the kids again

Ugly mushrooms, hurray!

Go team!

Her name is poo-er-sz-ing (we don't really know how to say or spell it exactly).

In the dark heart of the thicket!

The sky is almost blotted out, we fear we shall never see home again.

We escape back to the path, Piers is blocking up my lovely picture of Eshan

The local kids who love us because we gave them Koalas and have an inflatable kangaroo.

More Eshan

View from the top of the bamboo forest, up the mountain

The really cool bamboo forest we went through

Family with a donkey and cart on the mountain top

Eshan

Yeah the old man again and the family again

Some of the flattest part of the path up

View roughly west from the mountain (away from the town, towards... burma?)

Pagoda

Old man with tobacco pipe on top of mountain

Eshan, our school is in the distance near to the tower

A family who own the shop halfway up the mountain, they invited us to drink the water we bought with them

View from the Pagoda

YARRRR It Be China

Well I've done heaps in the last two days, but I'm a lazy person so I'll skip through it quickly.

Yesterday, it being the weekend so we have no lessons, we rode into town and left our bikes at the bottom of the mountian on the other side of town. We them climbed up, past some old pagodas and a big communist statue thingo. It was a huge climb, and really really beautiful and fun. There were paths branching off everywhere, and we found a bamboo forest on the way down. At the top we found an excelent view of Eshan spread out below us. I'll post some pictures after I finish this.

After that we decided we needed a big lunch/dinner (it was about 4 - 5 pm). We fruitless search for a resterant when we unexpectedly ran into one of the English teachers from the school. She invited us to (ANOTHER!) wedding feast, followed by bowling, swimming in hot springs, karoke and a bar! We eagerly accepted. The meal was one of the nicest I've had in China, there were some really good dishes and everyone was really jovial. We stopped by the school and got swimming gear, then got on the specially aranged school bus. The place was in another town about 10 minutes away, which we had been planning on going to today. We bowled with some of the guys around our age for about half an hour then went for a swim in the hot springs. Later we got drunk with some of the teachers and politly declined many many times to sing.
Everyone in China drink drives!! It's terrible.
Anyway, we got the bus back (the bus driver was sober as far as i could tell) at about 1 am.

Today we got up late and then went into town to go shopping for some 'essentials'. We got BB guns, firecrackers, toys, tea, shampoo, peasent shoes, an explorers hat, a mao hat and a leather jacket (piers did, i couldn't find one that fit comfortably), and a nail clipper.

Now we are just lounging around in the apartment, shooting the guns and listening to music. Piers hasn't seen heaps of the movies I brought so I expect we'll watch something like a Kubrick film or something tonight.

Missing everyone, hope your all well and enjoying your modern food hygine practices and drinkable tap water!

Tom

One of the dishes we had last night. This is a local endangered species somewhat like a small deer. Gemini told us later that it is illegal to kill ... though it tastes awsome... hahaha

PICTURES!

I got the pictures to work! Horay!

Enjoy, y'all.

I've been teaching since Wednesday now, and at first it was very stressful, but it's really easy now (considering i'm up to my 6th class and i'm still teaching the same lesson). I have 10 grade one classes, which is kind of like Year 9 or 10 approx.

Anyway, got to go have dinner.

The owner of the resterant we went to last night, a friend of our link teacher Gemini. All the men around here smoke cigarettes out of these crazy steel or bambo pipes! They fill the bottom with water, just like a bong, very strange.

3 of the teachers we had dinner with last night: Mr. Poo, Mr. Hua (phonetically guessed at) and Gemini

Gemini's nephew, currently going to teachers college in Yuxi and Gemini's son, in grade 2 at our school (left to right)

This complete stranger who came and offered us shots of 'Bi-jou', Gemini says this is a Chinese tradition of hospitality.

Kids on a motorbike outside the restaurant

Our fridge. The local beer is 'Tsingtao' (pronounced ching-dao), very nice.

View from our room into the school 2

Local brick factory 'Not One Less' style

View from our room into the school

Road into Eshan

Open market in Eshan

One of the two rivers that go through Eshan

View from the restaurant we had dinner in the night before last

Piers tries the foul local spirit 'Bi-jou'

The Great Wall

Kid with flag in Forbidden City

Beijing Highway Tollgate

Flying over Java

Rickshaws

Acrobatics show in Beijing

Me in the Forbidden City

Tom In Beijing

Hey Everyone,
It's Bronte, Tom's having some trouble with the internet in Yunnan so he emailed me these pictures of Beijing to put on his blog. Feel free to comment however as his internet should be sorted out soon.

Beijing Pictures

Pictures from Beijing. I can't tell if they have uploaded or not because something is screwed up with the internet here and i can't look at my own blog.

Bejing and Eshan

Today is our 3rd day in Eshan, Kunming at Minorities Nationality Senior Middle School. Having spent about 4 days in Bejing we arrived here after a very turbulant flight with China Air.

In Bejing during those 4 days we saw all the standard sights: the great wall, Tianamin Square, the Forbidden Palace and the Summer Palace. We also saw a large Jade factory. The section of the great wall we climbed was up the side of a mountain, and was extremely tiring to climb. I have pictures of most of this stuff, so rather than trying to explain and describe, I will post the pictures later. Something we rapidly got sick of in Bejing were the street vendors, who would not take no for an answer in any circumstances. For fun, Blake and I sometimes tried to sell their stuff for them to other people (using our limited Chinese), which they though was very funny. At one point we bought a traditional Chinese instrument called an Arfu and attempted to busk despite having no ability to play it. We made the equivalent of 0.00024 Australian Cents.

My GAP partner, Piers, and I are setteling quite well. Our link teacher, Gemini, seems very nice and hospitable. The main things we have found hard to get used to is the general constant dirtyness of Eshan (and of our accomodation when we arrived), also that the 'bathroom' is like a 1x1 meter box with a shower head set on the wall, but with no shower screen of any sort. This means everytime we have a shower the whole (unventilated) room, incl. toilet and sink, is sprayed with water. The furnature in our accomodation also leaves a lot to be desired: the mattresses are like woodern boards and the sofas are just as stiff. The only other seats are tiny childrens plastic stools. That aside, the other facilities (and the general size of the place) is very good. There are 6 rooms: a kitchen, living room (with 2 sofas, the computer, a large TV and DVD player), 2 bedrooms, the bathroom, and a small middle room with a fridge and washing machine. I will probably put up some pictures soon.

Now, the town. Eshan is a small town about 30 minutes drive from Yuxi (a much larger town, and popular with tourists) and about 1hr and 30mins from Kunming (capital of Yunnan province). Eshan is very beautiful, it is surrounded by mountains and the weather is very bearable despite being winter. Every day so far, Piers and I have cycled into town (the school has given us bikes) and bought some things we need as well as just to look around. There are many winding old side streets with very old buildings in a tradtional style that are amazing. Our first classes start tuesday, so far we have just been allowed to settle in at a slow place. We have made quick friends with 3 local children who think we are the best thing since sliced bread, especially since we gave them all little clip-on koalas and showed them the inflatable kangaroo. One of them is here right now playing with the kangaroo and trying to type on the keyboard as I do. Anyway, we must go have lunch in the canteen. The food here is very good, though i suspect we will soon get VERY sick of it haha.

I hope to post pictures soon.

Indo pics

Here are some reasonably boring pictures I took from the plane, but hopefully they somewhat liven up the post.





I took these as we were flying over Indonesia


I'm not sure if this image posting thingo is working properly... well if you can see them you can see them... ALSO, VERY FUNNY Mr. taking-pictures-on-my-camera-the-other-night-at-mine-party-while-i-was-asleep..... :P