Vacation time

I'll be hitting the road today, off to Shanghai to catch a flight to Bangkok. I took the trip to Hong Kong a few weeks ago (blog coming soon) and since then have been back in Changzhou, finishing up classes, doing some part time work, attending banquets, singing Christmas carols to the dorms, and reading travel books. I'll be traveling to Thailand to meet up with my friend John Thao who is teaching English there. Some of the other teachers will come down and we'll trek around Thailand.After a quick turnaround in Changzhou, I will head with Danthemanstan to India. No real plan except to meet up with at least one (if not two) of the Rob's from TU who are there doing missionary type work.

This may seem like a lot of vacation-and it is. I feel very fortunate to be able to travel so much, whether inside of China, or around the rest of Asia. China is a very different world than the one in which I spent the first 22 years of my life, and other parts of Asia are quite different from China. I'm incredibly lucky to have a job that offers me not only excessive vacation, but also pays me during it. Traveling is really attractive to me-seeing new places and thinking the new thoughts they inspire as well as the sense of movement-both anticipation and accomplishent as I move along a route. There are downsides to teaching here, but with the right attitude, I have a pretty sweet gig. Not only do we get summers off like all teachers, but our vacation for Spring Festival is ridiculously long, enough to allow a pretty sweet vacation.

I've now been in China for a year and a half (minus a big vacation and trip home). Even when stationary in Changzhou, almost every day I experience or see something new or different, and pretty often shocking or unbelievable. Just last night I was having dinner with Danthemanstan, and we wanted to get drinks with dinner, but the cafeteria we were going to doesn't sell drinks. So, he kind of sighed when he thought we'd have to go a little ways to get drinks and come back. Instead, I introduced him to a fairly hidden restaurant adjacent to the cafeteria-that sold drinks. He was floored that this restaurant existed so close to the cafeteria we eat at all the time. It's things like this, and the countless things I learn everyday about Chinese culture (and occasionally about my own) that make this such a great job. As a college student, like so many others, I (well my parents) paid a fair share of money to study abroad. I did this to engage in a cross-cultural experience (as they call it these days) to live in another culture, experience it day to day, not just as a tourist. Now, I get paid to do this every day, and I get to assign the homework!

Even though I'll be gone, I have delayed some posts, so they should upload every few days.