Meng Ying's House

Here are some photos from the house of one of the teachers at my school. Her name is Meng Ying and this is her parents house where she lives because she is not yet married.




The first photos are of what surrounds the house. From the main road you travel down an alley with houses on either side. The house is at the very back, right before the planting fields begin.

This is a view of the walls that surround the open area of the house. Broken glass placed into grooves.

This is the third floor of the house used for storage of hay, tools, and more.

This is the courtyard right inside the front entrance to the house.

Here is a view into a neighbor's yard.

This is a patio/balcony area on the second floor.

Second floor living room.

First floor living room.

First floor hay/kindling storage.

Meng Ying's bedroom on the second floor.

The kitchen. Gas stove.

Hot plate, rice cooker, sink, and cooking utensils.

Hay/wood burning stove.

General view of the kitchen.

From the courtyard looking at the house.

I have been to Meng Ying's house twice for supper and exploring the fields and rivers behind her house. Her uncle lives two houses away from her and all the neighbors roam between each others house. It is a very tight-knit community. The little girl you see in the picture is the neighbor's granddaughter who sang for us. Every family as a piece of land which the farm/plant on. Mostly for their own consumption.

A rare glimpse into the everyday life of the Chinese.

Weekend in Hanzhong

In order to buy American food, KFC and other treats we make trips to Hanzhong where some other Buckland teachers are. There also happens to be a decent bar there and these are pictures from a night at the bar.

Yes, they have a stripper pole on a platform in the middle of the dance floor. Yes, I am the only one NOT to have danced on it!









We arrived at roughly 10pm and were sitting down at our table when we noticed this guy passed out. Mind you that the music is blaring and strobe lights are flashing.

So we took pictures with him. He never moved a muscle.

This is what happens when you leave your camera on the table and go to the bathroom for 5 minutes.

Missing from that interesting slide show is the picture Theresa took of her boobs!

Free shots!!

This is Theresa's classy outfit she wore the next morning to take us to the cab. Rusty orange sweatshirt, Aqua blue scrub pants, multi-colored scarf and gold shoes with white socks!

Thanksgiving in Xian

Again, for the holidays we ended up in Xian. This time the holiday was Thanksgiving. While in Xian we always end up shopping, usually in the Muslim Quarter. On our previous trip we had discovered "North Face" fleece jackets and were planning on buying them. This is where I stubbled upon this calculator which warranted a photo. "JUST FOR CHEAP PRICE"!! I couldn't resist taking a photo.



This is all three of us and the shop owner wearing the "North Face" jackets. We also bought fake Burberry scarfs to complete the "fake" outfit. Fake or not they are warm and what we needed.

Dinner a la Pizza Hut. We had heard mixed reviews about Pizza Hut but gave it a shot. It was very good but not worth the price in my opinion. I'd rather eat the 3 Big Mac's I could have gotten for what I paid.

Us being the outgoing, fabulous and crazy Foreigners that we are, we got invited to KTV by some "English speaking" Chinese people we met at our bar. This is what followed.

They had tamporines

This portion I like to call "the morning after!"

And so ended another holiday weekend in Xian.

Being shown off!!

So since we are the coolest and only Foreign teachers in the area we were invited to teach a few classes at another school. By invited I mean told that we would be teaching at another school. Supposedly we are a hot commodity and there have been many requests for our attendance at other schools but this school was the best. The best meaning our Principal's son works as a government official in this schools district.

There was a map of the world so we took pictures pointing to Minnesota.

Pictures with kids.


Hanging out in the Principal's office

Our principal

Story time: So they took us out to lunch but we still had one class left to teach after lunch. Food was okay, some was weird like the 100 year old egg from Fear Factor that they served. I DON'T THINK SO!!!!! But some was really good. Of course, along with the food came the liquor. Since I am now know as the bijou drinking girl I got the distinct pleasure of doing shots of it with everyone. When I say everyone I mean everyone. The owner and the chef of the restaurant came and did shots with me. Needless to say the small amount of food I ate coupled with the massive quantity of bijou that I drank made me a drunk foreign teacher. Everyone loved it though. So after lunch we were walking back, to teach class, and we saw this bridge so what the hell lets go take pictures on it. Yeah, it was old, shaky, holes in the wood planks and went across the river. My drunk ass was way too excited about this. So they took pictures and Michelle, Mrs. Chen, Mr. Zheng, and myself made the long walk across the bridge.

Michelle was sober and therefore terrified while I was drunk and seeing how much I could shake the bridge. Dumb-ass!!

So after our adventure, we (and by we I mean Michelle) taught class while I erased things off the board and dropped the eraser about 20 times. Whether they noticed or not I have no idea and the incident was never mentioned again.