I have some time before my flight to Changsha so I thought I’d say hi from the Hong Kong International airport. It has been a long, long, long trip and I still have a few hours to go. Basically I’ve been up for 40 hours or so. I had to sit in Los Angeles’ international terminal for twelve hours, which really made the whole trip too long. But the upside is I meet all of my fellow volunteer teachers in LA and they are all awesome and I know I’m in for an amazing year in Hunan. I just found out through CNN (its playing all over this modern and clean airport) that LA experienced an earthquake just now (?). I’m glad we missed that! Anyway, next time you hear from me I’ll be in Changsha, Hunan. Peace.
July, 2008
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Hello from Hong Kong!
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Tomorrow I leave
Monday, July 28th, 2008After months of answering the question: “what are you doing after college” thousands of times – always with the easily repeated: “Oh, me? I’m just teaching English in China” – finally I am leaving the United States and all its troubles and comforts for China. I feel different from my previous excursions to the Far East, for one I’m going on my own to a place I’ve never been. Really the fact that I am no longer classified as a student is one of the most glaring changes; before as a student China was very comfortable and I always knew that I would only have to work as hard as I desired. With this trip I am sure to be working my ass off and I really have little to no idea of what my future life will entail.
However, I do know that my flights over the next few days will constitute the longest trip I have ever made and bring me to three cities I’ve never visited (LA, Hong Kong, and Changsha). I fly from Boston to Atlanta and then onto Los Angeles. In LA I will wait for 10 hours until my flight to Hong Kong at 2 am. After arriving in Hong Kong I will almost immediately fly to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, arriving three days after I left Boston. I have always flown into China through Beijing (it makes me sad that I’m not going to this time, because of all the pre-Olympic cheer I’ll be missing) and chilled out there before venturing farther inland. This trip sounds like it will much more of a head-first introduction to China, especially for my fellow volunteers who have never been to China. Kinda like jumping off the highest diving board rather than slowing stepping into the pool while sipping a fruity cocktail. See you in China!
The rising costs of getting around China
Saturday, July 19th, 2008Lately I’ve been checking the train and airplane costs of getting around China. Thankfully the internet makes this easy. For train schedule info check out this website. And for airplane info I’ve been using elong.com. Though be warned if you want to buy airplane tickets for getting around China a foreign credit card could be more trouble than its worth. One thing I couldn’t get out of my mind is the value of the American dollar and how it has changed since my first trip to China in 2004. This is a good representation of the U.S. dollar’s exchange rate with the Chinese RMB in the last several months:
A plane trip from Huaihua to Beijing costs 1200 RMB, which in 2004 was around $145 but today is around $175. Oyvey.
What I’ve learned about Huaihua (怀化)
Monday, July 14th, 2008This is a post I’ve been looking forward to writing. You see I found out where I’m actually going to live for the next year just a couple weeks ago. It was a powerful moment when I found out. Finally the switch my life is about to take seemed real and became something that I could imagine. I knew only one thing: I would be living in 怀化 (Huaihua) in western Hunan and that I would teach at the No. 1 Railway Middle School. With these two pieces of information I was on the case right away and this is what I’ve come up with.
Some might expect that my first course of action would be to use the internet, and you would be right. But here I’d like to start off with what is found in my newest edition of Lonely Planet China. It was very relieving to know that Huaihua at least deserved its own entry in the book. The LP largely takes the tourist’s view of China and whittles the nation down to a fine point which can be traversed in a matter of weeks spent traveling hurriedly. So knowing that I wasn’t too far off the beaten track was good, but the entry doesn’t reveal much:
A town built around a railway junction in western Hunan, Huaihua is useful as a transit point to Fenghuang and Hongjiang, and as a rail conduit to Zhangjiajie or Liuzhou.
Destination: 怀化 (Huai Hua)
Thursday, July 10th, 2008Earlier this month I finally found out where I will be living and teaching during my soon-to-come year in China. All of the sites for my fellow volunteer English teachers and me are in Hunan province, so I knew that much going in. The question was would I live in a large city, backwater rural outpost, suburb, etc. Huaihua is the City I will call home. It is somewhere in-between all of the scenarios I have envisioned; it is neither a huge central city like the capital of Hunan, Changsha, nor is it the most rural site in the province. To be honest though it is pretty faraway from other major cities in Hunan and (I imagine) it is more rural than urban.
Huaihua is located in the mountainous area of western Hunan and is 20 kilometers from the Guizhou border. It is a railway hub being the point at which the Beijing-Kunming and Shanghai-Chongqing express trains meet. I have never been anywhere near this in my China travels. More on my future home coming soon!
