Writer. Traveler. Tea Drinker.

To celebrate our three month anniversary I thought I would share some random pictures from our time here.  Enjoy! We haven’t had time to travel much but this was a pit stop during a trip into the countryside. It was beautiful.

Today is the 3-month anniversary of Ryan and I arriving in China so I thought I would take this moment and pause to reflect on our new life. Overall things are going great. We are getting accustomed to being strangers in a strange land eating strange things. And many of my misconceptions of China, and [...]

Spending an American only holiday in another country is certainly interesting.  Out of all the strange animals Chinese people eat, the one thing they don’t eat is turkey. So, it will be a turkey-less Thanksgiving for us. In fact, I’m still sick,–coughing and sneezing and all that good stuff– so it will be an early night [...]

Remember when I was complaining how hot it was this summer? I knew at some point I’d be cold and dreaming of those stifling hot days… I just didn’t know it would be so soon. Southern China has had an unusually cold weather plunging the temperatures to freezing and creating snow storms all throughout the [...]

Stuffy nose, sore throat, overall body ache and chills. Yep, in this winter of 2009 it could only mean one thing: the dreaded swine flu. Tell my cats I love them and when you come to my funeral don’t cry…I want you to remember all the happy times we’ve had. Ha ha, don’t worry too [...]

Back home in every Chinese food restaurant there is a lazy susan. You know what I’m talking about; The big round glass thing on the center of the table so when there are a lot of dishes everyone can spin it around to get to each dish. Well, here in China every restaurant has a [...]

I’ve showed some photos from around the campus but I haven’t shared any from our little patch of paradise. So here it is in all it’s glory: our little apartment. On the initial ride from Shanghai to the school our friend Zhu told us that we had the nicest apartment. Since we were a married [...]

Despite living near Hangzhou for the last two months, I have yet to buy some of the local specialty: Dragon Well Tea. (Pronounced Longjing Cha here in China.) Longjing is not only a famous local tea, but it is one of China’s most famous teas period. In fact, it is the tea served to visiting [...]

I love the peanuts here. They taste different then American peanuts, (it’s hard to explain how they taste different, maybe less sugary?) but I keep a bag in the house at all times. (I mean really, for 30 cents a bag how could I not?) And of course, my favorite brand is another opportunity to [...]