Home sweet home

Well, I'm back from Yichang. After a pretty ambiguous schedule, I finally decided to come back on Thursday so that I would be rested for class Friday morning. The other option was to try and get my coteacher to teach for me so that I could stay in Yichang for the weekend and hang out. Brad assured me that I would be distracting him from finishing his grades and that we probably wouldn't get to do anything exciting (like go to the Three Gorges Dam, the soon-to-be largest dam in the world when they finish it) so I caught the bus home. The ride was fine other than it lasting two hours longer than scheduled. That's China!

So where did I leave off? I wrote some about Christmas. Christmas night we had a nice foreigner party over at the Lewis' house. I got some awesome stuff from my secret Santa. Thanks Breanna! I'll have to figure out who was taking pictures when I tried it on, maybe I can get something on here. We had some snow on the night of the 29th. It wasn't too much, but it stuck to the trees and was enough to inspire about 2 billion text messages from various students who wanted to make sure that I knew it was snowing and that I should wear warmer clothes and that I should drink hot water so I wouldn't get sick. Good news! I didn't get sick! But it probably has nothing to do with how much hot water I didn't drink that night. It's probably because the next morning I got up and caught the bus to Yichang for about 5 days. Apparently a cold was passed around whilst I was away and I got back just in time to miss it. Yay! I came back to a sick Yvonne. Cindy apparently got her ticket home and left while I was gone, guess I'll see her again in March. Derek and Angelyn went to Xi'an for the weekend. I got a text message from them today. They're having a blast checking out the terracotta warriors and other sights there. I went to Xi'an once, it's a really cool place. Right mom?! She went with me, she knows how cool it is.

Wow, I'm all over the place in this post. I'll try to reign in my thoughts. So our winter holiday begins in about two or three weeks. That means that I'll have about 5 or 6 weeks in which just about every student on campus will pack up and leave. Most businesses and restaurants will close during the week of the Chinese New Year. This is the time of year when most foreign teachers in China get some travel in. I've been browsing my trusty Lonely Planet guidebook and I think I've decided to hit up Yunnan province this year. It's in south China and has mild weather year round, so while it may not be the tropics, it's as close as I can get without a boat or airplane. I could always head down to Hainan or Taiwan, but I'll save that for another time. I've been told that there's a lot to see in Yunnan, so I'm thinking I'll spend at least three weeks moving around down there. It should be nice to escape the cold and hang out in the cool/warm for awhile. Before I go to Yunnan, I think I might go over to Chengdu first. It's the capital of Sichuan province, the home of super spicy food and super elusive pandas. The main thing on my list right now is a genuine TexMex restaurant I've heard about, but I'm sure I'll eventually look into other things in the area. If I still have a lot of time left over during the holiday, I'll probably make a trip over to Hong Kong to hang out with my cousin Suzanne. I went twice during winter holiday my first year here, so I sure don't need to go for the sights. But it's always fun to hang out with Suzy! Plus I know other people in Hong Kong now, like Miss Deuce McMillan.

That's all I've got for now. The internet is being a pain again and I think I'll have to save this and post it another day. I'll sure be glad when it's fixed and I can get onto my blog more than once every few days.