to all our friends and readers of our blog. Thanks for “following” us through our
We have started looking for jobs back in
we are slightly. Especially now with Christmas coming up, we would like to be closer to our families.
is winding down. With only two weeks to go, we are mostly teaching about Christmas. Today, Johanna had her students act out the Story of Nativity… and captured it on camera. So if you come visit, we’ll surely bore you with that kind of thing!
So far we have got five definite visitors: The first one is Ivano (the guy who leaves most and most funny comments on our website… if there was such a thing as a blog comment leaver Oscar, you’d get it!), who comes here in February. Looking forward to exploring
Also, Johanna’s sis Anna will come visit with her friend Vanessa. Around the same time, we are expecting Catherine and Cornelia to be coming here. We will probably go on the Jangtze River Cruise, where they are building the “Three Gorges” Dam, and which will be inaccessible after 2008.
We had an arrangement with our families not to exchange pressies this year. Yet, we got a lovely little reindeer along with a long letter from Lee’s sister Sue. Thanks a lot, it is hanging in our window and it always brings a smile to our face when people are staring at it in amazement (it’s not a pig, it’s not a dragon… what is it?).
So, despite being in
We have been fortunate enough to get some sunny days back… which makes life so much more enjoyable.
We found this weeks "Picture of the Week" on a bar entrance in Xian. Being a "Politically Correct" westerner, we were amused by the blatant incorrectness of it. Sadly though, it does reflect a really deep dislike for their rising sun neighbors.
Watching the English Channel CCTV-9, we are often bombarded by documentaries of how brutal the Japanese were during the war, or how a Chinese soldier single handedly fought a thousand of them before they destroyed his village. Recently on the news, a group of old ladies were trying to sue the Japanese government since they were used as prostitutes during the last war.
During my lessons I subtly ask my students (some are teachers here) about their relationship with the Japanese, and they confirm our beliefs.
Despite the superficial Japaphobia, they still prize their Japanese consumer products, so maybe its more “family bickering” than anything serious.
Yippie! It's not only weekend, but there are also only three more weeks to go before our holidays start... and the last week doesn't really count, since Johanna will be showing ALL her students a Christmas movie. We haven't decided on one yet, so if you know an excellent Christmas related movie, please let us know NOW. THX! We'd be grateful for a good one, since we'll probably be able to recite it after watching it ten times...
Lee's difficult computer classes have now finished, and he will only be teaching 9 hours/ week as compared to his 24 hours/ week he taught before. So now there is no excuse for him not to be studying hard on Chinese.
Belgium weather has caught up with us here (don't tell us it's sunny over there, because we know it can't be!!). But the thought of the summer in New Zealand is keeping us happy.
Talking of which, thanks to Isa and Tanja for the tips on New Zealand: As a matter of fact, we will be going there in January, Isa, which you warned us about... I am looking forward to meet half of my fellow Germans!
We will keep you posted on our Christmas experience here in Golden C.
Right now we are planning our trip to New Zealand in January. We are looking forward to a "Western refill" including eating familiar food and buying clothes outside the maternity shops (which Johanna does here). Also, it will be summer there, so we can recharge our sun-batteries as well! If any of you have an insider tip on where to go or what to do, we'd be grateful for you to share it with us! So long, Lee and Johanna
Dear friends,
Nothing much new in the East, except that Lee and I were dragged out deep into the nightlife of Guilin, since it was the birthday of a friend of ours. It is almost surreal watching the Chinese partying, playing dices, eating pieces of watermelon and drinking beer out of shot glasses. Conversation does not appear to on the menu. Also, the music was quite bad. As you can imagine, "We are not amused", and left rather early. If we had been single, on the other hand, it might have turned into a great night...
Talking of a great night, we recently found Belgian beer here, and had a glass each, which made us miss good old Belgium!
We did not actually witness this story, but it comes from a good source... A friend was out in a Chinese club one night, and one of the party goers had drunk too much. He started to vomit on the table. The normal reaction would be take him home, but his friends would just clean up the sick after each time he pucked up. Apparently, this went on for quite a while.. which seems to be common practice!
We feel guilty for complaining about the cold after having spoken to some of our students. When we asked them how they keep warm, they replied:"We get everybody in the room (eight students per room!), close all the windows, and put our computer on!" When I half-jokingly replied:"You could also put the shower on!" they just gave me a puzzled look and asked why they would want to do that for? "For the steam from the hot water, of course!". That's when they bursted out laughing (the first genuine laugh I got out of them for a long time!) and explained that there was no such thing as hot water. I quickly changed topic before they could enquire about our three radiators and permanent hot water supply... We learned that day that even cold is relative!
Winter has officially arrived. Although it’s not very cold (around 15 degrees Celsius), the humidity makes you get cold from the inside. The fact that the classrooms are not heated (seriously!) or double glazed doesn’t help much, so our students are quivering in front of us not only because we are too sexy for them (as we initially thought). Luckily, we can move while teaching, which keeps us a bit warmer. During our Chinese lessons, however, we start cuddling up even with the ones we don’t like. That must be the survival instinct kicking in!
Note: If the first two characters look like squares then you have not installed chinese fonts. These should be on most modern computers. Let us know if you are experiencing problems!
The International Office took us out again, and informed us already on Thursday about our daytrip to the local waterfalls. Despite the rain and nippy weather, we had a great time climbing up the falls in Straw “Security shoes” and being fed local food. We have to admit, we are getting into the sheep behaviour, it is nice just to follow and not having to worry about a thing!
The pictures of this day can be found on Flickr!
The International office had organized a weekend for the foreign teachers and students. Organization was splendid! Friday night we got a call asking what we were doing tomorrow and telling us to come to the university gate at 9.00 a.m. the next morning… no further information was given, so we played sheep (which seems to be a popular Chinese game) and just followed. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a lovely weekend, also thanks to the warm weather and nice company. For photos from that weekend please click the following flickr link.
The place was surreal and beautiful. It’s a big reservoir lake that they use to feed the Li River (“local Schelde”) that the tourist boats run on. This year has been very dry here, and the reservoir now looks more like a desert than a lake. But the walk around and the boat were both beautiful, as the pictures will hopefully show.
Surf to Flickr to see what a hippy looks like without long hair...
About an hour ago, the mystical Lee with long curly hair has become history... incredible what a pair of scissors and a razor can do to a human being...
Photos will be published ASAP. I (Johanna) am looking at Lee with "one laughing and one crying eye": that is a literal translation of a German saying "mit einem lachenden und einem weinenden Auge". On the one hand, it makes him look young and dynamic while at the same time his long, curly hair was lovely, too. Oh well, time for a change... and it will grow back albeit grey:)
Hello again,
thanks for checking out our photos and "staying tuned". What's new? Well, not so much: we're getting the hang of teaching here and it is still lovely weather. Also, the Chinese are toughening us up: after having played "ping pong" outside and being laughed and stared at, we have become quite determined and are getting better.
Food-wise we still feel a bit lost, because whenever we ask our students or Chinese acquaintances about good food here, we get answers like: "You gotta try Chicken feet, it is not really meat" or "No, we don't eat steak either, that's meat! We prefer internal organs" and similar tips along these lines.
On a positive note, we still get big smiles from local shop- and restaurant owners when we try our limited Chinese on them. People are generally honest here, even if they feel that we don't have a clue how much their products really should be.
All in all, life is good here. Yet, it would be a lie to say that we do not miss the West.
PS: Thanks for your email, Isa, and we are impressed with your photos of Mongolia and New Zealand. I will get back to you personally soon!
Hello again,
as promised, some details about our trip to Xi'an, one of the ancient capitals of China. Firstly, we stayed in a great, luxiourious hotel with sauna and whirlpool IN THE ROOM! We thought we'd push out the boat a bit after having stayed with spider roommated in Ping'an and around China before. It was well worth-it!
Secondly, and yet foremost, the weather was great and the city itself very impressive: apart from the Terracotta Soldiers and the emperors' tombs, there are numerous ancient pogodas (build 600 a.d. and yet huge), a city wall to cycle around on, yummy coffee and cake places, parks, and a very impressive tao mountain in the area, which is worth seeing.
Since it was a Chinese national holiday, we weren't the only people on the streets there... quite the contrary! We enjoyed watching people and life go by. It was nice to see that everybody seems to be out on the streets during their time off, just enjoying the moment.
As for usual, we took plenty of photos, which will be put online by tomorrow. For Ivano (and our other friends who don't find it worth bookmarking our photosite:)), here is the hyperlink
Enjoy and remember to leave some comments for us!
Dear friends,
Last week, we had our "baptism of fire" by going from teaching around 10 hours per week to 22 hours. It was a double blow, since we had had a week off right before that. But eh, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger! And yes, we believe we are stronger for it! However, yesterday we did feel the urge to go out and try the local beer... too cheap to resist:), but luckily quite weak.
In short, normality has caught up with us, and we are still struggling with it. The good news is though, that we will get almost three months of at the beginning of January until mid March, which will allow us to travel to New Zealand, too. We are very excited about that!!
Dear friends,
we have been uploading some more photos of our campus and our neighbourhood. There should be a big mention for the big Chinese pants photograph of one of our neighbours' balcony.
Lee beat Johanna unconscious and cut her hair to almost ZERO. Actually, it was to get rid of the last of the henna colour. Lee calls Johanna "action man" now... decide for yourself.
Soon got a week off and will travel to Xi'an (Terracotta Soldiers) and will bore you with many detailed photos... promise!
Dear friends,
We have learned that not all our emails have been delivered (although they didn't bounce back). Thus, we have decided to ask for read receipts (despite disliking being asked for them ourselves!). This should help us see how well email works here (or not...).
If you have not heard from us in a long time, it might a. be on purpose or b. our emails got lost in cyberspace (Catherine, Hilde, Liz, Ivano, Jason, did you get our longish emails?). We will try to resend messages soon.
Also, we are going to get ADSL and hopefully we'll be sorted then.
Skype does generally work and we had our first videoskype with B and K. It is really nice to see familiar faces, oddly enough with round eyes! How do you guys do it?
Long time, no news…
But we are still alive and (most of the time even) kicking. WHAT kept us so long? Let’s get the common speculations out of the way:
1. No, Lee did not cut his hair – despite getting bullied by the boss of the International Cooperation Office(“Oh, you still got long hair!”)
2. No, Johanna is not pregnant (despite diarrhea)
3. No, we did not get brain-washed and only speak Chinese anymore… although it might not be the worst option, since learning this language is a real pain in – you know where.
WHY is it then?
1. We started teaching, which takes quite a lot of our time.
2. We have finally started to be less solitary and mixed with people here – albeit other Westerners.
3. The weather has been lovely – not too hot – and we started running around the campus. Check out flickr for photos – not of us running (we don’t want to put you off our site!), but of the campus.
Next week we’ll have a week off and travel… so stay tuned for more news on our China experience.
Thanks for being interested,
Johanna and Lee
Dear all,
We were told about this travel agent by our Chinese friend Shikun, who frequently travels between Europe and China. The prices offered there are at least 1/3 lower than one may find on the web.
PHOENIX Travel
Wei Hong
Rue de Poissoniers 14
1000 Bruxelles
Tel: 0032-2-513.06.00,
GSM: 0032-478-209484
Fax: 0032-2-503.40.14
email: phoenixtravel@gmail.com
Dear friends,
Please follow the link to flickr and enjoy the photos!
Also, Lee has changed settings so that you can now comment on our blogs without registering. Thank you for your feedback!
L&J
Dear friends,
Thanks for looking us up on our blog.
Thanks for all your emails. You can’t imagine how nice it is to receive messages from nice familiar people if you live in a culturally alien part of the world. So keep them coming!
After nearly two weeks here we feel almost at home and have made our apartment our little “safe haven”, where we watch western DVD’s (all “originals” for 50 cents), read, laugh at the little people and their ways (the same way they probably laugh at us… at least we’d like to believe that to make us feel less guilty ). Everybody treats us very well; we almost get spoiled by the attention and help! Our apartment is very big by local standards (air-con everywhere) and it even got a new lick of paint! Not to forget the DVD player, our best friend… after the pill, of course!
After returning from a short trip, the green and pleasant field that we originally overlooked has turned into a massive building site. Now we are going to take pictures every day and publish them on flickr in the end, so you can go and see for yourself. When China decides to build, it doesn’t waste any time… day or night!
Lee gets a lot of attention, not only by kids, but also by adults, who just won’t stop staring at him. We don’t think they have the concept of “secretly staring” like we do in Europe. Guess who doesn’t get as much attention as she would like to? Exactly, it’s Johanna! Oh well, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, little German girl!
After having mainly lived on noodles and rice to start off with, we have now discovered a nice little market where we can find fresh veggies and fruit plus tofu. Yippee!
Being vegetarian around here keeps you entertained! Since the Chinese almost never say “no” the following situation occurred to us: “Is that tofu?” “Yes!” “Great, and how about this?” “Yes!”… so in the end everything was tofu. Yes, you are right in remarking that we should have become suspicious by then, but we were simply pleased that for once we actually had a choice! The end of the story is that Johanna ate liver and Lee had some lovely bits of beef. By the end of our year in China, we will have probably “sampled” most animals!
It is still very warm and humid here, so most of the time we take a little nap around noon, since it is too hot to do anything else.
At the moment we are spending 24/7 with each other, but that will change from next week onwards when we start taking Chinese classes. Actual teaching will in fact only start on Sep 18th, which was a nice surprise. Still, we are looking forward to teaching as much as we are looking forward to learning Chinese. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
We will publish our first pictures during the weekend, so please check out flickr from Monday, 4th September onwards. We’d be glad to have you take a look at them.
Til the next bog!
Lee and Johanna
Liebe Freunde,
Danke, dass ihr auf unsere Blogseite gekommen seid.
An dieser Stelle moechte ich mich auf fuer die vielen emails von Euch bedanken. Ihr glaubt gar nicht, wie gut es tut, emails von daheim zu empfangen, wenn man in einer (kulturell) anderen Welt ist. Dankeschoen!!
Vor gut 10 Tagen sind wir hier in Guilin “eingeflogen” und fuehlen uns mittlerweile fast heimisch. Wir werden hier sehr gut behandelt, fast verwoehnt! Unsere Wohnung ist gross, mit Aussicht ins Gruene von allen Fenstern aus! Tja, zumindest bis vorgestern war das so, denn nun wird gebaut, und das geht rasend schnell hier. Wir waren nur drei Tage weg, und schon ist aus einem Maisfeld ein grosses Loch geworden, in dem sich ein Bagger gut verstecken kann. Unglaublich! Wir fotografieren den “Tatort” nun jeden Tag und veroeffentlichen die Fotos dann bei flickr.
Die Leute hier sind uns gegenueber sehr freundlich und vor allem die Kids kriegen den Mund vor Staunen manchmal nicht mehr zu, wenn sie Lee zu Gesicht bekommen! Aber auch die Erwachsenen starren ihn gerne ausdauernd an!! Tja, und ich bekomme mal wieder kaum Aufmerksamkeit, oh meno!
Nachdem wir uns anfaenglich nur von Nudeln und Reis ernaehrten, haben wir mittlerweile einen guten Markt in der Naehe entdeckt, wo man super Obst, Gemuese und Tofu einkaufen kann. Einmal haben wir Tofu mit Leber verwechselt, aber das soll ja gut sein fuer die Mannes- und Fraueskraft (?)… schaun wir mal:)! Vegetarier sein ist echt spannend hier, denn die Chinesen sagen (fast) nie “nein”. Somit entstand folgende Situation: “Ist das Tofu?” “Ja!” “Gut, und das auch?” “Ja”… am Schluss war alles Tofu! Tja, und deshalb habe ich ein halbes Kilo (Hunds)-Leber gekauft…
Wettermaessig ist es noch sehr warm, aber angenehm.
Lee und ich verbringen 24 Stunden pro Tag miteinander und das 7 Tage pro Woche… und haben uns trotzdem noch lieb – bis jetzt noch:)!
Ab Montag, 4. September, beginnt unser Chinesisch- Unterricht und ab dem 18. September unterrichten wir dann. Wir freuen uns schon drauf (hoffentlich bleibt das auch so:)).
Am Wochenende werden wir Photos hochladen, die ihr dann ab dem 4. Oktober anschauen koennt. Wuerd mich freuen!
Also dann, bis bald!
Herzlich,
Johanna
Dear friends and travellers,
This is the first of several little “homage- blogs” to the beauty of the Guangxi Province of China, so please stop reading when it gets too patriotic (after having lived here for 10 days it starts feeling like home after all!).
Let’s start with Yangzhou: once upon a time there was a sleepy little village situated and sheltered by beautiful mountains and a river. But there was one mountain called the “Moon Hill Mountain”, which was ambitious and selfish, and wanted to be seen by everyone. So it called up the tourist information of all major Chinese cities and told them to send their people over, which they did! There are loads of trendy Chinese people travelling long ways to visit this beautiful place, which has so much to offer: a beautiful countryside which can be explored by (rental) push bikes, beautiful nature caves and obviously the climbing of Moon Hill (breath-taking view!). On top of that you can take boat/ rafting tours on the beautiful Li River.
We can particularly recommend using a local guide to show you to the real country side. Our guide was a lovely, slightly crazy woman called Mo, who speaks English fairly well, and makes sure you learn about everything there is to learn. On top of that she might cook a lovely meal for you if you get lucky! Her email address is moshefeng@yahoo.com.cn and phone number: +86-13788437378. She will charge you 100 Yuan per day, and she is worth every single one of them! Although we had haggled her down to 90 Yuan, we ended up tipping her so much she actually made more profit than expected.
Be aware of local fragile old ladies selling drinks when you climb mountains and in general. After you have said that you DON’T want to buy a drink from them, they will ask “Maybe later?” and you will probably say “Yes” just to get rid of them. Unfortunately, you will achieve the very opposite! They will follow you up the mountain until you have bought a drink! So please do say NO or use the Chinese “BU YAO” (literally don’t want) and good luck in getting rid of them!
Accommodation is quite cheap in Yangzhou and you are in a good haggling position, since there are sooo many hotels and hostels. Most hotels are situated on West Street, which you can’t miss since the place really is a “one-street-place”. Most of the action takes place on this very street.
For those of you interested in a buzzing night-life, this is definitely THE place to be! Both Chinese and people from all over the world party here together – especially on weekends – most of the night long!
Food-wise one can find a lot of yummy European and Chinese dishes. So if you miss bread and jam, make sure you have breakfast at one of the Café’s on West Street (less costly than normal restaurants). Very good fresh coffee can be found for bean-worshippers!
If you are looking for very cheap accommodation and/ or the quickest internet connection in town, go to Lisa’s situated at the end of West Street on your right (coming from the bus station). Enjoy!
Einen Eintrag fuers “Vaterland”… in meiner Muttersprache!
China - was fuer eine Erfahrung.
Zunaechst einige Tipps, was Tabus betrifft:
Hello all,
Since term does not start until the 3rd September, we thought that we would be tourists again, and try some more public transport out in China. We have made a trip to Nanning, which is the regional capital of Ghuangxi (where we live).
Nanning is not really a "tourist" destination - traditionally it kept the armies to fight with Vietnam during the old days, and in the sixties was used to ship guns to the VC on their side this time...
Actually writing this from Nanning in a chinese internet cafe which I think is now trying to kick me off. Therefore, the next blog will come quickly and with more news of emails and other communications. By the way, the gmail appears to be working a bit better for us now... so you can continue to use these accounts.
Sorry for truncated blog...
Please stay tuned...
Lee and Johanna
Hello all,
First of all thanks for the feedback that we have received already (Liz and Ivano). Its nice to know that we are missed:)
We have arrived in Guilin after a 20 hour travel (this was including a few hours delay because of "leaking hydrolic fluid" in Finland which was very reasuring :))
The first week was spent cleaning degreasing the kitchen and removing coch-roach coloney. We think that we have won in the end.. Now it looks lovely, and overlooks the mountains. There are three rooms and a spacious living room, so we will always have space for guests.
Now we are relaxing and being tourists in YangShuo (around 70km south of Gulin). Some "stock" photos can be found at http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Yangshuo. We will try to put some of our photos up in the coming days.
Please be patient with our internet connection. We are currently using the "best yet" internet connection in China, and are often cut off from Google, and other internet sites. If you wish to send us an email, please use Johanna's GMX account, until further notice. (johanna.weilemann@gmx.de)
We will be writing more as soon as we can.
Dear,
we have created an account, where we have already published some personal photographs. Additionally, we will certainly be placing pictures of our China experiences there:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeandjohanna/sets
Hello everybody,
We found lovely pictures of Guilin at Flickr , which made us even more passionate about going there. Maybe it will do the same to you! Enjoy the link.
With love from Ghent,
Johanna and Lee
Finally, we would like to pass on our address in
Johanna and Lee Andrew Browman
Office for International Cooperation
No.1
Email: jbrowman@gmail.com; leebrowman@gmail.com
Welcome to our Blog!
This blog has been set up to act as a posting board for Johanna and Lee Browman, and our working trip to China (2006)
We are looking forward to sharing our experiences via this Blog, and Flickr (that will be providing the images)
We will be arriving in Guilin (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) in the South of China on 19th August 2006.
Hope you enjoy, and looking forward to any feedback,
Johanna and Lee Browman
