travels with tess

2007-01-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

Hello my lovelies
I hope you all had a splendid Christmas and a fantastic new year!!!

I spent them both on Koh Phangan with Rachel (my ozzie friend who used to live in Chengdu but is now based in Beijing). we spent our time swimming, getting massages, sun bathing and eating bbq seafood on the beach - oh a managed to squeeze in a wee bit of scubas diving as well.
a beautiful way to spend the holiday season !!!

I go back to chengdu to carry on working as a pre-school teacher at the QSI International school, and I’m planning on staying with them and therefore in chengdu and china till June 2008 !!!
then I have to rush down to NZ to squeeze in under the age restriction for the working visa.
I will be home next summer though (aug 2007) for Jerome and Sue's wedding !!!

before the wedding I plan to travel a bit around Europe - anyone wanting to join me for a week or 2 or a country or 2 is very welcome !!!

2006 has seen work and life carry on as normal but with much more frequent trips out of the country. I saw the new year in with Bryony in Tokyo - she is now home !!! and saw this new year in with mum and dad in Scotland

Chinese new year saw me freezing my arse off in Harbin with ozzie Rachel - running around looking at ice and snow sculptures with our breath freezing on our eye lashes !
and then skiing and the ballet! Now a bad way to start the year, especially as I get to do it twice (English and Chinese/ solar and lunar)

then in the spring bryony came out to visit me – I got to show her all the weird and wonderful; differences and similarities between china and Japan, and I got to show her off to my friends – she was a big hit !

Linda came out to visit in the summer and we went to some of my favourite places in yunnan and some new places in guizhou which have become a favourite – lots of hiking and outdoor pursuits – topped off with a hot air balloon ride for my birthday – magical!
Then just after she left, Aoife, an old chengdu friend came back out for a holiday and we got to catch up.

For the Chinese October break I went to Taiwan to visit an English mate who used to live in chengdu. Got my first chance to ride a scooter and became totally addicted !! wouldn’t even get off to take the photos so they are all a little blurry – had a blast riding around the island, just managing to get off long enough for hot springs and scuba diving !

Then for American thanksgiving I went to Macau for the weekend with a collegue from work – totally different from mainland china, beautiful architecture, great weather and a lot of fun gambling!

Which brings us to Christmas hols and Thailand – met Rachel in Bangkok and headed straight down to the sand and sea.

Next Chinese new year (late feb) I’m off to Malaysia to do a reccie for the Chinese may holiday when I’m meeting mum in kuala lumpa and we’re going off into the jungle to see orangutans.

So looking back I’d say I’ve had a pretty full year – you know its tough working for an international company abroad because I get all the Chinese holidays AND all the American ones – I seem to be doing ok though !!

Hope you have all had a 2006 to smile about and that 2007 brings you even more laughter and sunshine.

GREAT BIG SUN BLEACHED KISSES XXXXX

2006-10-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

first a PHOTO NOTE: i have a new gallery on fotopic - travellinginto2006.fotopic.net this will be where my new photos will go - as yet it has songpan oct 2005 and chritmas 2005 in japan and wig night! but i will get 'summer with linda 2006' and 'taiwan oct 2006' on there soon !
i do still have tessa140.fotopic.net which is travels with tess but this is older photos (bry please change your link on your blog - thanks x)

so TAIWAN
lovely holiday - lots of holidaying not so much backpacking, which means i relaxed rather alot instead of rushing around and seeing all the MUST SEEs of Taiwan. i did ask tom and his mates where and what they would recommend first though and their recommendations were spot on. so i spent my time scootering around, only getting off to lie in hot springs, snorkel or scuba dive!!

I went to Taiwan because a very good friend of mine from Chengdu: Tom went back there with his new wife Claire to live in her home country. Tom, Dave and another Dave all used to live and work in Taiwan and so its been talked about quite alot but none of the rest of us has ever been. anyway, tom and claire moved back there this summer and so i went out to visit them and the country this october break.

i spent a couple of days with tom and claire which was really nice - being shown round the city, good food and meeting their friends. then i headed off in a cirle around the southern part of the island

the best thing for me was learning to ride a scooter !! ever since cambodia where i spent 3 weeks sitting on the back of one i've wanted to be able to ride them myself, and finally i got the chance to learn. piece of piss and SO MUCH FUN!!!!
i never wanted to get off the scooters so i didn't stop and see alot and took most of my photos from the scooter.

spent my first night away from tom & claire in a hot springs resort - that had a cool pool, super hot pool, hot pool and then this great area with loads of stone seats and stone beds that had little buttons for you to press and then they sent out jets of water to massage you. really good fun!

then i went right down south to their brighton equivilent, lots of sunshine and beaches, where i rode around hopping inand out of the see and doing a little snorkeling. then i went diving it was great !!! diving always is but we did two dives - one which was FULL of fish. i've never had a dive like it. the fish didn't move out of the way and so you had to swim through them. i kept getting fish 6inchs in front of my mask staring me down -REALLY great !! one fish followed us around for the whole dive. the second dive was just as majical because we spent the time in a hard and soft coral bed. soft coral is amazing, its spellbinding to see what look like solid structures, gently swaying in the current. felt surrounded by life, by living breathing structures - very moving

that weekend was taiwans major holiday weekend and all the hotels were full but my dive guide let me stay my last night at his place - he had a whole bunch of diving mates coming down for the weekend so while they went on a night dive we went and ate GREAT seafood and then we went back and hung out with them. great bunch of guys and a really fun last night.

thats, all folks !!

work here is manic - i'm 7 weeks in but it hasn't calmed down, but i am enjoying it so thats good !!
it was great to get away and good to be back

now deciding where to go for thanksgiving break ! will keep you posted xx

2006-10-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

Coming here for the first time,
i recognise everthing.
the streets of Japan, the smell of Thailand, the people of China
where is Taiwan ?

Do we describe all countries, all things, all experiences by contrasting them with the known?
If so, then how do we find the unknown?
how do we identify it?

Do we try to classify it, assimilate it, relate to it,
and only when we have done all this and failed,
call it the unknown -
making it the now known, the newly known,
another image and experience to catalogue away
for next time.

If we recognise all,
can we still feel new?

In relating places to the familiar,
can they still be unique?

The answer must be yes!
or we would stop, rest and be content in the knowledge that all experiences are familiar and all places are known to us,
even before we reach them.

Yet still we travel, we explore, we step outside our sphere.
because only after you have identified the familiar,
can the contrasts appear.

Japan does not smell of Thailand,
the faces of the Thais are not chinese
Chinese people do not behave this way.

It is the combination of the known,
that gives Taiwan its uniqueness.
Through finding aspects i can relate to,
i truely value it as an individual experience-
new and exciting!

Often it is the slight differences
that we enjoy, in a familar situation.

2006-09-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

BURIED UNDER 2 MILLION YUAN (THATS 135,500 POUNDS TO THE REST OF YOU)!!!!!!!!!

Thursday started better than most days in the 6 weeks i've been back at school. i woke up ok and actually managed to get out of bed on time - very unusually!! unfortunately i do not take after my father who springs out of bed around 7am after pleasantly reading for an hour, does tai chi, feed the dogs, puts the kettle on and then attempts to get the rest of us up. i take after my mum - the one with her head under the pillow until the last possible minute and then a mad dash out the door.
this i believe is genetics and try as i have, i can not change it!! now of course i have to get up at 6.30am and its dark - not helping !!
but on this wonderful morning, i DID get up and was able to enjoy a very relaxed breakfast before a pleasant cycle to work. normally its hell for leather, weaving in and out of cars, people and all the bicycles on the wrong side of the road going in the opposite direction while my arse is burning more than it ever did for Jane Fonda !!! saying that though i am enjoying being able to cycle to work with music - i am now 30mins from school and i think this totally justifys the IPOD -its a NECESSITY !!! i;ve found that the Good Morning Vietnam Soundtrack works particulary well - super blast from the past and if you're into reliving moments you never thought you would again - i'm currently riding to work to Dirty Dancing soundtrack. i get to sing really loudly and totally out of key and in gasping breaths all the way and i'm loving it!!

so this sidetrack gets us to work - it went smoothly
on arriving at work i realised i had forgotten my swim kit which i need for after school swimming lessons TOTALLY PANIC !!! cold sweat ! some people's greatest fear is going to work naked - mine if forgetting my cossie on swim days - don't ask, i guess its just too many years in the pool with too many days of arriving at the last possible second.
after freaking out i realised that i did have time to go home after school and before the pool -aaahhhhhh - LARGE sigh, release shoulders, followed by a very pleasant day.

kids left and i cycled like mad back home, ran up 6 flights of stairs, grabbed the cossie, jumped back on the bike and pedalled like mad. (we're getting close now folks, don't leave me just cause its getting boring!)
i get to a giant roundabout on the other side of which is the pool. i'm cycling on the wrong side of the road but thats normal although many cyclist believe the pavement is theirs too
in front of me the traffic has been stopped my soldiers with guns to let an important looking car and a boring looking truck come out onto the road. i keep going but over to the far side of the road away from the truck. as i reach the truck, actually a second before because i saw it happening, the truck is making its turn and the weight of the load inside while being pushed against one side of the truck, pops the door - its a side loading door, had to be didn't it!, the door, which is actually the whole side of the truck opens up and all the boxes and the metal pallets they are on come sliding out - yes you guessed it folks - onto yours truelly.
the boxes, small but heavy (like a shoe box cut in half) hit me and the bike, we hit the curb and then the rest of the boxes and their pallets slide on top of us (me and the bike).
thankfully rather quickly a helpful and strong man with a gun runs over and manages to lift the metal pallet up enough for me to wriggle out from underneath and then i squirm my way out of the rest of it and stand up. People come flooding (the truck is still RIGHT outside its own biulding which it was just leaving). everyone is a hive of activity, supervising people to pick up all the boxes, talking into mobiles and wondering how they are going to deal with a foreigner when none of them speak english !!!
i'm freaking out because i know i have a bus of 5-7yr olds waiting for me at the pool with no superviser - i get them sorted, you know the kind of phone call:
"Hi Rach, its tess, can you get over to the pool and look after the kids cause i've just been hit by a truck, i'll be there as soon as i can" !!!

I have to tangent a little here and explain about traffic accidents in china. NO ONE HAS INSURANCE !!! no car insurance and much more importantly, no health insurance. a hospital will not let you see a doctor until they see money - NO EXCEPTIONS !!!
this means that in most accidents, especially those involving bikes, neither party wants to look like they are ok - just by standing up you loose money in the settlement, so people who are hit tend to lie on the road where it happened and converse from there. if the partys involved can not sort it out themselves - basically agree on a fee, then the police are called. the police look at the situation, they listen to the statements of the people involved and then those of the 50 people who have gathered to watch and give opinions (even though they didn't see it happen) since the accident happened and then they give the verdict. THEY proportion the blame: 30% here, 70% there and then THEY decide on the money to be exchanged - 30, 70; 300,700 whatever. the police are the judges.
add to this that EVERYONE belives that foreigners are rich, super rich, even though you're are riding a bike and they're in a benz, so everyone will try to tell a story that makes us pay the money - you wouldn't believe the problems my friends have had when they've been hit!!!!
so in a lot of cases leaving the scene is a lot more painful than what caused the scene- to your wallet at least

which brings us back to me! shock is kicking in, i don't think i'm badly injured but i do have a cut ankle and it hurts. i'm trying to get through to the school and the chinese office staff but they're all on the phone. luckily everyone is happy to leave me freaking out because it puts off having to try to talk to me. i finally get someone from school on the phone and then walk around thrusting the phone at people who i hope are involved with the truck and not just smartly dressed onlookers, no one wants the phone because for some reason they seem to think that the person on the other end will also not speak chinese. finally with my bad and presently very jumbled up chinese i persuade them its a chinese person on the phone and they find the person in charge of dealing with the foreigner. i pass the phone and start to breath again - followed rather quickly by breathing in a ciggarrette and then i start to look at what happened.

there are loads and loads of small boxes and pretty heavy by the way poeple are picking them up, and they're being stacked back onto the metal pallets they fell off which are now in the middle of the road. more soldiers have come out and they now completely surround the truck. some poeple are scrambling on the floor because some of the boxes have split and they're trying to collect up whatever has fallen out and thats when i realise that the boxes are full of tightly packed wraps of 1 yuan coins. now theres about 14 yuan to the pound so thats not much to you but here 1 yuan can buy you breakfast or a bus ride anywhere in town.
with later reflection we figure that maybe theres 20 coins to a wrap but i haven't had 20 to stack up and see so it maybe more but its not less. and lets say theres 20 wraps to a box, well each pallet must hold at least 40 boxes and there are quite a few pallets so even without the math - ITS A LOT OF MONEY !!!!!

the phone comes back to me and i know/think i'm ok and want to get to class but the front wheel of the bike is bent in half and the basket is smashed up - i say the bike cost 300-400yuan it did cost 300, my collegue says it costs 400-500 and they hand over 500yuan. but they want to take me to the hospital. i insist on going to class but promise to come back afterwards and ask them to look after the bike til then. everyones happy with this arrangement and i hobble off.

i teach my classes, hobble back and some poeple from the office which turns out to be a bank (surprise, surprise) even though its doesn't look like a bank, it looks like offices! we head over to the hospital to have me checked out. now this is not england, so the check up consists of looking at the cut on my ankle, having two x-rays of the ankle and the doctor telling me to go home, rest and put ice on it.
the bank staff say i can't collect my bike that night and i agree to come back the next day.
so today after work, i got a lift to the bank and there is my bike, new front wheel, new basket and there are the bank staff saying if i have any discomfort over the next few days i should call them!!!

can you bloody believe it !!!!!!!!! you can't get a better accident than that !!!
and i am fine - really mum, i'm fine !!

sorry i haven't got any photos, it would have been a good one but thinking about it they probably would have confiscated photos!

so thats me.
now i'm off to Taiwan !!
yep its national holidays here for a week and i'm off to visit a friend in taiwan, i leave too early tomorrow morning!

i'll tell you all about it when i get back.
check out bryonys blog - its great as always but especially good this week because she's singing !!! if you can't get there through my link just type bryonyberry on google, she comes up first - mememe

lots of love, money and bruises
tess xx
ps. thursday night, i came home, put ice on my foot, drank a glass of baileys and then when my mates arrived i won all their money off them at majong !!!

2006-09-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

hi there !
i know its been forever since i've written and that like me there is probably no one still checking it but i've been inspired.
bryony - my sister - has a blog and its just great! she writes in it pretty much every week and i love to read it - its funny and simulating and interesting (big up to bry!!) she does have a great way of saying things but also the usual for her is still not quite the usual for anyone else because she;s in toyko and we're not!! it also makes you think about your week and your experiences.
so i have decided to try and write alittle bit each week - i put off using the blog because i feel i have to write huge newsletters after i've been on holiday and because i wantto put photoson and its actually a comlete pain in the arse to do, but thats kinda mssing the point of having a blog. chatting and spouting and talking about now and life and me.
in telling you about myweek it also gives me a time to look more closing at whats been happening and why i've remembered certain instances and not others. china ahs had such a profound inpact on me and continues to or quite a refular basis and i'm just worried that i wil forget it all if i don't write it down! i spoke to a friend this week who's heading back home to the state after a years teaching here and she'splannin on writing a book about her experienes - but she doesn't have towrite it really because she has been sending emails home every week/month and so she has a record of her experiences and how they effected her. and i think thats what i realy want to hold onto - the emotions and reactions china has caused.
so far, i know its all talk !! but wish me luck !

i am back at work !!! year two and a 'real teacher'!! we're in a new school which is really great and actually makes us look a serious school and has lots of space for growth. i like my class very much - 2 americans, 1 american chinese, 1 korean, 1 spanish, 1 japanese, 1 australian malaysian,4 malaysians. all between the ages of 2.5-4 yrs old. most of them i taught last year so te english level is high but the japanese boy and the korean boy have no english - but big smiles!!!
last year my biggest complant was that i never felton topof things and that it felt too much like i was winging it! i blamed this on the fact that i had started after the startof school and so could never catch up. well this year i started with everyone else and i feel just the same !! i'm sure it will settle down but 3 weeks in and it hasn't yet!! my age grouphas been split into two clases this year and the other teah, although a very good friend of mine - is prone to panic and i'm sure thats effeting my sense of calm!!
add to that that i have takenon the 'roots&shoots' group at school which is an environmental action group for kids. and that my boss has decided we will be accredatited this year - no i don't know what it means either - except that i'mhead of a committee comprising of other teachers ad parents, that will meet one a month and draw up a five year action plan by april !!

thats school life, as for me i wnat to start a distance learning masters course. iwant to do a masters in Toursim with the focas on eco tourism. i going to go through the university of otago in new zealand who have just put together a foundation course for post grad tourism which means i get to study for longer and more money !!! lucky me !!
i'm hoping to start that soon. they have a sumer school in january but i'm trying to apply now so that ican have access to the reading materials in advance. I'm excited aout the course but not onvinced it will fit in !! i'll make it fit!
ironically, my current plans are to settle in new zealand and by current recogning i should be comleting my masters thesame year i get residency (a status that would have dropped my fees by 75%) oh well! can't just sit on my arse in china and no nothing !

other news- i'm coming home next summer (2007) you can thank jerome for that and for asking be to play the one role in his life i would never refuse -Best Man !!! so shouts of jubilation for jerome and sue !!!
Linda has also decided that since i'll be in england aug 2007 that its time fr another party, so her and jules are getting busy. after the 4 day party we had in may wheni came back i can't imagine what they're planing for my 30th !!! but keep august back holiday 2007 open - don't get married on it please !!!

Linda came out for 4 weeks this summer and we had a blast travelling around hot places and buying stools -just like the last trip !!!
Aoife- a friend i use to work with at Golden Apple (first job in chengdu), has come back for a holiday after 2.5 yrs back in ireland and she's here now so thats all good as well.

and there i think i'll leave you.

SMILE !

tess xx

2006-03-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

Well hello there my lovelies,
didn't mean to leave you hanging - i have a day long splurge on the blog and then i kinda forget about it, didn't realise i'd left you freezing your arses off in harbin !
so where was i ?.....
...are yes swimming. well after that we went to a snow sculpture park and then a night ice sculpture park - when i say park i mean amusement park size - they were both massive !! it was great to see snow scultures as well as ice because the work is really different. the weirdest thing though was that as we arrived so did a posse of Disney characters ! felt like Disney on ice !!! i guess they had fun though, must have been nice and toasty inside their suits !!!
The size of some of these creations is just amazing, like monuments and forts that we could walk all over, really cool and very cold !!!

the night ice sculptures were huge as well and these were full of neon lights so they glowed in funky colours !
there were a couple of bars inside the ice park. one was called the 'ice bar' and was made of ice - intirely - needless to say we had a look around but didn't stay to sit on ice chairs and drink frozen wine ! we opted for the bar with heating and hot chocolate and watched russian girls with big bottoms and very small knickers dance around and a russian guy sing very out of tune chinese songs - great fun all round !!!

when we got back to beijing, we thawed out for a day and then headed off to the slopes. there are a few slopes around beijing that you can do day trips to - it turned out that they all have manmade snow but this meant that the weather was warm and sunny and only the snow was cold. it was really good fun and quite challenging !! i fell more than i ever have before but i also got a much bigger high !!!
after skiiing we shot home changed clothes in a matter of minutes and raced back out the door to the ballet !! we went and saw the Russian Ballet with the Russian Philamonic doing the Nutcracker !! it was beautiful and majical and so wondeful to have some culture- long overdue !!! one thing that made me giggle though was that i looked down our isle in the middle of the performance and saw a little chinese boy trying very hard in the dimmed lights to read a chinese copy of the new Harry Potter !

i then came back to chengdu which felt lovely and warm - refreshing change seeing as i've been freezing my arse off for 3 months !
while in beijing, i think it was while i was lying face down in the snow after an almighty crash and burn on the slopes, that i decided to use my birthday present from graeme - a day at the spa. so the sunday before i went back to work i went to a small women only spa and handed over my voucher. i was lead upstairs to change and then i was put in one of those seated boxes you see in the movies where only the woman's head pops out. its a steam box and as i sat there i watched the temperature gange travel up to 46 degrees C !!! god it felt good ! then i got a full body massage and facial and cycled home in the sunshine with a big smile on my face !!!

so i arrived back to work on monday feeling refreshed and ready to go - a very unusual feeling after a holiday but thoroughly lovely.

the weather deteriorated for awhile but is now beautiful and sunny and i'm desperate to get outside and enjoy it - which means this blog entry is coming to an end.

just one thing to add - Bryony is coming to visit !!! i was pushing her hard to come to china for a holiday because i think after japan she will really feel the amazing similiarities and contrasts ! all the nagging paid off and she's coming at the end of march which is perfect timing because i have a week off work !! not sure what we'll do though - thought we might go out to the tibetan part of sichuan but have also heard of a cheap trip to the sunshine and beaches in the east so i'll keep you posted !!

2006-02-06T22:24:00.001-08:00

THANK YOU AUNTIE MO !!!!!
Over January i have been seriously comtemplating my time in japan and writing the blog in my head - and let me tell you it was a blinding blog entry !!!
unfortunately i then went off on holiday AGAIN and have now forgotton all about Toyko. to avoid this situation again, although i don't plan on going away soon (but you never know !!!) I thought i'd better tell you all about this holiday as soon as possible.
and what can i say ...
my body went from -21 degrees C to 46 degrees C in under a week and totally out of choice !!!
i really must start by shouting out a huge, great big THANKS to my aunt Mo - let me explain. up in north east china there is a smallish city called HARBIN and every year it has an ice festival (one of the top ice festivals in the world) - this means that people come from all over the world and carve amazing ice sculptures. i have wanted to see this festival for most of the time i've been in china and every spring festival i think about it, but i can never justify it because its so expensive to get to beijing and then on to harbin and harbin gets so cold (-15 to -30 on average days) that you only want to stay for a couple of days. the whole trip just seemed to expensive - add to that the fact that spring festival is an impossible time to buy train tickets and so i would have to fly and it has always been out of my price range. enter Mo and her very generous christmas present of money in the bank !!! and the fact that rachel and jamyang are now living in beijing (god i love free accomodation !!!) and that rachel was actually up for the idea of freezing her tits off with me ! and you find me friday 27th jan flying up to beijing after having hurriedly purchased two new pairs of thermals - i very nicely gave all my thermals to my mum for her tibet trip because i wasn't going to still be in china this winter - remember that !!!

Spring festival is the name givcen to the holiday that covers chinese new year - it actually starts a few days before and continues until 15 days after the new year. the actual new years eve was saturday 28th. so we went out for dinner with a bunch of jamyang and rachel's friends, including Dan the kiwi i spent last spring festival with in Aba, bought up mass of fire works, got terribly drunk and then let them all off !!! now i know that sounds more like an advert for A&E instead of "fireworks are safe and fun" - it was all done very professionally !!!
infact i was really luckly because this year, after a 12 year NO FIREWORKS ruling for Beijing the ban was lifted for the whole city. what thuis actually means is that for about a week before new year's night and at least a week afterwards (i can vouch for that part) from 8am to i guess 3am every day there are fireworks going off ALL THE TIME !!!! in the daytime these are mostly loud bangers (the type that set off the car alarms) and endless streams of fire crackers !!!
at night though the lights come out !! some explode upwards, some outwards and always there are some you can hold !!
i truely believe that no one in the world does fireworks like the chinese - and you know how everything at home says MADE IN CHINA well these babies don't make it home!! either the chinese keep the best fireworks for themselves or the amount of explosives in them is too much for european laws - you decide !!!
we had lots of fun - did you get that !

we had sunday to recover and then rach and i got a night train sun night off to harbin - good old jamyang had queued for 3 hours in the freezing cold for 2 days to get us the tickets - thank you sweetie xxx

the landscape we saw from the train actually reminded me of the romney marsh and winters in england - it was very flat and sparce and sprinkled with snow so that the plowed ridges could still be seen through the snow cover.

got into harbin early afternoon, dumped our gear at the hostel and headed straight out. because its up north the night comes very quickly - the shift from dusk to dark seems to happen in a few minutes and so after a very brief time wandering we headed off to the nearest park and expected ice sculptures. actually wandering is not the right word, we walked around 'shopping street', a street we were supposed to visit and then both realised that we couldn't feel our feet anymore and need to find heat VERY quickly and so shot off to the nearest restuarant to eat dinner and thaw out. and this is how our days went. we would be walking around happily and then one of us would say 'toes have gone, must find heat' and we'd shoot off to a restuarant or snow hole to eat and drink and warm up !!! i was really surprised that the rest of my body did so well - the probablem with the toes was that they didn't just go numb, they then started throbbing with pain which steadily increases - yeh nice !! i guess two pairs of socks just wasn't enough - the reast of my body was good though - that had two sets of thermals top and bottoms, trousers and top, 2 coats, two scarves, ear muffs and a hat and two face masks - what really surprised me was how cold my chin got - why has no one told me that i have a huge chin that must stick out further than any other part of my body because it found every breeze and frooze faster that my toes !!!
actually the first night wasn't too bad at all - we felt so tough when we got back to the hostel, we were like 'oh, well if that's it, this is ok, no probs !!!' i know, i know, comments like that just bring on bad weather - and yes the second day was -15 to -21 and oh my god !!! we felt it !!!!

the park though - really, really amazing !!!! giant blocks of ice used as bricks to build, well buildings !! and slides wwwweeeeeeee !!!! the lights are inside the ice and glow through - cool eh ! and yes it is a slide and we did slide down it !!!

so there were lots of large structures with coloured lights inside. but there were also smaller sculptures and an arena full or ice sculptures, each made by teams from different countries - some really good !!
you know what its like when it snows, it doesn't matter how old you are, you realise that a huge silly grin has spread across your face and all you can think about is getting out in it and snow balls and snow angels - well this was just the same, even though there was no snow, just solid frozen ice but the grin was the same. what made it really good and the same on the next night was that there's really fun music blasting out all the time and so we just danced, walzed, gigged and cancaned around the park.

the next day was jam packed as we found that in true chinese style - promising to do something on the telephone when you're still in beijing and actually doing it are two completely diifferent things and so we didn't have train tickets back and the two days we would have wanted to leave were both already booked solid so we had to get a day train the next day - meaning we had to pack everything the next day - yes the cold day !!! so we shot out of the hostel at 9am and headed out to find ourselves some architecture !!!!

during this holiday i was talking to rachel about the fact that i'd just written my year review and how surprised i was that i'd forgotton so much and she'd been thinking about it as well since i'd asked her to help jog my memory. so we went over every year we'd been here and all the holidays - spring festival, may, summer, oct, christmas and tried to remember what we did for each !!
and we came to two conclusions
1: we have made the most of our holidasys !!! everyone of them, every year !
2: our chosen holiday spots within china and all been the most UNchinese parts of china !! harbin is just the latest example !

after lunch we went down to the river to watch the mad people who choose to cut a hole in the ice and swim in the river !!!!
swim is not really the right word - they get in, swim five meters and get back out again, but some of them do it a couple of times and considering i' finding it cold just standing on the ice watching i don't want to take anything away from them - but i'll stick to a heated pool if you don't mind !!

that's it for now i'm afraid - off to work !!, prob more on thurs xx
thanks to kal and a magic web address i can now look at my own blog - sorry it looks so shit, i'll work on that xx

2006-01-21T00:28:00.000-08:00

Well here i am - three weeks back in chengdu and into the new year and i finally have a clear saturday and one full of inspiration - ooohhhh its great to have a day off when i'm up and about at a decent time and not hiding under the covers trying to remember what happened the night before and then trying very hard to forget again !!! Not totally my fault i might add - first weekend, was well, first weekend back ! secong was graeme's birthday so the excuses are all there. but it is lovely to be back at the computer and in the mood for writing, i was worried for a bit that i'd never get back into it !! My weeks are taken up so much with working that i really don't want to do aything when i get home except eat and huddle on the sofa watching a movie - now don't get me wrong, i'm really enjoying my work -infact i enjoy it more and more all the time including my extra teaching and this has now shifted a bit so that i actually got home in daylight once last week !!!

So here i am, and listening to Juro's christmas collection (oneof bry's friendsin japan who has a great ear for finding beautiful songs you could never find yourself) - in preparation for this moment i have been trying to remeber what i did last year and i was surprised at how hard that was - do i not care aboutmy life or is it just soo boring that there's nothing to remember. well i'm glad to say that after asking around i've found that i had a really good 2005 !!!! so let me tell you al about it !

the year was seen in with some very special friend and some just as special cocktails -a unch of my favourite people got together and bought lots of booze and mountains of friut and chocolate sauce and then went to graemes house,where with the help of 2 blenders and chefs in shifts we produced a constant stream of the best cocktails i've ever had. Stared about 10pm and were creating and drinking with such a tour de force that we just made the drinks last to midnight !! left the house to share the new year cheer with more friends in the most energised pissed i've ever been- lots of acohol mixed with lots of friut does not take away from the alcohol but definietly adds to the pissed !!!!

New Year was very special and so was being clear headed the next day! it was made even better because it ws spentwith two of the loveliest people i've had the chance to get to know - Heate and Dave - a very special australian couple who left us soon after to go back home to a year that came closer to hell and heaven than any of us would what to get, but that's their story. You just need to know that they were and are wonderful xxx

januray was the same as it would be anywhere, where its winter - cold. but in china at least it comes witha holiday at the end in the form of Chinese New Year - much more spedial than our new year because you get 10 days off work instead of 1 !!! IN 2005 the tibetan new year and the chinese new year were at the same time - they both follow a lunar calendar but apparently they can still be at slightly different times - yeh i don't get it either !!
Anyway Rachel, Jamyang, Graeme, myself ad two of jamyang's mates from beijing, Denny and Toby went up to Aba (Jamyang's home town) for about a week. Now you have to understand that i'veknown jamyang for over 2 years nowand every holiday he has tried to get me to go to aba and its never worked out - everyone else has made it - grae, rach even ben but for whatever reasonsi vnever pulled it off,so this was a super special trip for me - and it didn't disapoint !! We spent the week walking through the snow covered hills, sitting in very warm and cosy houses, eating more momo's (yak meat filled dumpling) than anyone of us thought possible and carving chunks of yummy yak meat off gaint slabs of it !!! Actually we spet most of the time eating but we did doabit of walking. And i got the chance to walk the pilgrimage route around the monestry - my favourite thing to do with tibetan monestrys.

It was a lovely trip, to be with friends, to see tibetan life and to be invited into someone's family -i couldn't have asked for a better holiday !!!

And this takes me on to May - when you work all year (i guess thatswhat all normal people do, but its weird for me because i only used to write newsletters when i left each country !!) you find that all the interesting things happen in the holiday times. What ihadn't realised was just how many i had last yearad how diverse and special they had all been !!!
The start of May is a 7 day national holiday in china but i took a whole month and went back to england. This was a truely special time, firstly because i hadn't been home for over two years but also because i got t be part of Megan and Leyton's wedding. Two very special friends of mine who had asked me to be bridesmaid - i felt very honoured and excited !!
My mum - as only she can do - organised a three day welcome home party which turned into about 5 days in the end as friends came early and late but meant that i got back to england and sat in mum and dad's garden - my favourite place in the whole country - surrounded by my favourite poeple in the whole country !!!!

I had a lovely weekend !!! and then got to travel around and see everyone again !! so the experience just got better and better. I know i have been really bad at staying in contact= both before i came home and especially now that i'm back here but it was really majical to see you all and i do think of you often.

I was struck most by how enthusiastically everyone is living life. I told a friend this and she said that sometimes she felt like she was copping out and conforming by buying a house and settling into life but to me everyone seemed to be doing it with so much positive energy. When i left, we were all not long out of university but long enough that we felt we should have achieved more and that we were unsatisfied in our lives. Two years on and there was so much positive engergy - people were enjoying jobs or changing to new ones, becoming very proud house owners, parents and husbands and wives. And they were doing all these what society calls normal things without any 'eastenders' misery !!!
I was jealous, because i felt like i'm treading water and not in a very create or enthusiastic way here in china, but mostly i was really happy and enthusiastic for them.

I came back, happy to be back home in chengdu but also confident that the people i loved most were happy in their lives too.

My only regret was that i got to spend so little time with mum and dad - this however was quickly rectified because what felt like very soon after (actally july) they appeared on my doorstep in chengdu. There is no way to describehowi felt seeing them come through customs in in chengdu area but safe to say that i'm welling up again just thinking about it - my parent are great !! ask anyone !! but it was especially special that they came to see me and my life out here in china.

Mike and Jules were with me for about 4 weeks before they headed off for their own adventure across china, mongolia and tibet - but you'll have to askthem about that bit !! doask them though because iknow they'd love to tell you all about it !!
It was super because igot to show them all the best thingsabout my life here - sitting in a tmepland doing nothing but drinking tea, eating too spicy hotpot and drinking formaldahide filled beer. They met all my favourite people and i go to take them to all my favourite places around sichuan and china for that matter. Including jamgyang's hometown of Aba - totally transformed by the summer into rolling hills of wild flowers and the bluest brightest sky you've ever seen !!! Xi'an with the teracotta wariors and my faourite and weirdest shrine ever and beijing, wih the best market in the world !

The summer got pretty hectic after mum and dad left - because it was so calm having them with me for only a month ad managing to showthem the best places in china !!! Rachel and jamyang - two of my bestest friends in chengdu - if you hadn't worked that out yet, moved in before leaving us forever to go and live in bejing. and then as they movedout, graeme moved in in preparatiofor taking over my apartment after i left. now as you might of noticed, i didn't leave, but it did take me nearly 6 weeks to makethis desicion while poor old graeme had to live with meand lexia !! but it was great to hav just a busy house - god did lexia and i love it when they all finally left and it was just the two of us again !!!

Just as i made the desicion to stay (in fact just before, and who knows maybe this helped me decide) we had our other chinise national holiday october 1st-7th. A whole group of us went to a small tibetan town in northern sichuan that is famous for horse treking. We didn't go for the horses though. we had decides to hike out to some deserted spot and have own own private party. We hiked up to what loked like an old gate to the city and whe we inally reached it - weighed down with everything we could carry, we founda bunch of tibetans who were helping to repaint it. they had obviously had the same idea as usbut for their party they had brought up gaint speakers and a sound system !!! We spoke to the local guy living nearby and he agreed tolet us sleep in the gate house - he gave us bedding and fire wood (gave beeing a 'we gave him money and he gave us the things !!!') but what with tibetans, a sound system, lots of vodka and a giant bonfire !! we had such a great tmethat we stayed two nights !!! i tell you its just as well we had the gate house because it was fucking freezing !!!! still a very good time was had by all.
i got to play poi the first time i've played them since being in china !! i hadn't realised how much i missed them, and by the endof the night, everyone had had a go !!!

maybe it was realsing that i still had some very speical friend friends in chengdu (what with haete, dave, rach and jamyang leaving it had felt a little lonely), and the fact that i liked my job and that it was the opposite to everything that i hated about teaching in china and had been getting me down, that i decided to sign on the line and stay another year !

Then it was just a hop, skip and a thanksgiving long weekend beforeit was the christmas holidays and i was off to toyko to see bryony !!!
I flew via beijing which meant i got to see rach and jamyang - hich was just super, although absolute carnage !!! And then i was in toyko looking at a sister who i hadn't seen in 3 years and looked so different and so like my mum and my sister that it was really freaky. actually she had the very moving experince and kept touching my face - i was just comletely hung over and sleep deprived and looking at my mum at 25 yrs old.

We had a great time !!!!!
she worked and i site saw and yet we still had time to be together and do things together. she showed me her favourite spots and i tried to persuade her to come to china so i could show her mine.
Your experinces of a new place are formed from what is your norm - like with any experiment, in order to make conclusions you have to have a control group. what moved me the most was how much my experience of toyko came from my life in china. i don't think i'd realised how much this life has changed me and effected me and become me. i feel so much that i am doing nothing here and that its just shy of wasting time, and although i know that people say that every experince you have shapes the person you are, it was visiting tokyo that really knocked it home. I have lived in chengdu china for nearly three years now and it has shaped the person i am. If i had come to toyko from living in winchester or london,i would have had two completely different experiences. and i'm really looking forward to what linda has to say about toyko when she goes to visit bryony after living in norwich.
Toyko is so much the same as chengdu and so competely different and opposite, i have no idea how it is in relation to england.
this is where i am now and who i am - weird.

And this is me - in some ways or rightthis second anyway - i am much happier nothats the wrong word, much more content in chengdu than i have ben in a long time. My job is a challenge and i'm getting job satisfaction something that has eenmssing for too long and thatabove all is whats making life good. I will leae in september and travel on down to new zealand, at the moment i really want to get there and start a life but i know this will ease off when i start trabeling and i alsofeel that that is still something i have to do. it is important to me to travel again before i get to new zealand. thanks to thisob i will have some money behind when when i get there, which not only gives me security but possibilities and both of these things have become very important to me.

But let me slow down a bit, cause i'm not writig this year off yet !!! i'm off to beijing next week for chinese new year to go with rachel and jamyang up to harbin to see the ice festival something i really wanted to do last year and didn't manage - not quite sure why though because the average daily temperature is -25 celcius , yes that -25 !!! and then a little skiing. not sure what May holiday will hold but linda's planning on coming out in the summer and then when i leave chengdu i'm going to travel out through southern yunnan into loas - a trip i've been saving for when i leave chengdu and one i've been looking forward to since getting here. (lots of hill tribes and laos influences)

Sorry i didn't talk much aout japan - it was a great experince and really beautiful. a respectful and contiplative relgion such a change to the money aggressiveness of china. and i don't know what i can say about my time with bryony - she looks great and seems a lot happier. they were both very magical xx i'm not sure if i just haven't preocessed the experince enough to talk about it yet or if i'm all talked out but as i'm sure you'll agree this blog entry is long enough !!!
if you're lucky i'll come back to japan and if not, or you can;t wait then check out bryony's blog - she's better at talking about it anyway. i will say though, that i now have a japanese house god in my house (got him fromthe temple on new years eve/day) and that i have a japanese bell on my key chain that reminds me of japan and bryony everytime i hear it - and that its makes me calm and happy and smilling all at the same time.

till next time

please hug the one you love and get one back xx

love tess xx

2005-12-21T18:16:00.000-08:00

GOOD MORNING STARSHINE, THE EARTH SAYS HELLO !!!!
xxx

2005-12-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

Well hello there - i'm finally all blogged up and ready to go !!! been wanting one of these ever since my sister bry got one and then again every time i read hers ! the hope and plan is that you will get much more regular info from me and photos !! be positive and strong tess - WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO GET IS MUCH MORE REGULAR UPDATES FROM ME AND LOTS OF PHOTOS !!!! thats better
eventually i'd like to get all the old newsletters and photos set up on here as well but i think we'll start with now and see how we go. and what a place to start - Tokyo !!!!
yes christmas is here and i'm in Tokyo with my sister, looking out at crisp sunshine and brilliant blue skies !!!!! some people dream of a white christmas but after walking under this brilliant blue sky and the sparkling stars this is cracking up to be one of my favourite christmas's for a while !!!

It's wierd seeing Bryony - she's really tall, slim and city chic - not a bryony i recognise and yet still so much the bryony i know. it's also been three years since we saw each other which puts her now at the same age as i was then - does that make sense ? same age but completely different place - in some many senses of the word. and yet in some ways, with us both living and working in asia we have more in common than we've had for a long time. not to mention the huge similarities between china and japan (something china would be horrified to know!!!), so the poeple, behaviour, experiences and our feeling are all things we can talk about and relate to. i don't know if we've ever had this much in common ?! its really good though and as much as i'm enjoying tokyo - i'm enjoying spending time with bry xxx

So to Tokyo - well i arrived very hungover from a night in beijing with two of my best chengdu mates who've moved up there. and maybe because of the hangover, i was able to negotiate the subway system quite calmly - actually i think zombiefied would be a more accurate description but it did mean that when i got spat out above ground after nearly 12 hours in airports/tubes etc and still hadn't reached bryony, i was happy just to sit in a cafe and wait to be collected. and thats just what she did !!! she swept in - like a startbucks ad or sex in the city scene when the sexy city worker pops in to grab a coffee. chengdu maybe growing and becoming more westernised and growing economically but it is a backwater compared to tokyo - even the mates in beijing can't compete !!!
we chatted over coffee and than went back to her appartment - i'll put up photos of that !! and chatted some more.

that was saturday, today is tuesday and bry's gone back to work so i got up late and am writing to you while my hair dries. i'm going to go out and explore the neighbourhood today - its a simple series of streets from bry's house to the subway but we seem to have come a different way every time !!! i'm also on cooking dinner tonight so i want to see what sichuan/chinese dishes i can pull off !!!

sunday we went to hear live bands in a park - all the local bands bring out all their amps, mikes and instruments and set up and jam, they are just far apart enough from each other that you flow from one into the next and on both sides of the path - really good fun, expecailly as in chengdu its so hard to get a young amateur music scene going - this was really positive. i don't think they pay for their spots but the police definielty don't move them on and its every sunday afternoon. Around the bands was a flee market where i bought cups with sumo wrestlerts on them !!! i'm am going to buy so much pottery from this place !! Just lots of young japanese selling old clothes and knick nacks - kinda felt like a jumble sale and camden market all rolled into a park with yellow leaves blowing everywhere. And then it was on to 'the bridge' where lots of young japanese dress up in very outragious clothes and pose for passers by, tourists, photos and for each other. i don't think my photois will be good cause the light was shit but it was really fun to see. makeup, heels, lace and bondage all on a windy, winter day !!! we carried on down into the shopping arcade where they buy all their stuff - its all off the rail, any look you could want !!!!
bryony took me for my first printclub experience - now that she's given up cigarettes i think printclub is her biggest addiction !!! we have it in china but i've just never got around to it - and she's right it is fun !!! and i will make anyone who comes to visit me do it !! so be warned !!! no i'm not going to tell you what i'm talking about !

yesterday, monday we went out of town to Kamakura - a small town with lots of temples and shrines. bryony had been before but there were lots of temples she hadn't been to and wanted to, so that was really good for both of us !! we started at the Big Buddha - or bigga- badda- buddha as bry says - well i live near leshan which has one of the top 5 biggest in the world and so my first though was - 'call that big!!!' but it was lovely and very different in style from chinese buddhas AND we got to go inside !!! there's nothing in there but its really interesting because you're inside the hollowed out frame of the buddha - i don't know who had the strange idea to let tourist get inside the mould, but a glass of sake for him !! i liked it.
we then wandered over hill and dale through side streets and back roads, took our leap of faith and arrived on the other side of town and more temples. its was a really interesting day because we saw temples that were buddhist and ones that were shinto - Shinto is the 'native' religion of japan although i think that nowadays buddhism is just as stong. shinto means 'the way of the gods' and concentrates very much on nature - the rock and water that people think of in japanese temples is shinto. but because buddhism has been in japan so long and is also such a strong faith - they both have a great involvement with nature. and although the temples were not spiritual to me in the traditional sense - they were strikingly calming, pure and simple. in trying to describe both types of temple it could sound sterile but it feels more like the bullshit has been left out and there is just reflection and reverence - i liked them very much.

budhism is a weird one - i've now seen thai, indian, nepalese, tibetan, vietnamese, chinese and japanese - and while they share so much they are different in as many ways. temple layouts, buddha images, offerings, everything - such contrasts - i really would like to go back and look at buddhist temples and then at the people and society. they are such a reflection of each other. everything about japan is the same or contrasted with china but they are so closely linked and it feels the same with buddhist temples - some much is familar and yet its its own country and religion its is own way.
add to this chinese zen and confusiasm and seeing buddhist and shinto temples has been great. i'm looking forward to seeing more!

waffle,waffle, waffle - think its time to get out the house and go exploring !!! sounds brave and exciting but i'm actually only going to the corner shop to buy veggies - but then i'm not in kansas anymore toto - so anything could happen !!!

lots of love
tess xxx