Bowling Bonanza

Ni hao!

I started teaching again this week, I teach two classes on Tuesday, one on Wednesday and two on Thursday, so yes you could say I have a pretty strenuous life. Having a four day weekend is stressful! hahaha My students this semester are pretty smart so I'm gonna have to up my lesson plans, which is fine because it'll just be more interesting for me :) Let's see yesterday we went into Chongqing and after many bus and taxi rides and confusing directions we finally found a bowling alley. Well it's more like 6 lanes in the middle of a mall, right next to an ice skating rink, pretty crazy! A note on Chinese bowling skills....even though there are illustrated instructions in the alley demonstrating the proper technique of bowling, the Chinese have found their own methods for hurling a ball into 10 pins. I can't quite describe it but if you can imagine a praying mantus having a seizure while periodically striking a pose for an invisible photographer and then suddenly tossing the ball down the lane as if it had caught fire, then you have the Chinese in our neighboring lane. But it was really fun, I even broke 100 for 2 of my games hahah. I'm sure we'll be headed back that direction sometime soon :D

The sun is out! It's probably in the 60's now and it feels fantastic. If the temperatures stay up I'll be able to go swimming in a week or two! Not much else is new here, hope all is well back home!

Back in Beibei

Let's see where were we...

For the rest of my time in India I didn't do much sightseeing as most of my days were spent travelling in a car. But soon enough it was time to fly and off to Malaysia we went! After a groggy red-eye flight to Kuala Lumpur, we managed to find a bus to take us to Singapore right away. So as Jack is going through customs on the Singapore side, he realizes his visa expired yesterday. Woops. So we're sent back to Malaysia and have to wait for the Singapore consulate to open to renew his visa. This could have been a very quick process but because of the Chinese New Year everything is closed. So I decide to head to Singapore on my own and wait for Jack to try get his visa. Singapore is this incredibly clean, nice, new tropical island. It's story goes something like this:

Once upon a time the handsome, bold West traveled a great distance and met the beautiful exoic East. They quickly fell in love and soon had a child which they named Singapore. Singapore grew up learning many languages and was taught to never jay-walk, spit or even chew gum! Nowadays Singapore slings back with his pet merlion and welcomes friends from every corner of the globe. I love Singapore. While I was there I toured the neighbourhoods (little india, chinatown, arab street and the colonial area) and also made a visit to the zoo and national museum. On the morning of the 7th I woke up at 5:30 am and grabbed a spot at a cool microbrewery to watch the Packers beat the Steelers in the Superbowl!!! I was surrounded by Green Bay fans also enjoying lagers for breakfast. Twas glorious. Jack didn't end up getting a visa so I departed the lion city and made my way to Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia is very laid back so it was the perfect place to go at the end of our trip. We met up with two other teachers from Beibei and toured the city, making sure to catch the awesome view from the skybridge of the Petronas towers! We had an exciting day at an amusment park and then it was time to go home. It was a little strange walking into my apartment here in Beibei and having it feel like home, but it does. So I'm all settled in here again eagerly awaiting the return of the other teachers from their travels. I'll start teaching at the beginning of next week and am looking forward to heading back to the chalkboard.

I sent a lot of you post cards from India but I'm afraid you'll never get them :( I think I used the wrong stamp and I doubt they'll ever leave the country, but know that I was thinking of you!
Here's a link to the pictures of my trip!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2094159&id=1019820015&l=8c853f3244