Well he's not really sure what's happening, but Andrew is unable to log onto his blog. So he trusted Mom with his secret ID and asked me to pass along the message...
All is well, the papers are coming together, and he's looking forward to getting home in a few weeks. But when he comes home, he'll first be taking a detour by LA to meet up with Stephen, Miss Miriam and Andy. Andrew and Stephen will both be home on the night of June 3rd.
So if he can't get blog anymore, it's not because he doesn't want to!
That's the message. Hope Andew will be back on soon.
Gail
Monday, May 18, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
BBQ- June 6th
Taking a break from writing my final paper for my Modern Chinese History class, it's on the the motivations of various groups during the intellectual movement known as the May Fourth Movement in 1919... don't worry mom, I'm almost done.
It is almost that time, most of my friends have already finished their finals and are back home and I'm about 5,500 words, two tests and eighteen days from heading back to the good ol' US-of-A. I've been informed by my mother that on June sixth (a Saturday) that there will be a BBQ happening at the Leiser household, and I would love to see all of you who can make there to share even more stories, pictures and good food with all of you. I am also planning on giving a presentation at church for those locally who may have a conflict, as for those a little further away (Grammy, ala), we'll figure something out.
Sorry I don't have anything ground breaking to share with you, been spending a lot of time staring at a book or a computer (apparently I have to do real school work). The weather has been a little nicer (aka, cooler) the last two days, and I had chicken tongue for dinner the other night.
Mark your calenders.
-AL
It is almost that time, most of my friends have already finished their finals and are back home and I'm about 5,500 words, two tests and eighteen days from heading back to the good ol' US-of-A. I've been informed by my mother that on June sixth (a Saturday) that there will be a BBQ happening at the Leiser household, and I would love to see all of you who can make there to share even more stories, pictures and good food with all of you. I am also planning on giving a presentation at church for those locally who may have a conflict, as for those a little further away (Grammy, ala), we'll figure something out.
Sorry I don't have anything ground breaking to share with you, been spending a lot of time staring at a book or a computer (apparently I have to do real school work). The weather has been a little nicer (aka, cooler) the last two days, and I had chicken tongue for dinner the other night.
Mark your calenders.
-AL
Sunday, May 10, 2009
HOT
Happy Mothers Day to all the mama's out there, I remembered and wished both my Meiguo mama (aka Gail) and Zhongguo mama (aka host mom) a happy day.
The cold and rainy weather that I wrote about to not too long ago is just a distant memory at this point as the temperature and humidity here continue to rise. It's 7pm here right now and my computer says it's 81 degrees with 45% humidity, numbers that I'm not really accustomed to. Of course my house is equipped with A/C but we never use it, also it has become painfully apparent to me that there are no cold meals in this country, everything is served piping hot, not helping to relive the heat.
Whats funny to me now is that even though it hasn't rained in quite some time you can still find plenty of umbrellas, its just this time they're to keep the sun off. I think this probably has less to do with it being very warm and more to do with avoiding a tan, the pastier you are in this country the prettier. This also means that people (mostly women) wear an outrageous amounts of clothing. The other day we had a BBQ, courtesy of our program, and all of the host moms came wearing either pants or a long skirt, long sleeves, jacket, hats, gloves (I'm not kidding) and holding an umbrella; it was probably close to 90 degrees.
Just about three weeks till I fly home, starting to get excited about seeing everybody and eating lots of American food.
-AL
The cold and rainy weather that I wrote about to not too long ago is just a distant memory at this point as the temperature and humidity here continue to rise. It's 7pm here right now and my computer says it's 81 degrees with 45% humidity, numbers that I'm not really accustomed to. Of course my house is equipped with A/C but we never use it, also it has become painfully apparent to me that there are no cold meals in this country, everything is served piping hot, not helping to relive the heat.
Whats funny to me now is that even though it hasn't rained in quite some time you can still find plenty of umbrellas, its just this time they're to keep the sun off. I think this probably has less to do with it being very warm and more to do with avoiding a tan, the pastier you are in this country the prettier. This also means that people (mostly women) wear an outrageous amounts of clothing. The other day we had a BBQ, courtesy of our program, and all of the host moms came wearing either pants or a long skirt, long sleeves, jacket, hats, gloves (I'm not kidding) and holding an umbrella; it was probably close to 90 degrees.
Just about three weeks till I fly home, starting to get excited about seeing everybody and eating lots of American food.
-AL
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Forgot something...
Meant to mention this in my last blog. I was out the other night wearing my "Rendezvous" t-shirt (thanks Grammy), and this guy came up to me and asked me if I was from Memphis. This of course led to the whole story about how I'm not but I have lots of people near Memphis and how we both loved Rendezvous and yadayadayada. I thought it was a good example of how small of a world it is.
Oh.... another similar story that is even closer to home. There's a girl in the program from Madawaska. And I thought I was from a small town. She's the only other Mainer I've found over here.
Anyways, I thought it was kind of funny.
-AL
Oh.... another similar story that is even closer to home. There's a girl in the program from Madawaska. And I thought I was from a small town. She's the only other Mainer I've found over here.
Anyways, I thought it was kind of funny.
-AL
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Back to Work
Hello all, sorry I've been neglecting my blogging duties, been spending a lot of time on Chinese and paper writing. In case you hadn't heard, I'm back in Shanghai (have been for a few days), and I'm back to the usual grind. Just to recap my trip for you briefly, spent time a few days in Chengdu which is in Sichuan province (also where the earthquake was last year) and then five days in Kunming in Yunnan province. Overall we had a great trip met some really cool people along the way, most of whom were passing through as they spent a few months traveling the world.
Really glad that I decided to go where we did just because it's so different from the big cities of Shanghai and Beijing. It was kind of fun to be the only white people and we certainly got lots of Chinese practice (I was actually complemented a lot on my Chinese) as very few people spoke any English. The way of life in both of these relatively "small" cities is also very different, people in Chengdu seem very content to sit and drink their tea as the day rolls by and in Kunming I've never seen so many people playing Marjiang, a game sort of resembling domino's.
Overall it was a great trip, had a lot of fun but glad to be back in Shanghai with my Zhongguo Jia (Chinese Family). Hard to believe that I'll be flying home in less than a month now!
Hope you're all doing well.
-AL
Really glad that I decided to go where we did just because it's so different from the big cities of Shanghai and Beijing. It was kind of fun to be the only white people and we certainly got lots of Chinese practice (I was actually complemented a lot on my Chinese) as very few people spoke any English. The way of life in both of these relatively "small" cities is also very different, people in Chengdu seem very content to sit and drink their tea as the day rolls by and in Kunming I've never seen so many people playing Marjiang, a game sort of resembling domino's.
Overall it was a great trip, had a lot of fun but glad to be back in Shanghai with my Zhongguo Jia (Chinese Family). Hard to believe that I'll be flying home in less than a month now!
Hope you're all doing well.
-AL
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
still going
Hello all, so we never went to Dali, just stayed in Kunming the whole time which has been fine. Went and saw this giant lake from some cliffs that over look it, went to a temple, and also stopped by an ethnic village but didn't go in because it looked more like epcot than a legitmate village.
I've caught a little bug in the last day here which isn't ideal but better now than when I'm back in Shanghai trying to get ready for finals. We fly out tomorrow, I'll supply greater details when I'm back home.
The weathers been perfect, hope all is well.
-AL
I've caught a little bug in the last day here which isn't ideal but better now than when I'm back in Shanghai trying to get ready for finals. We fly out tomorrow, I'll supply greater details when I'm back home.
The weathers been perfect, hope all is well.
-AL
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Travels
S'up, in Kunming right now in Yunnan province. Left Chengdu Sunday morning after seeing both pandas and the worlds largest Buddha (it's pretty big), spent the day walking around this sleepy little town of just over a million. Not sure what we doing today, but I think tomorrow we're going to try and jump on a train to Dali, which wasn't part of the original plan but turns out that Tiger Leaping Gorge is about 9 hours away, which is a little further than we thought.
Good trip so far (no ones cried), having fun, update you when I can.
-AL
Good trip so far (no ones cried), having fun, update you when I can.
-AL
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