An American Teacher in Guiyang

I admit it, yesterday's snow was underwhelming. Today's snow is not. It kept coming overnight and I woke up this morning to something a little more impressive. First, the view from my window this morning:     I decided to go out and check out the campus again. So, bundled up against the cold I went out and took a few pictures. Here's what greeted me as soon as I got out of the residence: Quite a bit deeper than yesterday. Probably at least two inches dropped overnight. The Christmas tree looks a bit more Christmas-y today: Can you see the athletic field? It's here, underneath a few inches of powder: Here's a closeup of the steps to the residence, just to give you an idea of how much more snow there is today: I ventured out onto the streets and it's the same pretty much everywhere. About a block away from my residence is a bus depot. The buses are prepared for the snow today, clearly: Along with snow piles there are ...

Guiyang gets cold in the winter. For the last week or so the temperature's hovered around freezing but it's dropped significantly in the last two days. It's currently 6 AM and I'm sitting in my room drinkingcoffee while the temperature outside is a balmy 25F/-4C. It's supposed to stay like this for the next few days before rising to about 35F/1C by the end of the week.  I'm from Northern California and spent the last 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, so this kind of cold is absolutely foreign to me. I had to buy a proper winter coat earlier this month. Despite the cold and the high elevation (1100M/3600FT) it rarely snows here. Yesterday was one of those rare occasions. In the early afternoon I looked out the window and saw this: It doesn't look like much and it really isn't, but it was cool to see. I haven't spent much time in the snow, so I suited up and went outside to check it out. I walked out of my residence and saw thi...

This time of the year is very busy for me, as we are winding down the semester. Designing assessments, figuring out end of year performances, and all of the other end of semester tasks have taken up quite a bit of my time. I'm exhausted and ready for the semester to be over. I've managed to curate a few more photos of my Bangkok trip, though, and I'll share a few more of them here. The first night I was there, I found an amazing Japanese ramen place. It's been ages since I've had a proper tonkatsu ramen and I couldn't resist. Yes, I had Japanese food on my first night in Thailand. An extremely helpful guide to making their specialty. I opted for something a little less hands-on Ah yes, that's what I was craving. It was delicious. There was a beautiful park on Sukhumvit road, probably around Sukhumvit 18. I spent a morning there wandering around and soaking in the atmosphere. It was full of people even at 7 AM. There were playground sections f...

I understood that Thailand was a deeply religious country before coming here, but I didn't realize what that would look like until I spent some time roaming around the city. Something like 95% of the country is practicing Buddhist, and you'll see a shrine to someone in the Buddhist pantheon about every three or four blocks. Just about every hotel has one just outside the main entrance, and you'll see them scattered about everywhere. They get quite elaborate and creative, too. Here's just a sampling of the ones I saw just around my hotel. This was near a hotel. I saw a couple of people pray to it but it would have been creepy and insensitive to take a picture. All of the shrines are riots of color. I couldn't get a good picture of this one without shadows, but maybe that just makes it an art shot. These were arranged in front of the previous shrine. Stuff like this was common in the ones I saw. I was impressed with the level of commitment and detail he...