Photo Journal

Here is a little glimpse into my everyday life here in Kunming.

On my walk to class in the morning I always pass by a group of older chinese people sitting around, gossiping and people watching. I think they are very cute.

China's rule for elevators is you only need them if the building has more than 8 floors, so a lot of apartment buildings only have 7 floors so they don't need an elevator. My school is on the 6th floor, hence my walk up 6 flights everyday.

(Vegetarians close your eyes) Outside of my school there is always some sort of meat hanging waiting to be sold. As you see here, a whole goat is waiting to be cut up and sold. The big bowl underneath is filled with the blood that runs down when the goat is cut.

This family is selling roasted chestnuts, the man stands next to this barrel continuously stirring the chestnuts and coal.

Here is the postoffice I stop at to mail postcards home to America :)

JiaHua is the local bakery in Kunming. I often stop on my way to the office from school to pick up a loaf of bread. My favorite kind of bread here is BeanSprout Bread, I don't know why its called that because the bread is normal with a slight sweetness to it, delicious.

I often stop and buy fruit from villagers selling their fruit on the street. These people usually live outside of Kunming on a farm and come into the city to sell their products.

This is the menu from one of my favorite lunch spots. I am trying very hard to learn the basic chinese characters so I can read menu's like this one.

My favorite lunch in China, jiaozi! It is a chinese dumpling, usually filled with some kind of meat and vegetable. You can get them fried, steamed or boiled. Then you dip them in a soy sauce/parsley mixture. Yum. I go to this place so often, the woman who owns the shop knows what I want I don't have to order anymore.

My desk at the office

I try to dedicate a portion of my afternoon to learning Chinese characters. Here are a few of my practice sheets.

Luang Prabang, Laos

October 1^st is a nationally recognized holiday in China called National Day where the majority of people have off work for an entire week. This week is usually spent traveling around China, seeing new sights or going home to spend time with family. According to China Daily, they expected 210 million people to be traveling around China during this week. 210 million people! My roommate and I looked at each other once we heard that and confirmed that we were getting out of China for National Day.

We looked at our options and decided to head to Laos since it borders Yunnan and we could take a bus straight there. So the night before National Day, September 30^th, we hopped on a sleeper bus and headed to Laos. 26 hours later, we arrived dazed and confused in Luang Prabang, Laos’ second largest city.

Over the next four days we enjoyed a relaxful vacation filled with kayaking, swimming, hiking, eating and lounging. We kayaked to one of Luang Prabang's famous waterfalls where we swam in the cool, refreshing water and enjoyed the sun. Myself and two other friends went zip-lining through the forest above the waterfalls. I saw some great scenery and got my thrills from flying through the air high above the trees. Another day, we took a boat ride down the Mekong River to explore some caves with ancient Buddhist statues inside. The Mekong River is a widely known river within southeast Asia, as it flows through China, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Luang Prabang is also well known for their Buddhist wats (temples). There are over 30 around the city, making them unavoidable. One morning we got up early to observe the monks collecting their morning alms and food. The monks spend their days meditating and taking care of the temple, they do not have time to buy and cook their own food, so the town’s people provide their only source of food in the morning. The majority of these monks are boys aging from 10-25 who stay in the monastery for only a short time.

Laos was reopened to tourism in 1989 and Luang Prabang was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage sight in 1995, thus leaving the city mostly bus/car free and preserving its French provincial architecture. Laos is known for its laid back attitude and we easily fell into the mood while we were there. We enjoyed French baguets and freshly made fruit shakes, a much enjoyed break from Chinese food.

Our bus ride back to Kunming was only about 20 hours. We returned safetly with many souvenirs and a new stamp in our passports.

CISS Water Project

The last week of September was filled with the Concordia International School Shanghai traveling to Yunnan to complete three projects with CWEF. Myself and two co-workers took 20 of these high school students to a rural village near the border of Myanmar to install a clean drinking water system. A full day of travel along some bumpy and curvy roads landed us in the middle of some beautiful scenery.

We spent our days in the village out on the mountain side digging a two foot deep trench to lay pipes for the water system. The fresh water source was about 10 km away from the village, the pipes would lead all the way into the village and then to each person household to a faucet with a water meter. The students put in some hard days of digging and laid pipe for a few hundred meters. On the rainy days, we helped the villagers with some other chores, pulling corn kernels from the cob for pig feed and separating rice kernels from the shell.

Overall it was a very humbling experience. We visited a few families in their homes and interviewed them about their daily lives. One of the families was one of the poorest in the village and explained they only had enough money to afford one pig and one chicken and they ate meat about once a month. The whole village was very welcoming and gracious to host us.

We did not get to complete the water system on our trip, but I pr-y that the village will finish and sustain the system for years to come, that when the rainy season is over, they will still have plenty of water flowing into the village.

Concordia International School Shanghai students and teachers arrival in Lincang

Hiking up the mountainside to dig trenches

Diggin'

Some more diggin'

Students helping to wash the dishes after dinner

Separating corn for pig feed

Village children after we passed out toys, books and balloons

Happy faces

Children holding their new possessions tight

New books

Father and son inside one of our village interviews

Rice Harvesting

This past weekend I traveled with my two roommates, Whitney and Jian Juan to Jian Juan's hometown to visit her family and see the rice fields being harvested. I was very excited to see where she grew up and see how rice is harvested. After I thought about it, I realized I didn't actually know what a rice plant looked like or how rice is grown. I soon found out, since once we got out of the tuk tuk rice was everywhere!

Kunming is surrounded by mountains and once we got outside of the city to her village, the mountains were more beautiful than ever. It was a gorgeous day, the rice fields bright yellow beneath a clear blue sky.

Many workers were in the fields doing different parts of the harvest. It was truly amazing to see these people bent down chopping the rice stalks by hand. Farmers are the hardest working people I know.

After they chopped the rice plant from the ground, they either slammed the plant on the ground or stuck it in a machine to shake the rice kernel from the stalk.

Once they have gathered all the rice kernels, they must lay out the rice to dry in the sun for several days. This was being done all over the village, in the streets and courtyards of their homes. After the rice is dried, they bag it and send it off to a factory to be de-shelled and packaged. The rice looks brown/tan because it has a shell on it. Inside the shell is the white rice kernel.

Jian Juan was very happy to be home. She does not get to see her family that often because she has to work in Kunming and is very busy teaching kindergarden. Her mom and aunt cooked up some delicious meals while we were there, now if I could only replicate what I eat here at home...

Jian Juan with her good friend and neighbor from home.

The rice kernel and plant up close.

Some kids playing in the field while their parents work.

Yum, the meal Jian Juan's aunt cooked for us: duck, pumpkin, peanuts, pork with peppers, beans, fish and rice!