I deeply apologized for my delinquency. Not that you've necessarily noticed, but I've been away for a WHILE. I've been living here now for about 2.5 months. The Blonde Man and I have battled bugs,teens and bureaucratic nonsense, but we've come out alive. As I said in my last post, I now teach Art to high schoolers (grades 10, 11 & 12). The younger ones are pretty okay for the most part, the seniors are pretty much devil spawn right now. Not really,.... but I kind of hate them. But not really...well, maybe a little.
The school we're teaching at is located in Dujiangyan, a 'suburb' (ahem, if you call a pop. of 800,000 a suburb)of Chengdu. Chengdu (pronounced Chung-doo) is the capital city of Sichuan Province. Some of you may have heard of Szechuan Kitchen, or Szechuan chicken or Szechuan peppercorns. No. It is Sichuan. It's the home of the panda and Kung Pow Chicken (gung bao jiding). The characaters for Sichuan (四川) mean four rivers, and it's regarded as a land of plenty. It's subtropical (read: HUMID) and very, very green. Even now, in October flowers are still blooming, though I wouldn't say it's warm.
Chengdu is big, grey, green and has a lot of motorbikes/motorcylces. It's unfortunate, but I would have to say it's...kind of ugly. Dujiangyan, where I live and spend 98.9% of my time, however is a bit better. The sunny days are few, but when it is...
...When it is sunny, it's pretty nice. Most of the time is a bit gray around here, and it rains at night pretty often. The town though is pretty modern, and cute. Dujiangyan has spent the last few years repairing damages from the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. There are still parts of the city with condemned apartment complexes, but the Shanghainese government has given a lot of aid to the city, so clean up and beautification of the city has really taken off. Later, I'll show you some of the local markets and things, I'll tell you about the food, and the trip I went on the first week of October, but for now I need to make some dinner!
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