(this pasted from an email i just wrote to my high school students from taiwan)

Right now I’m in Chongching–I finished the three weeks of teaching in Guangzhou, and now we all have one week off. Ryan and I are going on a boat cruise (we’re going to get on the boat in a few hours!) on the Yangtze River (the Chinese call it the Chang-Jiang… long river), and the cruise will go through the 3 Gorges (which won’t be around anymore because of the rising water caused by the big dam). The cruise will last for three days. We’re getting off the boat in Yichang, then taking a 20-hour train ride to Xi’an, to see the terra-cotta warriors and stuff. Also, my father’s “lao-jiah” (“old-home” … er… family…) is from Shaanxi, so it’ll be cool to go there. (My mother’s family is from Shanxi, the neighboring province, but I’m not going there this time.)

And then we’re meeting all the CHI teachers in Hong Kong to play for 3 days, and then we’re all flying back home to America!

Last week I didn’t teach for four days because I was really sick. I went to the hospital to get medicine, and they told me I had a 39.6 degree fever =P but I’m fine now.

——(end pasting)—–

I miss you guys in America. Looking forward to going home. Going to run out of this internet cafe now… OMFG it’s so hot here in chongching, it’s not even funny. You stand outside and bake, even if your’e in the shade, and if you’re in the sun, the sweat drips and drips… lalala… yesterday r and i stayed in this crappy “hotel” next to a temple… we’ve been having ridiculous brown-water diarrhea, probably because of the little restaurant we ate at last night where we had really good spinach and tomato-egg… and r is waiting for me… i hope the boat will be fun, and not dirty or something