I went with Brian and some of his friends from his QQ group to the huangpu port. There are a bunch of little shops, restaurants, and fruit stands. There are also a lot of fields, and it feels like you're in the traditional Chinese countryside rather than a few kilometers outside of Guangzhou. The restaurant where we had lunch in located behind several fields and banana farms, and we got to see the guy go get our goose from the field before he cooked it.

Some of you have already heard the rumors that I found a Chinese girlfriend, so I figured now was a good time to put the photos up. Her English name is Sunny, and I met her on the bus heading across town one day. The pictures are from our first few dates. The first one was to Tianhe Park which I've mentioned before. The next one was to Beijing Road, which I've also mentioned before, where we went ice skating. The third is just dinner at her apartment.

This album is a selection of pictures from my weekend trip to Hong Kong. We took a bullet train into Shenzhen, China, which is the city in mainland China that is directly adjacent to Hong Kong. We stayed there during the nights, and went to Hong Kong during the days. The city is sweet. It is a really interesting blend of western and eastern culture. The crazy part is that almost nobody speaks "Chinese" (ie mandarin) there, so any chinese that we picked up was totally useless. There are some pretty cool pics I think.

This is a pretty short gallery. Basically I just went out walking one weekend when I was trying to have cheap fun. As usual I found some interesting stuff.

These pictures are the fruit of another walking adventure I went on with Tim. We went to Yuexiao park and walked around for a while, and saw the famous five goat statue. I had never heard of this before coming here, but there are billboards around town showing famous things from all over the world including the statue of liberty, the Sydney opera house, and the five goat statue, so I guess it's a big deal. We also saw the site of an ancient Chinese tomb and the stuff that was extracted from it. Some of that was cool, and some of it was a little oversold. But the tomb itself was cool.

A few weeks ago a new foreign teacher came. I met him at Tianhe park and we looked around and explored a little bit.

My friend Tim was invited to go with his school's principal and her family to see a temple in the far south part of town on Tomb Sweeping Day. He invited me to come along, and we got up early on our vacation day to meet the family. Jasmine, spoke great English and served as our tour guide. Her parents did not speak English, but with body language and a little translation, we could communicate just fine.

Saturday (3 April) Tim and I took a walking trip around an area of town that is pretty close to my house. We found a pedestrian mall, tons of jade jewelry stores, a White-person-infested Island and lots of other cool stuff. I'm not sure about the history of Shamian Island, but there are lots of English signs and white people, and the food prices are set to match those in western cultures. Obviously we didn't eat there :) There are lots of pictures so I've selected a representative subset to show here.

On Friday (2 April) I went to GrandView mall for dinner and to look around a little. The place is huge and there is an adventure floor that looks really cool, but we didn't do much other than look because we still haven't gotten paid. I took pictures of the highlights.

By pure chance, I met the mother of one of my students at lunch a few days ago. We ate together and exchanged email addresses, and she told me that her brother had a son in another one of my classes. Saturday was her brother's birthday party, and since the family was getting together they decided to invite me as well. I figured it would be a little awkward because of the communication barrier, but didn't let that stop me. I met the whole extended family and went out to a fancy dinner. They even paid for me! It was fun and, somewhat surprisingly, not awkward at all.