From Grits to Chopsticks

Now that we’ve been living in the States for a while, it seemed timely to look back through this year’s photo archive and post a few random photos.  I’ll start with some transportation pictures, like this very small car:a stroller-bike:an overloaded e-bike: and something new in our part of China – a group of rental […]

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Now that we’re back in the USA, we often miss authentic Chinese food from Yunnan province.  During our final month in China, we enjoyed some unique things. A group of students invited us to dinner at a new, very delicious hot pot restaurant.  After we sat down, the manager spoke to the leader of the […]

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In 2009, we visited China and took this photo in front of the Business School: On a sunny day last month, we took another photo in the same spot: Over the past ten years, we have spent time with hundreds of students and developed many new friendships.  We moved back to the States this week, […]

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In my Financial English class, I set up the room for an economics experiment, not realizing that it would also lead to a social experiment.  Typically, our classrooms are arranged with a group of desks in the center section, flanked by narrower side sections.  But this time, I split the chairs down the middle to […]

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Since we just celebrated Mother’s Day, it seems appropriate to share some beautiful flowers.  The climate in our city is semi-tropical, so we regularly enjoy a wide variety of vibrant colors.  Bougainvilleas abound: These purple trees line a major street we walk down every week:pink trees enhance the foreground of our apartment building: and the […]

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As we’ve said in some of our past blogs, people here often use railroad tracks as sidewalks and gathering places.  We also walk on the tracks, but the short steps from cross-tie to cross-tie can get rather laborious.  One of our most often used sections of track recently underwent a welcomed upgrade, from this: to […]

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A few weeks ago, we climbed up our nearby mountain:From the top, you can get a good view of the growing city:You can also see how dry everything is near the tombs on the mountain – the rainy season is still a month away:With that in mind, it wasn’t a big surprise that the mountain […]

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In a previous post, we shared some photos of the walk along the river that runs through our city.  We are still amazed that we can walk such a long distance through a major city, enjoying parkland almost the entire way. Of the numerous bridges that cross the river, some are old and ornate: while […]

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There’s always something interesting to see from our apartment window.  One of the things we see has to do with “trash management.”  On the nearby corner are two dumpsters for common use: As we’ve mentioned in the past, some people spend most of the day at the dumpster scavenging for recyclables and other things of […]

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In previous posts, I’ve talked about the bus ride from our local campus to the new campus an hour away.  As the bus departs from my nearby (in-town) campus, it’s interesting to see how quickly we travel from the city and into the countryside.  I usually leave our apartment about 6:30AM and walk to the […]

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