Writer. Traveler. Tea Drinker.

Experiencing my first big “American” holiday out of the country has been interesting to say the least. Halloween is not celebrated in China, but they know enough that it is an American holiday, and a good excuse to have some fun. I was invited to a “Halloween Party” by the school’s English Association. None of [...]

The University we teach at is called Zheijang Forestry University and true to its name, there is a lot of forest and natural beauty surrounding it. The campus is landscaped and planted, and trimmed and some spots are amazingly gorgeous. We spent the first several weeks just exploring the campus and finding all the little [...]

So, the 8-day National Day/Mid-Autumn Festival is over and now it is back to the grind for us. We don’t have another day off until the end of the semester, so we have 3 solid months of work ahead. I don’t mind, after all it is what we came here to do, but it is [...]

The other day Ryan and I went to Hangzhou to explore the tea fields. After all, I am a tea lover, a tea drinker and a tea reviewer, yet I’ve never seen tea actually growing in a field. To be honest, I didn’t even know what a tea plant (bush? tree?) even looked like. Well, [...]

When you live in another country, one that you can’t speak or read the language, you notice everything that is in English. I find myself reading people’s English t-shirts, or reading small signs on a bus that happen to be translated such as “no smoking.” It’s like I’ve become hyper aware on English and every [...]

I just thought I’d share one of our favorite meals here in Lin’an. Fried dumplings. Ryan likes the dumplings boiled in soup, I like them fried. Either way, they are delicious: And yes, drooling on your keyboard is, in this case, acceptable.

Okay, what can I say, I love China. We’ve only been here a month and yet it seems we have some sort of holiday every few days. First there was Teacher Day, then National Day, and now? Well, today is the Mid-Autumn Festival of course! The Mid-Autumn festival also has a more delicious name as [...]

60 years ago today Mao Zedong stood in Tianamen square, raised the national flag for the first time and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China. They say there were 300,000 soldiers and spectators there that day. Well, that’s nothing compared to how many people are expected to be in Beijing today for [...]