Recently, Sean has been really active and into sports which can be difficult to find in a country obsessed with ping pong and badminton. Not only is he training for the Great Wall Marathon in Beijing on May 21 but he has been playing ultimate frisbee with the team in Shanghai. This means that every Saturday morning he leaves Changzhou really early to make it to the train station on time to take a train and then the subway to the fields. The trip in total takes about 3-4 hours. I think it's crazy but Sean loves frisbee and makes the commute without complaining.


Last weekend the Shanghai team invited Sean (he's wearing the blue shirt in the pics) to play in a tournament with them in Nanjing. The tournament was Saturday and Sunday and the other foreign teachers (Jorg, Marcus, Felix - Germans, and Jordan - American) decided to go and along to watch and enjoy the parties. I stayed behind to enjoy the girl time and work some extra hours. Saturday night I had all the ladies over for card games, wine, and the movie "Up" (Thanks Susie for sending it!).


From what I hear, the weekend was a ton of fun. Sean said that the guys on the team are a blast and he appreciated his personal crowd of spectators (they had never seen a game of ultimate frisbee in their lives and wanted to see what it was like). There were seven teams in all and Sean's Shanghai team got 3rd in the tournament. He was surprised that even though he was the newest member he won the "spirit" award, the only award given on the team. Good job Sean! The team also invited him to play on their competitive league which is Thursday nights in Shanghai. He is still considering whether it is worth the time and money to commit to this. In any case, the other foreigners are eager to learn about frisbee on campus and we are planning on playing some less competitive games of ultimate together one of these days - should be fun!

One of our days in Manila we spent walking around the city. One of the only greenish areas we saw was Rizal Park which was a huge area in the heart of Manila.


When we visited the park it was a beautiful day and many people were practicing dance routines, stick-fighting and martial arts. There was definitely a lot to see and do including a lot of memorials, gardens, museums and a gigantic 3-D map of the Philippines that you could climb around in.


The park is named after the national hero, José Rizal, who was executed there in 1896 for going against the Spanish colonizers. There are many memorials to Rizal scattered around and you could tour the actual execution site.


We wanted to go in the National Museum but it happened to be closed that day which was kind of disappointing. Like Manila in general, the park was kind of run-down and all of the greenery seemed to be dying. But that didn't appear to bother the Filipinos in the least and they hung out on benches, walked the perimeter or took pictures in the garden and after getting some Slurpees we did the same.

My European history students have worked really hard so far this term and had just finished their first exam so I decided to do something a little different this week - an Easter lesson and party.


An explanation of Easter actually fit in well with the current unit of the rise of Christianity in Europe and for the first class period I talked about the religious reasons behind the celebration. Then I explained how Easter is also a secular holiday for many and showed some slides about Easter egg hunts, decorating eggs, Easter baskets and of course, the Easter Bunny. They were most interested in the kind of food that many families would eat for an Easter brunch/dinner and the popular types of candy found in Easter baskets. They were fascinated by the marshmallow "Peeps" candy and by the fact that Americans actually eat giant chocolate rabbits. In China, chocolate is ridiculously expensive and eating a chocolate bunny the size of your head could set you back a day's wages, at least.


After playing a few games it was time for the break between periods and we moved to a new classroom without technology/media - one that I could get a little dirty and not feel to bad about it. The second half of class we dyed eggs and frosted and decorated sugar cookies.


Oh my goodness, my students were so excited and were literally hopping around in their seats when I told them what we were going to do. I showed them how to prepare the cups of dye, some different options of egg decoration and some suggestions for things not to get too out of control. I had visions of falling and cracking eggs and spilled cups of dye on everyone's clothes.


Then I explained what a sugar cookie was and how to frost and decorate a cookie. Some questions asked were: a) Can we eat the frosting and the sprinkles? b) Can we eat the eggs or is the dye bad for you? c) Where did you get the dye and the sprinkles?


The Easter class was a total success. The students had so much fun and behaved great. They were creative, worked together well and followed all directions carefully. It was hilarious to see how they decorated their cookies and then ate them immediately. Most of them would have taken 20 minutes working on their eggs if I had let them but I had to cut them short as we had to share the dye cups with many students. After making their cookies and eggs, elaborate photo sessions were held in which students posed with their creations to the delight of all the rest ready and waiting with their camera phones.


When they weren't working on their eggs or cookies they were filling out an Easter crossword puzzle and word game in partners. I had told them at the beginning of the class that I had a present for them if they finished the game by the end of class. When the bell rang, a few groups were frantic and almost in tears and I couldn't figure out why until they told me that they hadn't finished and wouldn't be able to get the prize. At this point I felt horrible, I didn't really think they would take me seriously. I said that everybody had worked hard and handed out the prize - a plastic egg filled with jellybeans for everyone (thanks mom!). They were ECSTATIC which is a bit silly because although all the supplies were from America, everything was made in China, of course.

Though the preparation was intensely time-consuming, it was totally worth it and all in all it was an egg-cellent class. Hehehe =)

Last Wednesday Qin Chen, my roomie, came home complaining of a bad day at work. I asked her what happened and she said that some kind of strike with workers at a busy port of entry in Shanghai prevented one of her company's shipping containers to make it through, thus delaying orders to other international clients. She and other employees at the company had followed what was going on at the harbor using news updates and micro-blogs until all of the sites suddenly were blocked on the Chinese internet. She came home curious as to what was happening so she used my uncensored internet to check it out.

The headlines didn't make it to my inbox until today, Sunday, when I saw the article "Chinese Truck Drivers Block Port Over Gas Prices." Turns out the drivers are angry at the rising cost of fuel in China as well as the extra fees warehouses have started to charge them during their shipping routes. Because of all of these added costs they aren't able to make enough money to afford the expenses in their own lives.


There's a lot of chatter about inflation and rising prices of goods here in China. I don't hear about if from my students at the university, but for the adults and young professionals at my second job it's a hot topic. Everyone is complaining about how things are becoming really expensive while salaries and wages aren't being increased. Another issue is the housing bubble; prices of houses and apartments are outlandishly expensive and people are speculating if and when this bubble will "pop." One of my students this week actually works as a censor for the Changzhou forums. Her job is to remove anything inappropriate about the Party or the government from the websites open to chatting and networking specifically related to our city. She says the number of complaints that she has to remove are rising every day.

While everybody is up in arms about rising costs my older students don't seem particularly concerned with anything related to politics or human rights. Take the recent example of man named Ai Weiwei. Ken (previous teacher here) mentioned this story to me the other day and since then I keep seeing his name pop up in news articles. Ai Weiwei is well-known because he was one of the architects behind the building known as the "Bird's Nest." In China, he uncovered some government corruption related to inferior school buildings which led to the death of thousands of children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The Chinese government recently arrested Ai Weiwei and is not saying where he is or what's going on.


But it's not people like Ai Weiwei that the Chinese government really has to worry about right now - it's keeping the 1.3 billion or so Chinese people happy and unable to network about their complaints. If more and more Chinese turn to the un-blocked blogs and social-networking sites to vent about rising prices or unsustainable living conditions, protests like the latest truck drivers strike will become more and more common and the PRC is going to have to deal with a huge number of unhappy citizens with the ability and the potential to organize - kind of a frightening thought, to say the least.

As for my roommate, she just hopes that the strikes blow over soon so that her shipping container can get through and she can stop having angry phone conversations with business owners from the U.S. and U.K. who just want their golf trolleys delivered on time.

After enjoying island paradise for a few days, it was time to travel the 6 hrs back to Puerto Princesa and fly to Manila, the capital city of the Philippines and our last destination before heading back to China.


Manila was a little dodgy and it was initially tough to find a safe place to stay that wasn't out of our price range. We checked out a few different hostels before finally settling on Hostel 1632 which I would totally recommend. The rooms are very small, but it's clean, safe and affordable.


Our first day we just walked around and checked out the sights near our hotel. Everything was pretty run down except for the giant new and modern shopping mall that was just down the street. The other thing that caught my eye was the crazy form of public transportation - the Jeepney.


Jeepneys are colorful, creative and artsy jeeps that have small routes all over the city. There are no official stops, you just flag them down. Each one is individually decorated and have a lot of character, to say the least. The Jeepneys are the heart of the public transportation system - there are a few buses and one or two elevated rails, but it's the Jeepneys that you see everywhere. I couldn't stop taking pictures of them because to me they looked like entertaining clown cars.


After walking for hours, we grabbed dinner at a Middle Eastern snack shop that was cheap and delicious and then went back to the hostel to enjoy the movie channel and crash after a long day of traveling.

We woke up to a breakfast of pancakes, fruit, eggs and coffee, all made over a fire. Then Sean and I spent the morning walking as far as we could around the island while the tide was out. We also did some shell collecting. The amount and variety of coral on the beach was amazing.


After that we packed up camp and got back in the boat for some more island-hopping and snorkeling. We stopped a many different places along the way like caves, coves, hidden lagoons and my favorite island - Snake Island.


Snake Island included on high lockout point that you could hike up to and also a long, thin strip of sand that you could walk on out to another island filled with mangroves. The view was amazing and it was fun to walk on a small bit of sand out in the middle of the ocean.


In the evening we headed back to El Nido and crashed hard after being out all day in the sun, swimming, hiking and boating. For dinner we ate at the most popular restaurant for travelers - the Art Cafe which is Swiss run and had some incredible food, with a great 2nd story view of the harbor and live music. It's easy to see why some travelers opt to rent their cottages for a month or simply never leave this place.