gokunming.com

so there is a website called gokunming where i frequent because it is website mostly for the foreign community to see about updates and new events that are going on around the area. Well, here is an article the promotes out rugby team. If you look really closely you will see me in the second picture on the webpage.

http://gokunming.com/en/blog/item/2612/rugby_kunming_tigers_vs_chengdu_pandas

update

I officially start character education at the Korean School on Wednesday Feb. 29^th. It is a very joyous occasion for myself and China Call, but there is still much work to be done. We are having a summer kickoff event (in the summer). I know that you are thinking that it is after the opening at the Korean School, but this is for the rest of the people in China. We thought about it and decided that we should really get on more of the China School System schedule. It seems logical. So the kickoff camp dates are July 13^th-26^th.
 So it is time to buy some jeans to wear as I ripped a hole into one of my jeans during my trip to Lijiang. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find length of 34” in China? First off people are more into slacks and khaki pants instead of jeans so I have to shop at like the mall. I just can’t go into the small shop on the side of the road (in which there are literally thousands of these shops).
So our Chengdu rugby match is coming up this weekend and most of the guys on the team do not have cleats. Well, big feet are not common in china either. Who would have thought Tall and big feet was not common in china. This is such a new mind blowing experience. We have been asking everyone we know if there is a place to buy cleats. I don’t have a problem as I planned before leaving for china and brought some cleats from the states. Also, I got moved out to winger as the guy who usually plays there has a problem with his wrist and is strongly recommended by his doctor to not play on Saturday. So now I am not the last line of defense and if the ball goes out to me…I am supposed to score.

It is newsletter week. 

joined the rugby team

So soccer has taken a break for the new year (Chinese that is). Well, we didn’t have a league or scrimmage game this weekend so I decided that I would go out and play with the newly formed rugby team. So I am thinking that we are just going out to play some friendly rugby. Well, this was not the case. Like they set up drills and formations and we did a lot of stuff that I didn’t think that I was going to be doing. I figured that we were just going to go out and pass the ball backwards and tackle each other. Not sireeee. This was a 3-hour practice session We started off with a drill called touch which is to warm up the legs by playing rugby, but just touch (hence the name). Then we divided into two groups: Backs and Forwards. Now, the forwards are the brutes of the team where they just tackle and go nose to nose with the other team by trying to rough them up. And the backs are more strategic by trying to move the ball up the fields by calling out plays and other stuff. Luckily, the captains saw me as a back. I was glad as I did not have to get hit every two to three seconds. And when they saw me as a back I got to be the FULLBACK. This means that I am the last man on offense. And if we turn the ball over, then I am the last man on defense….( which means that if I the guy with the ball gets to me and I don’t tackle him, then it is a score for the other team.) And also,  if I get the ball then there that means I should be scoring. I normally don’t get the ball that often but I am usually just supposed to run the ball as far up as I can and not pass to other people. Now, as this was my first practice, I don’t know if they want me to stay in that position or move to someplace else. But I do think that I showed enough to earn a starting position in our up coming match against the team from ChengDu. So the ChendDu (the capital of Sichuan province) city has had a team for a while now and ours is newly formed (like 4 months old). Our match is set for March 3^rd, and our soccer league doesn’t start up again until March 4^th. So I am pretty happy about that.
On a side note, I have not been this sore since college soccer. I have scrapes all over my leagues because the ground was ssssoooo hard and bruises all over my body from getting hit…..BUT IT WAS SSSSOOOO MUCH FUN!!!! Also, the week before I went, a guy got a broken nose….

First Turn and Tiger Leaping Gorge

So we took a day to go up to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, but we had an unexpected detour. We went to see the First Turn in the Yangtze River. It is where the river is going south and then all of the sudden it starts going north. This happens hundreds of times in the river but I got to see the first one. I think we were there a total of 30 minutes and it was still too long.
Tiger Leaping Gorge is a big attraction in South China. It is the place to go to when you are going on vacation and guess what….It was only two hours outside of lijiang. Most of the foreigners usually hike the 20km gorge, but we had kids with us. And one of the kids threw up in the van. Luckily, we were going up hill so the puke rolled to the back and not the front where I was sitting. And the miniminivan had a metal floor. So we just had to take a hose to it. There is a picture. It was just like ever other gorge you have seen. And if you haven’t seen a gorge yet, then it was the most beautiful valley that anyone has ever seen. So the reason that they call it tiger leaping gorge is because the legend is that some tiger was travelling to the north or south and he came to the river and guess what happened…he had to LEAP over the river. Well, there is the huge boulder in the middle of the river, and the tiger was unable to make the complete leap across the gorge so he jumped on the boulder and then leaped to the other side. And you know what happened next…..Well, you can look up the story online because I don’t know and I didn’t think that it was interesting enough to ask. The best part of the tour was that there were people from the Hong Kong area and we were at around 8000 feet so the people coming from the coast would have to take a break like every ten steps. There was a step trail to go down to the river and then you had to come back up. And they also sold oxygen canisters for people and tons of people were sucking them down. 

Super Bowl

So I got to watch the Super Bowl at the Irish pub with 30-40 other people. It was a great atmosphere for 7:30 in the morning

More Lijiang

So the next day we went to the other old town which actually looks really modern because a couple of years ago there was an earthquake. Lijiang is a fault line. This earthquake destroyed half of the authentic old city. So the city officials hurried to rebuild the city because that is the second biggest tourist attraction in the area. (Snow mountain is the first). I personally did not see much difference between the two old cities in town. Both places had tons of little shops all selling the same stuff.
Lijiang is home to the Naxi people. And that is all I was able to find out about them. I know that they use the Yak for all there needs where as other tribes used water buffalo, cows, goats, etc. So the Yak shops were always full of people.
The next tourist trap that we hit up was the Tea Trail which was around a lake. Now this is at an elevation of 3000 meters, so I don’t know how authentic this trail is. We were told that it connects all the way to Pakistan.  From the map that we looked at (Sorry, I didn’t take a picture of it) it just looked like a path that circles around a mountain. Now there are these horse tours that you can take to travel along the different trails, but you are only allowed to take the horse. You are not allowed to walk on the paths though. You were only allowed to ride a horse. Needless to say, I did not take the tourist trap bait. There were about 30 horse rental places around the lake.

Lijiang first couple of days

Lijiang First Days
So we arrived well enough after the midnight train ride. It was a bit overwhelming arriving at a hotel house. I figured that we would just be staying with one of their friends because that is what would have been done in the states. Well, we didn’t have the house to ourselves. There were five rooms with 3-5 beds in each room. There was a tourist group staying in the other rooms. Well, they were a group who woke up at 6:00am and ate at 6:15am. You might think that this would be no problem, but Chinese do not think about being considerate of other people. It seems like a very self absorbed people, but this is just how they were raised. So at 6:00am, it got very loud in the house. My room was right next to the dining area so I had the luxury of hearing them for a solid hour talk (loudly) with each other planning their day. Luckily, this only went on for three days. We got “out of bed” at 9:00am to eat and then walked over the “new” old town. The modern area was filled with cafes and restaurants, but when you walk outside the modern area you see the old houses and mountain areas and wild goats.  At the top of one of the mountains, you might see some flags. It is a Tibetan tribute. Well, after walking around see tons of shops selling all the same little “tourist” trinkets, we were picked up to go to the hostesses house.  

  
Well, they had been grilling a goat the entire day. Needless to say, we ate goat for the next three days. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, but too much of a good thing…well you know the saying.  Well, after eating a HUGE meal. It was of course time to sit down and eat more. So we had the meal then a little later, they made dumplings. A LOT OF DUMPLINGS!!!! Well, after eating too much to even think about breakfast, we retired for the day only to wake up the next morning to arrive back at the lady’s house to, you guessed it, EAT!!! At least after the meal all we had planned was to climb the side of a hill. Well, you might see the pagoda at the top of this hill. So the Chinese constructed this nice concrete stair/path that leads up to the pagoda and gives a nice view of the city and snow mountain. I don’t know how much it costs to take the path, but apparently, it was too much. So we had the pleasure of find a hole in the barbwire fence and climb the side of a hill. We also had two 5 years-olds with us. I know the hill does not look that bad, but it was definitely not any picnic walking up the side of it. I ripped holes in my jeans.

 

Lijiang (initial summary)

So we took an overnight train to Lijiang which left at 10:50 and then arrived the next morning at 7:40 and I only woke up twice during the night. The “cabin” (we didn’t have a door) was actually better than when I took my first train ride in China thirteen years ago. The beds however were a little short. Well, luckily our driver did show up on time to pick us up from the train station. So our accommodations were a “timeshare” house. It was nice. There were heated beds which was positive, but we did not have 24 hour hot water. The housekeeper would only turn it on at certain times during the day which was times when we were usually not there. So I only took was able to take 2-3 showers during our nine days there. Since a friend of the family was paying for all of the accommodations, we were “forced” (Chinese custom is we are “bound” to our host) to spend lots of time with her and her family. I am not saying it was all bad, but sometimes we (they) were just sitting around talking (in Chinese) and my language comprehension is not all back to where I could only understand about half of what they were saying. We did visit a couple of places which I will point out in more posts to come. We visited the two “old town” tourist locations, tiger leaping gorge, a pagoda, and a trade route. Snow Mountain is the big tourist trap in the area. We, however, did not go up the mountain because 1. There is just snow on the mountain. 2. There was a fire at the base camp 3. It was going to cost around 500+ RMB. Snow Mountain highest point at which people can hike up to 4500 meters where there is a rock that you take your picture in front of. Not really interesting for me personally.
I have to compress all of my pictures down to make them more webpage compatible.