Tag: Travel

A night on the town

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The past month has been a very hectic month for the two Iowans abroad. Our school hosted a huge music festival called Dynamix. This was a strange event to me, and stressful. I won’t go into too much detail, but basically the festival only involves our own students, but guest conductors and workshop directors came in to work with the students. In previous years, the past band director was in charge, but now the company has broken off and ran the event privately. Since all of our students are involved, I felt personally responsible for preparing every single student on the music. I was a little frustrated by how our music program was hijacked for the first term, but I am relieved that we are now free to plan our own program.

Angela and I decided to go on a fancy date this week. I decided to surprise her by picking a fancy restaurant. A few other teachers recommended a place called Hai by Goga at our last teacher meeting. I did a little research and found that it was located in the French Concession. The restaurant is located on the 7th floor of a hotel tucked away behind a block of restaurants in the heart of the expat French Concession. We found our way up, and discovered a pleasant little restaurant with windows on all sides and a great view of the city. Continue reading →

ERA – Intersection of Time

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The past week has been a long one. I always struggle a little bit when returning from a long break, and with the week off we just had, I almost forgot that I am living in China to work, not just travel and have fun. I don’t think that is very fair, but oh well. We started our week with a typhoon warning. I was expecting our building to eventually collapse, but the weather was not quite as destructive as I had imagined. We did end up with an incredible amount of rain on Monday and Tuesday, however. Our apartment is on the fifth floor, and so flooding is not something we ever have to worry about. My classroom at school is on the very top floor, so I assumed that I would not have to worry about that flooding either. I was very mistaken.

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Nanxiang

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Angela and I spent the final Saturday of our October holiday exploring Nanxiang, which is an old river town in the outer reaches of Shanghai. The major draw was that Nanxiang is the supposed birthplace of great dumplings. Or maybe a special kind of dumpling. Either way, there were a ton of dumpling shops. Once we arrived at the Nanxiang metro stop on line 11, we went into a Starbucks to get some coffee and figure out where the old town was. Starbucks is a rare sight in China, so we take advantage of the special times that we find them. Sometimes we have to travel further than a block to find one, which is very disconcerting. You can read all about how extremely rare Starbucks is becoming here.

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Zhujiajiao Water Town

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On Tuesday, a small group of us decided to travel to a nearby suburb of Shanghai. There are several old water towns that are very close, and Zhujiajiao is called the Venice of China. With a name like that, how could we pass it up? Our friends John and Catherine Geisen-Kisch researched and found that the best way to get there was by taking a bus from Shanghai that only cost 12 RMB. So we did! We also brought Brett and Angie, the world travelers as they were keen on seeing a water town. The rest of our traveling group included Kat, Kathy, Dianne, and Julia. With 10 of us total, it was quite a large group. We took the metro to People’s Square, and then boarded the bus.

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October Holiday

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So far we have had a fairly active October break. At the very start of break, we spent the weekend in Nanjing, China which you can read about in the previous post. Nanjing used to be the capital of China, so there is quite a bit of history in that city. On Monday after we returned from Nanjing, we met up with a young couple who signed up to couch surf with us. There is a website that you can register with called couch surfing, and connect with people and places to stay for free all around the world. We had a married couple sign up to stay with us named Brett and Angie, and they are from Australia. They had previously come from the United States before then. Brett was an engineer and Angie an educator, but they both quit their jobs to travel the world. They are approaching one year of traveling. What a cool adventure! We met them and brought them to our apartment, and then we all went off in separate directions.

Angela and I decided to visit Jing’an Temple. This temple is not too far from where we live.

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Nanjing Weekend!

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It’s amazing what you can do in one weekend!   This weekend Jason and I traveled with some other friends to Nanjing, China!  Our travel group consisted of 8 people:  Kathy, Heather, Boramy, Kat, John, Catherine, Jason, and me!   We took the train from the Hongqiao Railway Station.  This was our first time to this train station and it was very easy to navigate although it looks confusing.   There was a minor security check that everyone was herded through, and then we just had to find our train number and platform.  We were running behind and nearly missed the train.    Our ride to Nanjing was very pleasant and comfortable and was only one hour and 45 minutes.

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Floating Down The Mighty Shuangxi River

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This weekend was an exceptionally eventful weekend for us Iowans in China. On Friday Angela and I had musical pit rehearsal after school, so we did not get home until a little before 6:00 PM. We went out to a great local dumpling restaurant just down the street with a big group of friends, and even got one basket of dumplings for free, as the owner seemed to be enjoying us. Afterwards, we wandered into the park right next to our apartment complex. There is social dancing in this park every single night, and Angela and I have been here a few times before. On Friday night, we took turns dancing with one another, and I even got to dance with an older Chinese woman named Ms. Lee. Her English was very good, and she told us she taught Chinese. One of the new teachers got her phone number so that we might call her for lessons someday.

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The Bund, Insane Asylum Swan Lake, and Yu Yuan Garden. Great weekend.

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Please notice that in honor of Joseph ‘Danger’ Putnam, this post contains no exclamation marks.

On Saturday morning, September 14, something incredible happened. Well not really, but Angela and I awoke and didn’t do anything, so that was pretty great. I recently joined a community jazz band, and we had our first gig on Saturday at 12:30PM. We played at the Ritz-Portman hotel, right outside. There was a fairly decent crowd, and the band is quite talented. I had only been to one rehearsal the Tuesday before, and my friend and co-worker Lee and I got really mixed up getting to rehearsal (I admit…mostly my fault) so I sight-read most of the performance. I really enjoyed myself, however. After that, it was time for Angela/Jason adventure time. Our ultimate destination for Saturday night was a ballet performance of Swan Lake in Pudong, which is the East side of the Huangpu River. Angela and I decided that we should make a day of it. So, we began our journey via the Subway line 10, which is quite close to our apartment.

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Rain storm

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Another week in Shanghai has ended!  Everything this week was pretty normal…I think!  Jason started playing in a community jazz band and had a rehearsal for that on Tuesday night!  I stayed in and researched info about our trip to Thailand!  On Wednesday we had Taco night!  It was yummy!  I was able to find all the ingredients (a little expensive) but it was delicious! I even splurged on some Tostitos Hint of Lime Chips!  YUM!  I even made homemade salsa!  It felt great to cook again!  And the tacos were delicious!  On Thursday night, Jason had back to school night for the high school, so I decided to go out for some drinks with my co-worker Sean and his bride to be Tiffany!  We went to the Shanghai Brewery!  They have a decent happy hour, delicious nachos and yummy thin crust pizza!  It was a fun night out! Continue reading →