Journey to the East

Adventure is out there...In China! Follow me as I teach, explore, and experience life in Enshi, China

[culturenlifestyle]

Stray Dog Joins 155-Mile Race, Finishes It With A New Dad

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culturenlifestyle:

A tiny, adorable stray puppy from China found her human parent in the middle of a hectic 1555 mile marathon held in China’s largest desert. The fearless furry friend jumped right into the race to let her presence be known. She had found her human and she wasn’t going to give up!

Watch her dedication to her human in a three-day race!

Keep reading

[unbfacts]

Yu Youzhen, a Chinese millionaire, works as a street sweeper for the sanitation department to set an example for her children.

[ursula-uriarte]

Time for a re-read 🎄

[unbfacts]

A Japanese robotics company ‘Yaskawa Electric Corporation’ taught a robot to wield a katana like a master swordsman.

[ultrafacts]

(Fact Source)

Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

[merrychimera]

This is what Goodness looks like.

[gifsboom]

[goldstarzzz]

Thief: *hops off of motorcycle, steals woman’s bag, and runs away* Woman: *turns around and steals motorcycle* Thief: *chases after woman*

[aanklam-in-china]

The huntsman spider is quite a terrifying little beastie. Although harmless to humans, they inflict horror and shock on those unlucky enough to find them under the kitchen sink, like my neighbor. They do not spin webs, but they can climb and jump and are extremely fast. We usually find them on the wall in the dark apartment hallway. On the other hand, though, they eat cockroaches, so I like them to be around, as long as they stay out of sight. This picture shows the one from my neighbor’s kitchen. Its legs were longer than my fingers.

[aanklam-in-china]

Normal People Don't Eat People

I went with a student to see Guardians of the Galaxy. At one point, when Yondu was reminding Star Lord to be grateful he wasn’t eaten as a kid, my student leaned over to me and said, “If you could read Chinese, you would be so happy. The translation is so cute.” She could understand both the English audio and the Chinese subtitles, and thought some of the translations were funny. She kept a pretty steady commentary up during the film, saying things like: American movie always has so many monsters. Why is she green? They will fall in love. I knew it would work. Every American movie things happen always in the last second. He is so cute. He is so funny. They are so cute. I am Groot.

[aanklam-in-china]

Enshi, China countryside

[aanklam-in-china]

Sesame Street

I like to use Sesame Street videos in my EFL classes, particularly clips that teach vocabulary words. It’s fun for me and for the students to have people like Elmo, Grover, Hugh Jackman, Conan O’Brien and David Beckham talk about definitions and pronunciations. In fact, if you’ve got some time to kill I recommend you go over to sesamestreet.org and enter “vocabulary” into the search box. You’ll get a list of over 200 videos with descriptions like: “Steve Carrell, Abby, and Elmo vote on a snack,” “Grover stumbles over Ricky Gervais,” and “Usher and Bert explore the meaning of the word ‘unique’”.

(There’s also one where Neil Patrick Harris plays the Shoe Fairy and sings a musical number where he goes around giving everyone shoes, and one where Cookie Monster stars in a Star Wars parody called “Star S’Mores”, but my favorite is definitely Hugh Jackman and Elmo giggling and explaining the word “concentrate”—although Mark Ruffalo and Murray explaining the word “empathy” is equally adorable. It’s all just delightful).

[aanklam-in-china]

One Day in Class

This happened a couple weeks ago. My students and I were talking about the upcoming National Holiday (where the entire country gets a seven-day vacation, but then has to make up two days of work on the weekend), and I told them I might travel to Yichang to see the Three Gorges Dam. They said, “Will Peter go with you?” (Peter is another foreign teacher, and all of my students think he is so handsome). I said, “Probably not,” because he was thinking about going to Chengdu to see pandas. They said, “Why? Does he have a girlfriend?” I said, “No, not that I know of.” This revelation caused a murmur of surprise, so I added, “But he does have a lot of girl friends.” The class erupted into a chorus of awes. I hurried to clarify, “I mean, he has a lot of friends that are girls.” They said, “Do you have a boyfriend?” I said “No.” They said, “Do you have lots of boy friends.” I said, “No.” They looked confused, so I added, “Well, most of my friends are from the English department, and the English department is mostly girls.” (this is very true. The boy to girl ratio is approximately 3 to 35). Some of the students nodded like it made sense, but I heard one girl in the front row mutter to herself, “I think homosexual is cool.” Things so easily get misunderstood—vastly misunderstood. Communication is tough.

[aanklam-in-china]

Flora from the Enshi countryside, both wild and domestic.

[aanklam-in-china]

The Enshi city dam

[aanklam-in-china]

New Pet?

Yesterday, I asked some friends "Do you think I could tame a huntsman spider?" I was feeling nostalgic for my zookeeper days, and I'm not allowed to have a real pet so I thought taming a huntsman would be the perfect solution. He could live free in my apartment and eat all the cockroaches. Also, whenever I'm lonely for animal companionship, I could pick him up and play with him like a tarantula. But my friends inevitably brought up the downsides of such a pet: they're wild to start out with, so how can I hope to tame one? They're ridiculously fast, and could therefore run up your arm or into your sleeve before you've a chance to stop them. Also, they grow so large that an adult wouldn't be able to fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. I decided it was a bad idea. Imagine my surprise when I returned to my room last night and found a huntsman on the wall by the door? He is young, only silver-dollar sized, and therefore tamable, right? I decided to keep him. He's what I wanted, right? Sometimes, our wishes are granted. Sometimes God says Yes to our foolish prayers (except, I didn't really pray for a huntsman to haunt my rooms...). Still, I'd talked about wanting a huntsman, and not two hours later I got one. I thought about catching him and exiling him to the hallway, but I didn't. I left him in the wall in the living room. I kept tabs on him until I went to bed, with the door to the living room closed securely. Now he's gone, probably hiding somewhere in my room. I'm an idiot. But hopefully I'll be an idiot with no cockroaches.

[aanklam-in-china]

I went walking with some friends one day. We were going to a rural area outside of town, and to get there we had to walk through this long and eerie tunnel under a mountain. Inside, inexplicably, was an unattended truck full of pigs. Enshi is well known for its bacon, which is smoked during the winter. Unfortunately for the pigs, winter is coming.

[aanklam-in-china]

Many houses in the country here have large, flat concrete patios in front. In September and October, it is common to see corn spread out on the concrete to dry in the sun. These men are separating the kernels from the cob with that red machine between them. They make no effort to keep the corn clean; they even walk on top of it. The corn will be used for animal feed.

[aanklam-in-china]

Enshi, China