Hello there... I haven't written anything here in over a year... and likely I won't write much if at all here in the future either. You can look at my website http://thejimshelley.worldzonepro.com if you want to see more recent photos and information about me. That's all. It was a pleasure doing business with you.

Good news, I have arrived in Guangzhou in one piece. I arrived here on Saturday, August 6th and have been adjusting to my new environs at the South China University of Technology. It's nice here--there are a lot of trees and two lakes on the campus, which makes for a peaceful setting. I have a room in the International Students' Dormitory, so I am hoping it will be a good setting for improving my Chinese (which I hope to study again part-time). Maybe it'll help my Swahili as well--I live across the hall from a guy from Tanzania who's here studying computers. I started my job on Monday the 8th, but it hasn't been too busy so far--I am mainly just getting familiar with the courses I'll be teaching and helping with editting and translating English documents. They want me here to help with the program's preparation work and I suppose to do some promotion to recruit students for the program, but there hasn't been much of that yet. I'll be teaching in the starting year of a program which is an intensive one-year course to prepare high-school graduates to study in university degree programs abroad. My girlfriend Zhe Lan is quite happy that I am suddenly much closer to her--I saw her this past weekend (she lives two hours away in Shenzhen). Overall it seems like a good situation, although it's a big change being in a big city and a new place, and so it'll take getting used to. But I believe I can persevere.

Hello there. Well in the last two weeks since the school term closed I've gone high and low and near and far to students' homes in various locations in this region, from grassland tents to mountaintop villages and all places in between. It's been wonderful, especially as I've attended a few festivals along the way, but it's been exhausting as well, and moreso because in all free moments back in Tongren I've been frantically preparing for moving to Guangzhou. I'll be leaving here on the morning of August 1st and stopping in Xining and Lanzhou to say goodbye to folks before catching a train on August 4th to arrive at my new location on August 6th. I should be able to put more frequent entries here after that time--in these past few weeks I've mostly been away from the computer, and when I have been around I've been hectically busy, so alas, no news although plenty to report. Well, I've put some pictures on my website, and I'll write more details later about all things happening with me.

This past weekend I went to my student Fred's (or Shawo Tashi's) home in Shaopong village northeast of here. It was quite an adventure getting there. First, we were waiting for the truck to leave for three hours before we finally departed Tongren at about 5pm, and then on the way we had two flat tires followed by the transmission completely going out up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. Luckily for the latter problem, shortly after we broke down a motorcycle passed by which sent back a truck to help us out (albeit after a couple of hours). So once all was said and done a one-hour trip turned into a six-hour journey, and we got to Fred's house at about 11:15pm, at which time we were met by a big welcome and dinner and being stuffed until one in the morning. I had a nice time there anyway. I went with both Fred and another student Jackson (Dorje Jyal), and they are both vibrant and energetic students who managed to keep us from cracking up too much while waiting along the roadside. In Shaopong village we went to a famous small Buddhist meditation room carved into the side of a cliff, which was interesting. It was a good trip that would have been quite relaxing if going there hadn't been so exhausting. Coming back was less hectic anyway, despite muddy roads from the rain the previous night.

 

Now I'm back in Tongren and we've got exams this week, and it seems I've got a million things to do. Also, now that exams are almost here and gone it seems time has almost come for me to leave here for Guangzhou--I guess I've come to the homestretch. Well, lots of things to do in the meantime anyway.

 

Yesterday was the fourth of July, so happy Independence Day to all fellow Americans. Mine was spent busily working, but I still managed to reflect and enjoy memories of recent fourths of Julies past (?)--eating hot dogs at the American Consulate in Guangzhou, anticipating my friend Zach's wedding in Morgantown, eating chipsi mayai in Seattle--enough good times anyway to justify having to work this time around. And I'll have my holiday in a couple of weeks, so I'll be patient--good things await me just around the corner.

This past Saturday I had my much belated Mardi Gras/Fasnacht themed party, this year titled "Hjug Bay Za Meek Hmer" ("Fat Tuesday" in Amdo Tibetan). I sent/gave out invitations, prepared my mask, and cooked up a ton of food. But in the end, it was a bit of a disappointment, really--nobody who I had invited from other places (Lanzhou and Xining), and only a few of the people I had invited from here in Tongren, showed up, so in the end I had five people in attendance (not including me nor the two who showed up for about five minutes each earlier in the day). Well, I guess five is better than none anyway--it gave me just enough participants to give away the five flag prizes for best masks to. We ended up calling a bunch of students from school to come over and and help eat the food (which I cooked too much of, as I expected many more people to come). Well, the arrival of the students livened things up a bit and made for a delightful turn of events. It was fun enough overall. My mask turned out well. It was a horse's head, or actually "the horse's head," based on a long joke I like to tell which has a line that goes, "Are you the horse's head?"... "No,"... "Then you must be the horse's ass!" Well, with mask on I didn't feel like too much of a horse's ass anyway.

 

Really, I guess it was a bad time to have the party--school terms are finishing up right about now, and lots of people have exams now or soon, and seeing as most of my friends are either teachers or students, that causes some complications. I guess it should be reason enough to show that I should just stick to the traditional Mardi Gras/Fasnacht date for the party--but alas, on that date this year (Feb. 8th) I was in southeast China traveling. And actually originally I was going to have it on the correct date, but then my girlfriend Zhe Lan found cheap tickets to Thailand and had her sights set on going there instead of coming up to cold, dreary Qinghai Province for the Chinese New Year holiday, so in the end I submitted to her desires. And I was considering calling the whole thing off for this year, but in the end I was sad for not having the party and for not making a mask and such, so I did it, albeit much delayed. And it's done. Well, next year the dates of the Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras apparently don't coincide (they are Jan. 29th and Feb. 28th, respectively), so I should be able to have a proper party next year. We'll see.