Winter is Here, and so are Finals….

Winter has most certainly come to Pengshan and finals are just around the corner.  This will be the very first time in my life where I will not actually be taking a final (Thank God!).  I've been very busy writing finals for all of my different classes.  Writing finals still sucks pretty bad, although, it's definitely not as bad as actually taking one.

I always like to have a little fun with my students.  So, naturally, I decided to scare them all in class by telling them, "I decided the final would actually be TODAY!"  It was absolutely hilarious.  The students just stared at me with completely blank faces and some just yelled, "NOOOOOOOOO."  Then I finally told them I was kidding and that it won't actually be for a few more weeks.  Some laughed, some sighed in relief, and I'm pretty sure some still want to kill me.

There really isn't a whole lot to blog about, so I'll be keeping this one short and simple.  Also, I plan to talk about my upcoming plans which will definitely result in some future, EPIC, blog posts.  So, get ready for that.


My Hair:

Still no hair cut….  I got a hair cut the day I left America (August 9th).  You do the math.  My hair has never been longer than it is right now.  And I must say, it's getting a little out of control…

Yeah, pretty damn long…  (Haircut scheduled for early January….)

In other news, I did just take a final for my Chinese class.  It actually went very well.  I did really well on my final and the teachers were impressed.  I have come so far since I first came to China.  My tones have improved dramatically and my vocabulary is becoming much more extensive.  However, this does mean that my Chinese classes are over for the semester… I will have to practice on my own until they start again next term.  I definitely plan to do that by using various websites as well as meeting with students who are willing to help me practice my Chinese.


Vacation time is almost here!

We have a pretty epic vacation planned.  We just recently bought our flight tickets to Thailand.  James, Devin, and I will be going to Thailand in mid-January.  We originally planned to travel to Thailand in the most awesome way possible; unfortunately, it didn't work out…

Our Original Plan:
- 18 hour train ride to Kunming.  2 days of exploring and living it up in Kunming
- 7 hour bus ride to Xishuangbanna.  We planned to ride elephants here for a day
- Get on a boat, 12 hour boat ride on a river through Laos and eventually into Thailand.
- Arrive in Chiang Saen, spend the night
- Take a 5 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai and spend a day or two there
- Then take a 24 hour train ride into Bangkok

Unfortunately, this did not work out.  Because of our complicated visa situation (I still am using a tourist visa and need to leave the country every 90 days) we would not have been able to get out of China in time for this to work out.

Our New Plan:
- 5 hour plane ride to Bangkok

Not nearly as cool of a way to travel.  But, this does allow us to do a lot more in Thailand.  We plan to spend a few days in Bangkok, where I can visit a friend who is teaching just outside of the city.  We will then spend the next two weeks traveling south, by train, to various cities and beaches.  We will travel all the way into Malaysia.  I will then fly out of Kuala Lumpur to meet my mom and dad in Beijing.

I'm pretty excited to finally see my family.  Not only that, but they get to see China! We plan to travel throughout China, including; Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, and Hong Kong.  I'm pretty stoked.

I will not be able to blog for about a month while I am traveling; however, you can expect some pretty awesome blog posts once I come back.


More blog posts to come before I leave for vacation, don't worry.


Jono

A Very Happy Chinese Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! from China...

Well it is safe to say that this Thanksgiving holiday was the most interesting Thanksgiving I have ever experienced.  There were so many different things that made this Thanksgiving a very special and fascinating holiday.  Lets first start with the students….

The Students

For the entire week I gave all of my freshman classes the same Thanksgiving lesson.  I thought that all of the kids would definitely enjoy a change of pace from the listening lessons that they are accustomed too (I was definitely right about that).  

The lesson included a brief video about the history of Thanksgiving and some of the traditions that we practice in America.  I then showed the students a powerpoint with more information about various traditions that we had in America on Thanksgiving.  But the best part of the whole lesson was showing them the food.

Turkey:  They all knew what the turkey was and when the picture came on the screen they all yelled in unison "TURKEY!!!!!!!!" followed by "OOOOOOO" and "AHHHHHHH".  Very funny.

Stuffing:  They were baffled to say the least.  Most students looked at the picture in disgust and said, "What is that? Meat? Ew. It looks gross."  I then proceeded to tell them that it was one of my favorite dishes.  They just looked at me very suspiciously.  I told them it was basically tiny bits of bread with some different vegetables like celery and onions mixed in.  They didn't understand what was so good about it at all… anyway, on to the next…

Mashed Potatoes:  "It's a bowl of milk? Why do you have a bowl of milk on Thanksgiving?"  Then some students would realized its potatoes and exclaim at the top of their lungs, "IT'S POTATOES!!!! But why do they look like that?" I then had to explain that they were mashed potatoes and that we crushed them into a creamy sort of substance.  I told them they were delicious and that we could eat them easily with a spoon.  They were skeptical…

Gravy:  Loved the response to this picture.  "Coffee? You have a bowl of coffee on the table?" To which my response was, "We cover our food in this sauce.  Do you think we would pour coffee all over our food?" The students reacted by saying, "ewwww. No.  I hope that you don't."  I explained that it was gravy and that I loved gravy because it was delicious and salty.  They didn't understand.

The Full Plate:  I then showed them a picture of what a full plate of food on Thanksgiving looks like.  The stared at the picture and their mouths were watering.  All of the students went "OOOOOOOO" and "AHHHHH" followed by "TEACHER, I'M SO HUNGRY." It was hilarious. 

After all of the food pictures I told the students about Thanksgiving with my family and that we typically had about 27 people at our Thanksgiving dinner.  They were absolutely stunned.  I explained that we had A LOT of food.  

Giving Thanks:  I explained that Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks to the things you have in your life and to any special people, such as friends and family.  I got some awesome responses when I asked them what they were thankful for….

"I'm thankful for my parents for bringing me up" was the most common response.

"I'm thankful for all of my disadvantages in life," and I was just thinking to myself, "What? Why? Maybe you don't understand." But they continued to say, "because these disadvantages make me stronger as a person."  Okay maybe they do understand.  A lot of students said things like this.  I was surprised.

The students also decided to get me some gifts or cards for the holiday.  It was extremely nice of them and it made me feel very happy.  I know that the students like me a lot because they tell me all the time; however, the cards that I got from the students and some of the gifts were really touching.  It made me feel very happy to actually be a teacher.

This is one note from a Freshman class:

The note was very sweet.  I love this class.  A lot of very good students.  One of the students is extremely dedicated and comes to me all the time to improve his English skills.  I also decided everyone in this class gets an A… because of this letter…. I can do that right?

The ABSOLUTE best thing came from a junior student in my Western Etiquette class.  The student is probably the best student in the class.  She is extremely dedicated to learning English and she speaks it very well. She sent me this email:  

 Hi Jono, thanks for your information about etiquette this semester. To be frank, at the beginning of the course, I was arrogant, wondering how something like etiquette could be taught for the whole semester. However, it turns out that by taking your class, I realized that I had been provincial. Etiquette has a lot of details, manners, and meanings to be disscussed. Besides, the course gave me a clearer understanding of some certain manners than what I've heard before, like the etiquette of using a phone.

     I've tried to prepare a gift for you a week ago - Autographes of Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, as your favourite sport is golf. However, so far I havn't received any reply. ( is that because America is too far from here?) For Woods, I sent a message to his employees to ask for an autograph on his official website, and for Vijay I sent a letter to the address mentioned on his website about how fans could get his autograph. Hope I could receive his reply soon. In addition, since Facebook and Twitter is not available in China, it is difficult to get direct contact with them.

     Anyway, I've learned how to behave more properly in your class, and hope you enjoy this Thanksgiving in China.

This was easily the greatest email I have ever received in my entire life.  It was also the nicest thing that any student has ever tried to do for me.  I had to explain to Wendy that getting their autographs was very difficult to do and that to actually get one, people would have to pay a lot of money.  I didn't want her to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a gift for me.  

The students are extremely sweet.  I got a lot of different gifts, cards, and special performances from my students to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.  I love my students, they are amazing.

A Thanksgiving Dinner? Well, something like it….

The administration prepared a Thanksgiving meal for the foreign teachers.  It was…. ummm… interesting…

They had a Turkey…

At least we think it was a turkey? I'm not totally sure.  Might have been a goose.  Nevertheless, the WHOLE bird was cooked.  So it included the head…

We also had some mashed potatoes along with bread and butter.  It was a pretty decent meal.  Nothing like a Thanksgiving meal in America.  I was very happy for them to have done this.  We ate dinner with the director of foreign affairs as well as the president of the school.  It was very nice.

Our Own Twist on Thanksgiving

Our Chinese teachers had come up with the brilliant idea of making our very own dumplings to celebrate Thanksgiving.  I absolutely love dumplings, so of course, I was game.  

We got all of the ingredients the weekend before and the day after Thanksgiving we finally got an opportunity to make our own dumplings.  YES!

The vegetable mix (left) and the pork mix (right)

And the rolling party begins...

 I was pretty damn good at rolling dumplings… Extreme concentration…

So. Many. Dumplings.

The finished product… Pretty damn good if I say so myself.

Time to eat… yummmmmmmm

These dumplings were so good.  I must have eaten 30 of them in total.  We also had some mashed potatoes, green beans, lots of beer, and some really good whiskey that our friend brought.  It was an awesome meal.  Good food, good people, couldn't ask any better way to spend a Thanksgiving in China.

While our Thanksgiving was very fun and unique, it really did make me miss America.  I wanted to spend time with my family and friends very badly.  I wanted to eat traditional Thanksgiving food.  However, I can't complain about our Thanksgiving situation.  

Thank you for reading and I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

Jono

Well... I'm Engaged Now...

Okay, so, I'm not actually engaged.  However, I did attend a single's event this past weekend...  It was quite an experience to say the least.  The girl who was hosting the event invited me to it (not as someone she was interested in dating... I hope...).  I met her at English corner and she invited me to the event.  I didn't even know that it was a singles event until I actually got there.  She told me that it was just going to be barbecue, of course I said yes.  Chinese bbq is pretty damn good.

I brought the other foreign teachers with me because there was no way in hell I was rolling solo to this event.  Upon our arrival we were finally told that it was a single's event.  A single's event is basically an event where a lot of the Chinese students can meet their special someone.  When we were told what the event actually was we were a little freaked out.  We really were not there for that reason, we just wanted some delicious bbq.

The event first started off with some mingling games, which we participated in.  But because we could not speak Chinese very well we were soon out of the game (thank god).

In this game we basically had to get 5 people to stand on a sheet of paper.  Everyone was standing really close to each other as you can see, which was good for mingling.  We were obviously the first people out of this game, so we immediately made our way towards the beer.  

Finding the beer made the bbq immensely better.  I was extremely hungover that day, so the beer was really nice.  As you can tell, I really need a haircut....

All of the students were still playing the game so we just kind of hung out and helped set up some of the barbecues, and drank beer of course.  I was getting really excited to eat.  They had soooo much food there.  

They had all sorts of different vegetables and various other meats.  The thing that I was excited for was the lamb that they were cooking over a giant fire.  It was really cool to watch them cook the lamb this way.  They also threw a bunch of sweet potatoes in the fire when they first started cooking the lamb.  I honestly had no idea what they were putting into the fire, but I knew it was some sort of vegetable.  The sweet potatoes sat in the fire for like 3 hours.  I had no idea how a sweet potato could even sit in a fire for so long, but I guess that's the Chinese way.

Here is a picture of the sweet potato when it was finished:

It actually tasted really good.  And as I said, it sat in the fire for like three hours....

We talked to a lot of the students for a while.  Some of the students there spoke English very well.  It honestly seemed like a really long English corner.  All of the students asked the same questions that we hear at English corner: Where are you from? Why are you in China? Do you like China? How is it different than America? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you want a girlfriend? Etc...

We were also in a beautiful area to have a bbq.  It was right next to the river.  We had a huge area set up where we could all hang out.  Here are some pictures of the scenery:

It was a beautiful day for a barbecue.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  It's usually very overcast in Pengshan.  It never gets too cold.  The last picture shows our chefs for the night.  Chinese BBQ is very different than the American style BBQ.  Usually in Chinese BBQ there aren't even chefs cooking up a large portion of meat.  At Chinese barbecues they set up a few smaller barbecues and everyone cooks their own food.  Typically they have a ton of food that has been cut into smaller portions.  It takes a very long time for the BBQ to actually be over.  Because everything that you are cooking is so small it takes a very long time.  But that gave us more time to drink beer, and also eat amazing food.  

So those are the tiny little barbecues that they use.  You can only cook a few things at a time with them.  It didn't really seem to bother anyone though.  It actually worked out very well, other than it was the most poorly organized way to bbq.... People would have to wait until they could find room around a bbq to actually cook their food.  We finally got some room around a bbq and joined a few girls who could barely speak English.  They couldn't help but to just giggle and stare at us.  They helped us cook our food.  And by help I mean they picked up everything I was cooking and basically threw it away....  Then they cooked some food for us...  It was pretty hilarious.  I basically just burned everything that I was cooking.  It was kind of difficult....

After four hours or so, the lamb was finally ready.  I was stoked.

Of course there was absolutely no light by the time that the lamb was finished.  The chefs relied only on cell phone light in order to cut the meat into tiny pieces, really safe....  The meat was unreal though.  It was probably some of the best lamb that I have ever had in my entire life.  Because we were foreigners we got the first serving of lamb... Couldn't complain about that.  

After the meal was over, the fire that was used for cooking the lamb was turned into a giant bonfire.  All of the students gathered around the bonfire and we were not sure what was about to happen.  I was finished with my food, finished with my beer, I thought it would be a good opportunity to go and pee before anything happened.  Of course as soon as I start walking I get called out and the host of the event asks me to sing a song...

The Chinese sing all the god damn time.  Any opportunity they get to sing songs with each other, they do it.  So I was called out to sing a song in front of about 50 Chinese students.  I was really excited....

Obviously you can see that I still have a "Damn it.  Really? I have to sing a song right now" kind of look on my face.  But I sang anyways.  As you can see all of the students took the opportunity to take a picture of the waiguoren teacher sing a song.  I sang Good Riddance by Green Day, the students loved it.  Thanks to Devin for taking the picture.  

The students also played some sort of song/train game.  We of course participated in the game.

As expected, all of the foreign teachers had to sing a song.  The last picture is of Devin singing a song for the students.  Hate to say it, but mine was totally better.... Devin would probably disagree, but whatever.

The single's bbq was a great time.  We had a lot of fun at the event.  The food was spectacular, people were friendly, and we got free beer.  No complaints from me.  And just to reassure my parents... I AM NOT ACTUALLY ENGAGED.  

Thanks for reading,

Jono

The Daily Grind - Life so Far

I have had some of the most memorable moments in my entire life while I have been here in China, and I've only been here for just over two months.  A lot of these experiences will live with me forever.  In this post I will describe some of these experiences.  The goal of this post will be to portray various aspects of my life in China.  In previous posts, I have described certain aspects about Chinese culture and in others I have talked about some of the places I have been.  I have yet to write a blog post about my daily life and how I spend my time in Pengshan.  This blog post will do just that.  I hope everyone enjoys!

Teaching

Teaching has been a wonderful experience for me.  For my entire life I have been a student.  Now, I have finally been given the opportunity to see the classroom from a different point of view.  It is an extremely gratifying experience for me.  

The students are the best.  They have a lot of respect for their teachers and they are diligent workers.  Their dedication is very surprising to me.  I know that there are lot of dedicated students in America, and I like to think of myself as a dedicated student.  However, the students that I have met at Jinjiang College are extraordinary.  The students will take any opportunity they can in order to better their English.  

I teach seven classes in total.  I teach one senior class, one junior class, and five freshman classes.  The juniors and seniors speak english very well.  Most of the time I don't really teach them that many new things; instead, I give them an opportunity to practice their english skills with a native speaker.  

The senior class that I teach is a very small discussion class.  There are about 10 students in the class.  For the class, I typically bring in a current event news article that I find online.  The students take turns reading the article out loud.  Their English is almost flawless.  Very rarely do I have to fix any grammatical errors.  The articles are not particularly complex; however, they are long and challenging in some ways.  The point of these articles is for the students to learn about Western culture and to also think critically about it.  They analyze the articles and we discuss the articles for the entire class.  The senior class is easily my favorite class.

The junior class I teach is fun, but not nearly as fun.  The title of the class is Introduction to Western Etiquette.  I basically have to teach the students certain aspects of Western etiquette.  I typically don't like to just lecture to the students; however, in this class there really is no other way for me to teach the students about etiquette.  The class is a little boring, but I try to make it as fun as possible.  Recently, I showed the class a lot of clips from Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and other clips I could find that portrayed Western etiquette.  As you can imagine, the clips from Seinfeld and Curb showed pretty bad etiquette and the students learned what NOT to do in social situations.  They loved it, and I'm glad.

The freshman classes that I teach are okay.  The freshman just love to have a Western teacher, and for many of the students, I am the first Western person they have ever seen in their entire lives.  I love going to the classes because they are all so excited to see me and learn from me.  However, I teach them listening classes and they just sit and listen to these tapes of British people speaking simple English phrases.  I make the class fun when we go over what has been said in the tapes.  They definitely love the class and I am glad.  I personally think its a little boring because they just sit and listen to these different tapes.  During the first class I had with the freshman students I gave them the opportunity to ask me any questions about myself and America.  I got some of the same questions from each of the five classes.  They went like this:

Why are you in China?

Do you like China?

Do you have a girl friend? (when I answered no, the students were completely shocked)

Do you like Chinese girls?

What is college like in America?

I love the last question.  I love telling about the students about my college experience in America.  First off, I start with telling them about our living situations.  The dorms for college students at Jinjiang College are ridiculous.  The dorms for the students each have 6 people crammed into them.  They have two desks, 3 people to a desk, and a bed for each of the students.  The dorms are about the same size as the dorm that I had in college, but our dorms were for only two people...  The students always give me a great reaction when I tell them this.  I tell them many more aspects about college life in America, but the part I just described is always the best.

The school always keeps me very busy.  The classes take up about 14 hours of my time a week.  On top of that, I have to have office hours for 4 hours a week.  Most of my time is spent lesson planning.  Lesson planning takes up a lot of time.  I always spend at least an hour and a half a day, usually more, planning lessons for future classes.  The school asks the foreign teachers to participate in an English corner ever Monday and Wednesday.  This lasts for an hour and half and students come to the school quad to talk to us.  It's always pretty fun, but by now its getting a little boring and redundant.  The foreign teachers also must give two lectures each semester.  I just gave my first lecture last week.  Fortunately, we get to choose the topic, so I chose to talk about swimming and water polo in America.  About 80 students or so showed up to hear me give the lecture.  

And finally, the school anniversary celebration.  This actually happened on October 8th, my birthday.  The administration asked us (basically required) to give a performance during the celebration.  We chose to do a dance to several different songs.  This was quite an experience.  About 15,000 people showed up to the celebration and we had to do a dance in front of all of them, pretty ridiculous.

Here is the video:

Foreign Teachers Dance

On top of all of this, yes there is more, I have Chinese lessons twice a week.  Every Monday and Thursday I have Chinese lessons for an hour and a half.  The same students that we teach in some of our classes are our teachers for the Chinese class.  They are great teachers and are helping us immensely.  My Chinese is really coming around and I can have very simple conversations with people, know enough to get around town, and take cab rides where ever I need to go.

Night Life

With my busy schedule there is always time to get drunk one night out of the week.  Friday night, my favorite night.  There is a bar right next to campus that we always go to.  Drinking for college students in China is no where near as popular of an activity as it is in the United States.  Some students do go to the bars every Friday night, but not many.  We always go with the senior students.  They love to drink and play all sorts of different drinking games.  I have learned some very cool new drinking games from the Chinese.  Most of the games involve dice or simply using your fingers to throw out different numbers.  These games get you pretty drunk...

The bar that we go to absolutely loves us.  We get free beer all night long every time we go there.  We get free beer because we are Westerners and we attract more Chinese people to come to the bar.  It's great!

Another very interesting aspect about Chinese culture is the way that students will celebrate their birthday at the bar.  When everyone is nice and drunk, a cake is brought out for people to enjoy.  In America, people enjoy a cake by eating it.  Not in China.  There is a massive food fight in the bar.  The point of the cake is not to eat it, but rather, to throw the cake at people and smear the frosting on other people's faces.  I have experienced a handful of birthdays at the bar and it is really fun.  Just this past weekend there was a birthday at the bar.  The bartender, who is a good friend of mine now, ran up behind me and smeared frosting all over my face.  I had to retaliate, obviously, but he ran away too quickly and I ended up chasing him up and down the street outside the bar.  I finally gave up, or so he thought.  I was waiting just by the side of the door in the bar and when he finally walked in, I got him.  I got him good too.  The bar really is a lot of fun.  It also is a great time for me to practice my Chinese.  I always end up speaking Chinese decently well with the people at the bar, probably because I'm drunk.

Here are some pictures that I have taken at the bar:

A drinking game that we are playing...

My face covered in cake...

Some dude throwing up the classic peace signs...

Party atmosphere...

 More cake on the face...

And the cake with some of the frosting taken off...

Miscellaneous 

They actually have pools in Pengshan.  They are not like any pool that I have ever seen in America.  The pool was pretty damn dirty.  Just jumping into the pool and opening my eyes, looking through my goggles, I could see dirt just floating around the water.  It was pretty gross.  The pool also was not heated at all, and it was pretty damn cold.  But swimming was fun and Jason, our Chinese friend that took us.  He was very impressed by my swimming.  I showed him how to do some new strokes and helped him to have a better technique in freestyle.  Here are some pictures from the pool.

The entrance of the pool.  Looking pretty sketchy already...

The actual pool...

Before jumping in.  Decided not to break out the speedo...

And of course, what aquatic center isn't complete without the baby pool!

Life in China is becoming more and more interesting with each passing day.  I am still enjoying my time very much and loving China.  I have been reading a book by Peter Hessler called "River Town" that has made me love China even more.  Peter Hessler taught English in a town that is also in Sichuan Province.  His life experiences are very similar to mine, they just happened 20 years before I came here.  There are many similarities, as well as differences, between my experience and his.  One of my absolute favorite quotes from the book describes the honking that people do while driving in China.

Hessler describes the various sounds of the city and a majority of the noise came from the different cabs that were winding through the city streets.  He says:

"They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians.  They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves.  They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was no body to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the drivers mind.  Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked.  They did it so often that they didn't even feel the contact point beneath their fingers, and other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it.  Nobody reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose.  A honk in Fuling was like the tree falling in the forest - for all intents and purpose it was silent."

This statement is absolutely true.  When I first came to Pengshan all I could hear was the constant sound of horns when I was walking in the streets.  Now, I can barely notice it.  The honking is so constant, all the time, that I have become completely used to it.

It isn't only the honking that I have become accustomed too.  I would consider myself to be nearly adapted to Chinese culture by now.  I have gotten used to all of the differences from American culture.  As the Director of the Colorado China Council, Alice Renouf, says, "Think Chinese, Be Chinese." That really is the only way to get used to life here in China.  It is safe to say that all I do now is, "Think Chinese, Be Chinese."

Hope you enjoyed, until next time

Jono

National Day Vacation - Chongqing

Chongqing is probably one of the craziest cities that I have ever been to in my entire life.  The endless development, the ridiculous number of people, the amazing architecture, the terrible pollution, and so much more.  I was in Chongqing for 3 days and two nights.  During this time I took around 800 pictures because everything in the city was worth photographing.  I pretty much documented just about every aspect of the trip.  I hope everyone enjoys!

Arriving in Chongqing

Upon arriving in Chongqing, I immediately noticed the immense size of the city.  We arrived by train and the ride took about two hours from Chengdu.  The entire train ride we basically went through complete rural looking areas.  There was a lot of farm land, traditional looking houses, and thick forested areas.  To be honest I didn't look out the window much, instead I was reading to kill time quickly.  However, when we were taking the taxi from the train station to the hostel, I couldn't keep my eyes away from the window.  I took a lot of pictures from the taxi window, here are only some of them...

 The taxi driver was very protected from us dangerous wai guo ren (foreigners)...

One of the very first things I noticed was the massive buildings and the horrible air quality in Chongqing...

The buildings seemed to stretch as far as you can see, which really wasn't too far because of the pollution...

There were huge over passes all over the place.  The city is full of hills and the bustling highways were raised far above the ground in some places...

Other pictures from the cab... Pollution was sooo bad

Construction everywhere, even the bridge hadn't been finished yet...

View of one of the metro lines and some towering apartment buildings...

 Buildings were nestled into very tight places...

Horrible traffic... everywhere

Big buildings, air pollution, construction... Get the picture?

This bridge was really cool... Chongqing is basically a city that is mostly developed on the island which sits between two rivers.  The Yangtze and Jailing Rivers meet at the end of the island.  The island is where most of the city is concentrated; although, the city is absolutely massive and there is development throughout all of Chongqing.  The bridge that you see below is under construction right now.  There are two identical bridges that connect the island with the rest of the city.  Both are under construction at the moment.  It really is quite a sight...

 Almost there!

The bridge was really cool.  We were all looking at it in absolute awe. And the fact that there are two identical looking bridges pretty much blows my mind.  Both are almost done being constructed.

More buildings, more construction, more traffic...

After a crazy cab ride we finally arrived to our hostel.  The area that our hostel was in was extremely loud.  Horns honking, people yelling, and the various sounds of construction happening everywhere around us.  I thought it would be impossible to sleep in such an area...

The Hostel

We were dropped off on in an insanely busy area, and I was worried to say the least.  I didn't even know where the hell a hostel would even be until everyone started walking down this steep set of stairs.  We had to wind around this little area that seemed completely out of place to be in the middle of a bustling city.

After several alleys and a lot of stairs we finally arrived at our hostel.  Here are some more pictures from the surrounding area of our hostel.  It truly was like a whole different world in this area.  I really can't explain it.  Everything was so much older and didn't seem to fit in with the surrounding city that has become developed so recently.  Another thing that was absolutely amazing was how quiet the area was.  It was incredibly loud on the street above; however, in this whole different world only 50-75 meters away from the bustling street, it was dead quiet.  I could hear birds and people talking quietly instead of the car horns and various sounds of construction.  

The hostel was simply stunning.  It was a very traditional looking Chinese building.  It had various courtyards throughout the building and open aired ceilings over the courtyards.  Here are some pictures of the hostel...

Pretty cool courtyard, looking into the hangout area...

Courtyard again, Brenna reading...

Traditional style with the open roof top...

And our room for the duration of the trip.  The beds were basically a piece of plywood with a very thin pad on top.  Wasn't too comfortable...

Fish eye view of the fishpond in one of the courtyards...

The straight on view of the fishpond...

The hostel was overall pretty nice.  The hangout area was pretty simple, but it was a good place to drink some beers after a long day of exploring.  

Tourist Adventures

The very first day we arrived in Chongqing we walked around and explored some of the city.  It really was a pretty crazy city.  The docks were full of tourist activities.  Most tourists in Chongqing will take river boat cruises up and down the river.  Those usually take a few days so we did not have time to partake in it; however, I got pictures of the boats!

There wer a ton of boats and people out on the pier...

Another view of the bridge...

This boat was basically a hotel on the water...

 Devin getting artsy...

Pretty bad pollution...

Cool looking gate around town...

This building had a giant green beam coming out of the top of it, pretty weird, but cool...

All of the streets were crowded with people at all times in Chongqing.  Many people would carry the goods they were selling just like this man here...

And from dinner that night.  We had chicken soup.  Basically an entire chicken in the pot and we threw in random vegetables that we had ordered into the soup.  As you can see, there is the chicken head...

 The People's Hall and Three Gorges Museum 

The next day, after a basically sleepless night on the piece of plywood, we woke up early to go on a crazy day of tourist adventures.  The first stop we made was The People's Hall and the Three Gorges Museum.  

The People's Hall was a remarkable building.  It was absolutely beautiful.  It had traditional looking Chinese architecture.  Here are some pictures:

The chief engineer who designed and built the building.  Forget his name though...

More pictures of the impressive structure...

The front gate in the square.  The building directly behind the gate is the Three Gorges Museum...

And finally the view from the Three Gorges Museum...

We didn't end up going in The People's Hall because apparently there wasn't much to actually see inside the building.  Plus we were more excited for the Three Gorges Museum...

The Three Gorges Museum building was also very impressive.  Here are some pictures of the building and the foyer of the building...

And the foyer...

The museum was separated into various different sections.  

Here are pictures from the section about the Three Gorges:

The Three Gorges project is extremely astonishing.  The project was very controversial in China because of the effect that the Three Gorges might have on the environment and for the Yangtze River.  The project would basically turn a section of the Yangtze River into a massive reservoir and raise the water level of the river.  Many towns along the Yangtze would basically be submerged after the project was completed.  Another disadvantage was all of the cultural relics in the Yangtze River area would have to be excavated before the Three Gorges project was completed.  Most of the Three Gorges sections of the museum were dedicated to the relics that were recovered from the Yangtze River basin.  There were a lot of relics throughout the museum that had been recovered form the area.  Unfortunately, we could not see the actual Three Gorges project in real life because it was very far away.  But we did see a miniature model of the project.  Even the tiny model was impressive.

Here are some pictures from the miniature model...

One of these days I would love to visit the Three Gorges project.  From what I have read about it I heard that it is incredible.  I would highly suggest googling "Three Gorges Project" for further reading.  

Here are some pictures of the relics that were recovered from the various areas throughout the Yangtze River basin...

In the Yangtze River basin there were a few rocks that had giant fish carved onto them.  These fish were used thousands of years ago for ancient peoples to determine the water levels of the Yangtze River.  These rocks were completely covered after the Three Gorges Project was completed and in order to preserve these rocks the CCP created an underwater museum so people could still go to see these ancient symbols.  This picture below depicts the project of creating the underwater museum.  I also am very interested in seeing this museum in the future.

More relics...

Probably the first Mahjong set ever created...

And notice the tiny dice

How the ancient people lived in the Yangtze River basin...

The next series of pictures is a sculpture of how the ancient peoples would drag the boats through the low areas of water in the Yangtze.

And a grave...

Even more relics...

On to the Next Destination...

After the Three Gorges Museum we walked a great distance to our next stop, the cable car across the Yangtze River.  The walk enabled us to see even more of Chongqing.  Here are some cool pictures I took...

Probably the coolest building I have ever seen..

Next we went to this crazy mall.  The mall had just about everything you could ever imagine.

Some guys making some Chinese candy.  Repeatedly hitting it with hammers.  Apparently they hit the candy over one thousand times...

Snacking on a chicken foot... not really my favorite...

A cave built into the side of the building...

I thought this was very cool.  An old Chinese building that still exists in the very center of town.  Old in the midst of new....

We finally made it to the cable car and I took a video of the cable car ride.  Check it out:

Cable Car Ride - Daytime

Across the Yangtze River the town could not have been anymore different.  The town reminded me a lot of Pengshan in a few ways.  There were very few people and a lot of the stores and shops were much simpler than in the main area of Chongqing.  

These pictures are the part of town that we saw immediately after we got off the cable car.

I saw at least four or five shops that just had a ton of people playing Mahjong...

Another street in the area.  Far less people than in the main areas of Chongqing...

We then decided to take a bus ride up to the top of the mountain in the area.  I thought that there was just a park at the top of the mountain; however, it turns out there that is a decent sized town at the top and also a lot of development...

Here are some pictures of an international high school

The marsh in the middle of the high school was really cool.  Unfortunately we could not walk on the wooden walk ways in the middle of the marsh.  It was probably for the best though, who knows how stable they were.

A new development area.  I can only imagine what sort of monstrous building they plan to put in this area...

A random set of long and scary looking stairs in the middle of nowhere...

View from the top of the mountain...  Pollution basically blocks any line of sight...

At the top of the mountain there was a Taoist Monastery that we went into.  It was a very cool place.  We were extremely tired by this point in the day but we had to make the most of our time in Chongqing since we were only there for such a short period of time.  The Taoist Monastery was a recreation of traditional Taoist Monasteries that were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.

A family going through the traditional practices...

The area of the monastery was absolutely beautiful.  It was tucked into the woods high up on the mountain.  All of the buildings were built into the side of the mountain as you will see...

Lots of pollution.  The degree of the pollution became very evident up in the mountain because we couldn't see very far out into the distance...

Stairs.... this place had so many god damn stairs...

More candle lighting and other relics...

Really bad smog...

Yes, more stairs...

Yin & Yang...

And the homie... this little guy followed us around quite a bit.  It was basically the most perfect place for a dog to live.  Endless exploring for him...

A good view? Who knows, the smog is horrible..

 We FINALLY made it to the top... took forever...

Group photo - Devin - Me - James in the back - and one of James' students, Chres

 Group pic again...

A Pagoda style building within the monastery...

 Typical view...

Beautiful paintings all over the building...

The monastery had a ton of these little figures throughout the building...

The people who work in the monastery sleep there too, I guess...

It was built right into the side of the mountain...

 I'm Taoist now...

The whole monastery was very cool.  I walked up and down more stairs than I have in my entire life but it was well worth it.  

Hot Pot!

Towards the end of our time on the other side of the Yangtze River we had to go and get some hot pot. Chongqing is well know for its delicious hot pot, and it was amazing.  I have had hot pot a few times since I have been in Sichuan Province; however, this was most definitely the best I have had yet.

We went to the restaurant a little early, so it wasn't too crowded, thank god.  We tried to go to a hot pot place the night before and we were told that we would have to wait over an hour...

Our dipping sauce...

 The actual hot pot...

 Our vegetables, meat, eggs, and noodles...

And some more meat...

And of course, meatballs...

Some dumplings and on the far side is some tofu...

The closest plate consists of string like mushrooms.  They are very good...

Some fish...

And when we were just about done with the hot pot... James grabbing the very last egg that he can find.  He still needs some work with his chop sticks skills...

After a long day of walking all over Chongqing it was necessary to stuff our faces with some delicious hot pot.  The meal was outstanding, but after dinner it was time to head back to the cable car for one final ride over the Yangtze.  This time we got to go over the river at night and see all of the buildings lit up.  And yes, I have another video!

Cable Car Ride - Night Time

Back in the main city area of Chongqing we had to end our trip right.  Basically all the girls decided to go to bed but the guys went out to live it up in the city.  The city was beautiful at night.  All of the buildings were lit up.  It was gorgeous.  

These pictures are from the town square.  The square has all of the most high end shops as you will see from the pictures below.  The streets were even more crowded at night than they were during the day.  

After the town square we headed back to the mall area that we visited earlier in the day.  There were a lot of Western bars in the area.  We hung out on the roof at first to finish up our road beers.  There are no public drinking laws in China so we walked around for a while drinking beers in preparation for the night.  

I finally had my first IPA since I left the states.  It was wonderful.  I love IPAs...

A friendly reminder from the bar...

Got pretty drunk that night at the bars... This is what I looked like traveling the next day... Yeah, I looked like shit...

The trip to Chongqing was great.  It was a very quick trip so we had to fit everything into basically one day.  It has taken me two and a half days of recovery from the trip.  I probably got about 10 hours of sleep total while I was in Chengdu for one night and Chongqing for 2 nights.  There was a lot of drinking and a lot of exploring.  Somehow I survived the trip...   To top things off, on the trip back to Chengdu, the only seats available on the train were standing tickets.  

My seat, or standing area, was basically right next to the water dispenser.  The entire train ride I had people standing over me filling up their water bottles while I sat on my bag and watched movies.  Photo credit goes to Devin.  

Hope everyone enjoyed the post.  Not sure how I was able to actually create such a large post with so much information considering I'm still hungover/tired from the trip. 

 Alright, until next time...

Jono