Kind People

 This is Olivia and WeiWei. Olivia is the coordinator of the volunteers and WeiWei is the foreign affairs coordinator. These ladies are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They have taken care of me from the night I drove on to GFC campus. WeiWei makes sure that she creates a personal friendship with all of the interns and volunteers. She is one of those people that really cares about you. Olivia is the same way, just in a more humorous manner. Earlier today WeiWei told me she spoke to Erin asking if it was possible to cancel this week's Saturday class I was scheduled to teach. She did this so that I could travel to GuiYang with the other volunteers to go see the Chinese Supercup soccer match between GuiYang and ShangHai.

The lady here is Erin, she is the duty coordinator for the volunteers. She schedules our classes and pretty much coordinates anything work related for us. She is one hilarious woman. Beside her is Max. He is a graduate from HongKong University. He is an incredibly sweet guy and one of the head honchos around here.

Experiments

 Last night for dinner head chef Tom tried an experiment. The experiment was leaving the students in charge of dinner. Tom picked a head chef and made the head chef organize everything in the kitchen, even the design of the food on the plate. The experiment was a major success with one slip up; the students had forgotten to turn the kitchen hoods on making the restaurant quite smokey. The food tasted great though. In this picture we have sous-chef Jason.

 This is Shine, she told a story about herself at the opening of the English Festival last night. She was amazing, unfortunately she did not win the first prize for her category. The English Festival is three nights of performances by students in English. This is the first year for the English Festival here.

 I have no idea who this guy is, but this little butt hole argued with me and a couple of the other volunteers for not allowing him to leave. Every GFC student is required to attend one of the three nights of the English festival. Some students snuck out throughout the performances, but eventually the volunteers started standing by the doors stopping the students from leaving. This picture was taken right after we rejected this student's departure from the auditorium.

 I feel bad for posting this picture, but I felt like I can't just events that are all good and proper. The girl here is Tiffany, she was in the story reading category. Students here choose and memorize stories to perform. This is Tiffany struggling to remember her story. She did end up winning 3rd place in her category.

Here is Rain, Ben, and Lincoln. Rain and Lincoln were the MCs tonight. Ben helped them practice their speeches before this night. The students did an absolutely amazing job; these guys were better than the majority of MC's whose native language is English. They had humor in their speeches and they cooperated with each other so well. What was the really impressive was that these students practiced every single day for the past week; their motivation and work ethic is incredible.

Embroidery

 This embroidery class is held in the minority center. These girls are trained in this style of art and then get to make there own sheets of embroidery. After they are finished, their pieces are put up of sale. The intricately designed pieces are longer than 4 feet and cost 380 kuai, just shy of $65. I will surely buy one of these beautiful creations. They figurines and everything on the wall in the background are also for sale. These are things that promote the minority culture. One of the girls told me that she loves it when her mother allows her to wear the traditional outfit for her minority, and the next time she will be able to wear it will be for her wedding so she is waiting for a husband. 

This girl works on her fish design. I like to ask students for their name to give them credit for allowing me to take a picture of them, but I forgot to ask this girl for name after taking the picture.

Apologies

Hey everyone, I am sorry that I do not have any pictures today. I did take pictures but I have to put them through post processing to make the real nice and pretty for everyone before I can show you. It doesn't take much time, but today I am very tired. I went to my upper level Internet Marketing class and met them today, then I went to play soccer. It is extremely hot here right now. Today it was about 90 and humid. The whole time I was here I was under the impression that the school was in a valley. Today I found out that we are about 5,000 feet or so up, but there are other peaks near by that make it seem like we are in a valley. So playing in the hot sun with the high altitude has definitely taken a toll on me today. Now it makes a lot of sense why it takes so much energy to walk up stairs to my apartment. Right now I am taking a break from preparing a presentation I am making for the lower level int. mark. class. Also, the administration has changed my schedule again. Now I have to get to work at 7am on Wednesdays and leave at 7pm, there is quite a lengthy break in the middle of the day though. I don't want to make it seem like they are making work all day. Starting tomorrow until Friday, we will have an English festival. There will be much to report on when these begin. Again I am sorry for no pictures today.

First actual day at GFC

 This is my Monday, Thursday internet marketing class.  I am the TA for Ben who I will be taking this class from in a couple weeks.

 This is lunch in the GFC hotel. The guy in the grey shirt, Scott, is also a volunteer. Volunteers like to go here for our meals. Students not as much for two reasons: they don't like the western styled food and the price here is a little more expensive. Cost in the cafeteria is anything from 2-5 kuai (less than a dollar), and the cost at the restaurant is around 5-9 kuai (a little over a dollar). The exchange rate is a little over 6 RMB to 1 USD. Todays lunch was vegetarian sandwiches on a garlic sourdough bread. Can't really remember because I put it down so quickly. I was super hungry today.

 Meet Erin. She is a Hotel Management major and took care of my lunch today.

 This guy here is named Messi. Today I went to play soccer after my classes when I saw people playing on the field. Today Messi scored 3 goals.

Here we have dinner. Dinner tonight was a kind of potato soup for appetizer (dish on the right), ratatouille and stuffed pork loin on potato for the main (dishes on the left), and a lemon meringue pie for dessert. Dinner costs around 15 kuai.

Let The Work Begin

This morning at 9 o'clock I finally received my duties for the next 10 weeks. I am now the TA for one of the lower level internet marketing classes, TA for the upper level internet marketing class, and a TA for one of the hotel management classes. Within the next 3 weeks, I will be taking over the internet marketing classes since the current teachers will be leaving then. Right now there are about 20 volunteers give or take, I still haven't met them all, from all over the world. The Hotel Management major is a practicum. Here at GFC we have an actual hotel. They don't use it to host students, but they will use it to host important people when they come to visit. The hotel is supervised by two guys but is pretty much run by the students. So the restaurant that serves wester food here is all catered by the students. In turn, us volunteers are kinda like the guinea pigs and we also get to eat nice food. I am not saying the cafeteria here is horrid, but I do prefer the food they serve at the restaurant.

Day 2

 Meet Jacqueline (student) and Alice (volunteer). Here the roles have switched to where the student has become the teacher. Jacqueline was helping Alice learn piano this morning. Each student and domestic volunteer is given or gets to pick an English name when they come to GFC. I met a cute couple today whose English names were Misery and Sunshine. Misery is the guy and Sunshine is the girl; they wouldn't allow me to take a picture of them.

 Today Ben, Xing, and myself took a trip to HuiShui, the closest city about 30 minutes drive, to eat lunch. We had hotpot. It wasn't the best idea since the heat today along with the spicy soup base made us sweat more than the devil's armpit. However, it did taste amazing. GuiZhou province has a lot of hot pots, stews, and a lot of noodle soups.

 This is a normal thing in China, but I had to take a picture of this family.

 Sunday evening relaxation. Students enjoy the soccer turf and track this evening.

The last two characters on this sign says "dog meat". HuiShui is famous for its dog meat dishes. Some of the volunteers like it, some don't, and some haven't tried. I am among those who haven't tried. Not yet at least.  

Student dorm A taking in the last of Sundays sunlight.

Real or Fake?

China is notorious for not only having fake Apple product, but having full on fake Apple stores. What do you guys think this one is? Real or Fake?

Day 1 Pictures

 This here is the path between a dorm and the cafeteria (not good at all). The red sign is for a super market that is on campus which is run by two older women. I went in today to buy toilet paper as GFC does not provide us with any. The lady at the table tried to sell me the most expensive case, but me being cheap bought the cheaper toilet paper. She wasn't too happy about that. Also, Chinese toilet paper is freaking weird.

 Today was sports day here at GFC. The houses that compete against each other were the different majors. Still not sure how the system here for majors work, but I'll give an update once I start working.

This is the pathway from the volunteer dorm to the main campus.

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At around 7 hour mark on my 15 hour flight to Shanghai, a Boeing 747 flew perpendicular to my flight just 1000ft above. This caused us to get caught in its jet wash which in turn pushed us down at an incredible rate. I remember seeing a man who was walking in the aisle come off of his feet for a second, that is how fast we dropped. Out of panic I opened my window. I was greeted with this view. I have never seen such an amazing scenery before. Look at those frozen rivers! This was a couple hundred miles south of Fairbanks.

The Great fireWall

You know how people say that some websites are blocked in China? Well essentially every website known to the western mind is blocked, so I found a program that will only allow me to proxy for about 10 minutes. 3 of which I just wasted staring at my screen in disbelief. I am working on a way to get this working better, but I just wanted to update everyone for now. I have made it to GFC (GuiZhou Forerunner College) safely and all, heavily bogged down in jetlag though. Settling down is a bit complicated. You see, almsot all the volunteers have been here for more than half a year so they have all bonded and made relationships, then comes this young Asian kid. It will take some time to get used to, but I figure I can settle in within a couple days, maybe a week or so. But I have met 2 nice guys, one from England and one who went to the same university I currently attend. Got to love that Sewanee connection. There is so much to tell everyone, but for now I am pretty much out of time. I will find a way to keep everyone updated. Also I am sorry for all the typos if any in this post. No time to read over before posting. Have a good day y'all!

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Flight 2 of 4. Right now there is a 1.5 hour delay in Miami. And my layover in Chicago is 1.5 hours... let's see how this works out.

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Boarding the first of four flights. Day one of three days of travel... airports suck!

My Gear

I have decided that I must add the stereotypical photographer's gear picture. This is the majority of my travel weight.

Off to China

As there is no Facebook in China, I decided to start a blog to keep everyone posted on my adventure. I will be working in GuiZhou province teaching English, but I do not plan to simply stay on the college campus for 10 weeks; I will travel as much as I can to juice every bit of experience from this trip. As I am a better photographer than writer, this will be more of a photo blog. So follow me as I head off to China on my own. Please, everyone feel free to comment.