My family came to Beijing to celebrate my 30th birthday with me – my parents, my sisters, my brother in law and his brother. They arrived in four different lots, and so they didn’t all do the same things in Beijing, but it was still a really great time!
I first visited Jiuzhaigou National Park in China’s Sichuan province with my parents in October 2009. I was surprised at how different my second experience was! It was early summer as opposed to Autumn, so there was a big colour difference.
Our 10 hour bus ride up the Min River valley from Chengdu to Songpan and across a long plateau and then down into Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan province – more interesting than it sounds!
Yu Gardens were as beautiful as I remembered, and it was my first time to visit the City Gods temple.
My previous posts about conversations (in Chinese) with Chinese locals have been pretty popular, so I thought it was time to again record for you a few snippets of interesting conversations I’ve had in the past few weeks. On the plane from Singapore to Beijing I was seated next to a nice man from va small town Shandong…
This week the Spring weather suddenly came upon us here in Beijing. The daytime temperatures soared to 13, 15, 20 degrees! It’s finally warmer outside than inside! And the overnight temps are almost always above zero. It’s very exciting. My puffy coats are back in storage til next winter, which is a very lovely thing.…
Chinese new year in Beijing is something quite difficult to relate second-hand. It’s something I recommend experiencing in person! Yes, there are plenty of annoying things about it, but I enjoy it anyway. I arrived in China just after Chinese new year 2004 and I was out of the country for the start of 2005,…
I wasn’t going to do another what-I-did-this-week email so soon but, given recent developments, my schedule may be less typical for the rest of the semester. Last week was a short week because of Chinese New Year. Normal “work” included 2 singing lessons (with girls from youth group), 2 youth groups (a record of 50…
On the way to church this morning the taxi I was in had to travel by a circuitous route as the main expressway was closed. There was no explanation, just a guy with a police car and cones blocking the on-ramp. The driver and I both assumed that some dignitary was travelling that road in…
I am frequently asked what a “typical day” looks like for me. I never know what to say. It’s a legitimate question, and I appreciate the interest in what I do. While youth work is the most natural thing in the world to me, I understand that many of you have no idea how it…
Since everyone enjoyed my last post about my conversation with a taxi driver, I thought I’d follow up with some more conversation excerpts – this time from visits to my favourite nail salon. The lady who runs it, Lucy, is the only one who’s been there longer than I’ve been going there. We had a…
May is a crazy time of year for me. There are graduations and farewells and end-of-year events and all sorts of related stuff. This May I’ve had a bunch of extra stuff too. CRAZY! But all wonderful stuff I’d never want to miss. Instead of talking about all that, though, I want to tell you…
Stories From Tanya 