Hi everyone! Firstly, I want to thank all of you who replied to my last update with words of support. Wow. You rendered me (nearly) speechless – quite the acheivement! It was a difficult decision and although I was already convinced I had made the right choice, your encouragement means SO much. It’s easy for…
Hi everyone! Happy new year, both solar and lunar! The Year of the Tiger is upon us – and it’s shaping up to be an exciting year for me… I spent a lot of time over the past 9 months thinking about my future – what I want to do and where I want to…
Finally, here it is, the last installment of my travelogue. This section is about Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. We were only there for two days but it was fun, and involved pandas! Facts about Chengdu (成都): Chengdu was the birthplace of the first widely used paper money in the world (Northern Song Dynasty,…
Welcome to part 4, the penultimate portion of my travelogue! It’s a long one, especially given that it covers a single 24 hour period, but Jiuzhaigou is a pretty amazing place – definitely a highlight of the trip for all of us. Neither words nor pictures can really explain it, but I’m having a whirl…
Welcome to Part 3 of my travelogue (as it has been dubbed by several of you, my faithful readers!) from my trip to Yunnan and Sichuan with my parents back in October (has it really been two months already??). Part 2 ended with our flight from Lijiang to Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna, a Dai…
Wow! I was a little worried that all these travel emails would just be a form of spam, but it seems a lot of you really enjoyed the first installment! Thanks so much to all of you who wrote to tell me :) At the end of part one we drove through the mountains from…
I’m going to be breaking up the travel stories into several emails – we went to so many places (and took so many photos), that to do it all justice would mean one mammoth email! So I’m making it… not exactly bite-size, but less of a full banquet. Again, I know this stuff won’t interest…
Well, hello there! Autumn has well and truly arrived! The warmest room of my house is usually about 18 C (65 F) and I wear a coat and scarf pretty much every day. Tops are still double digits (50s F), but that won’t last long. We’re due to get negative overnight temperatures (20s F) from…
So 61 people (last I heard, anyway) at university city have been diagnosed with swine flu. I’m not worried about getting sick or anything, but things are frustrating!! There are police blocks at both gates. Apparently during the day yesterday they weren’t letting people in or out. When you do go through (in or out)…
“It’s a goodnight feeling when summer’s leaving” Bonus Points* to those who know the song that’s from. (Stefan you don’t get bonus points, but you do get cred for introducing me to it!) Summer is nearly over. The weather is starting to cool a bit (I’m wearing closed toed shoes today!) and University City is beginning to…
It all started when I saw a friend’s twitter post saying she was going to Swan Lake at the Water Cube (the Olympic Aquatics Centre). This intrigued me. There was a Russian ballet troupe, a Russian synchronised swimming team, and a Chinese diving team. I know that all sounds fantastic, but it gets better. And by “better” I mean “infinitely more ridiculous”.
Hello Everyone! It’s definitely summer here now – a daytime max under 30 feels quite cool, and nighttimes are usually in the high teens. It hasn’t been overly humid yet which is a boon for my arms. Apart from a couple of weeks when the weather started warming up they haven’t bothered me much at…
Stories From Tanya 