Where In The World Is Evan?

Sorry about the delay between posts, however, my teaching schedule has been surprisingly tirering and it’s been a real struggle to make the time to go to an internet caffe. The recent St. Patrick’s day celebrations and my birthday party haven’t helped with my seemingly chronic tiredness (I’ve only had a cumulative 6.5 hours sleep in the last two days).

My birthday celebrations at my new apartment went quite well. As my birthday fell on a Tuesday, and I had to leave for work at 7:30 am the following day, I didn’t do too much on the day itself (just had a quite night in with my late-fifties flatmate and a couple of bottles of bad Chinese wine - unfortunatly the Chinese don’t make any other kind). I did, however, have a great birthday party last night, with much drunken shenannigans and enjoyment had by all - at least all those that could still remember in the morning

My flatmate, Richard, whilst being rather tight with money, is nonetheless quite the saint. When I returned to the flat at 5:30 am this morning from an afterparty session at an expat bar across town the house was a total mess - with people sleeping on couches in two different rooms and spilled beer and all sorts of other mess everywhere. By the time I got woken up at 9:00 am (by a still drunk Olen climing into my bed) the house was spottless and all the hanger’s-on had been turned out!! He then also cleaned the extensive breakfast dishes that I subsequently created, while I was out for an hour in the morning!!

That’s about all thats of any particular note thats been happening in the last week. My apartment is quite nice, my teaching roster is acceptable, and I’ve had a raft of small chronic problems dealing with my Chinese bosses (as have all the other teachers) but it’s not been anything to problematic. I’m still enjoying the China experience greatly and have been taking all opurtunities to travel and see more on my days off (this weekend is the first in 4 weeks where I haven’t left Chengdu). Last weekend I went to Santai, a small Chinese town (a mere 150,000 people!) in a rural area about 3 hours North-East of Chengdu. Santai was quite the experience, as the friend I was visiting is the only resident foreigner in the county (populated by 1.5 million people), so another foreigner was quite the novelty for adults and children alike. From the children I recieved one of two responses upon being seen walking the streets - they would either run at me and grab me around the legs in a big hug, or freak out and run away giggling or in shock. The weekend before last I was in Beijing for a total of 11 hours, after spending 33 hours in transit getting there and a subsequent 26 hours getting back (I am now quite well aquainted with Chinese hard-sleeper train services.

Check out both the St. Patrick’s Day and my birthday photo galleries.