The Best of 2014

As another year wraps up, I've taken some time to reflect on this year and all it has thrown at me.  I turned 27, had a MAJOR move, left Honduras and really great friends, and traveled to some amazing places.  So here are some of the highlights of the past year.

Finishing my Time in Honduras
Leaving SPS and my school in Honduras was bitter sweet.  I was beyond excited to try something new, but terrified of the changes I'd be making.  I would miss the comforts of Honduras and all of my wonderful friends, but it turned out to be an easier transition than I thought it would be.  I still miss Utila and my Honduran family (have some wine for me on the CNA balcony, guys!), but I am confident I made the right choice.

"If you've got something wrong go to Dr. John"

Travel
I got to go to so many places in 2014!  I rang in the new year in London (amazing), and spent multiple weekends in Utila and Copan.  My brother even came for a visit in Honduras, which was really exciting!  I also traveled to Panama and Nicaragua before I left Central America.

Moving to China
I can't believe I am living in Shanghai.  When I was searching for jobs last February, I was positive that China was the one place I would NOT end up.  Angola and Brazil were higher on my list when I left the job fair in Boston, which is pretty insane.  That being said, Shanghai is a great fit for me.  I love how busy and exciting this city is.  Public transportation is great and I can actually walk around. At night.  With money and my phone.  Such a nice chance of pace from Honduras.  China definitely has its challenges (like how everyone spits everywhere, it is pretty crowded and the kid who pooped in my elevator...while I was in there...but I digress), but overall I am really happy here.  My job is great, I've made some good friends, and I will be able to save money AND travel around Asia, so its a win, win, win.

My Best Friends Wedding!
I was lucky enough to be able to make the journey from Shanghai to Charleston in October to see Kathy get married.  It took me 3 days to adjust to the time difference and I was only in town for 6, but I made the most of my time in Chucktown and was even able to squeeze in a trip to target.  Woo!     Being apart of her special day was amazing, plus I got to see most of my Newington Forrest family. It was a whirlwind of a weekend, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Coming Home for Christmas
When I left Orlando in August I was sure I wouldn't be able to afford to come home for Christmas.  Luckily my new job pays me quite well and I have recently been informed that my company will pay for 1 flight home a year, so coming home for the holidays was a possibility I couldn't pass up.  I leave next Saturday and I am beyond pumped to see my Florida family for a whole 10 days!

Can't wait to see these guys!

Best Trip of 2014:
Either my time in London with Jill over New Year or Nicaragua with my Honduran roomie Alexa.  London is always amazing and it was great to celebrate with friends in my favourite city.  Its a tie with Nicaragua because I had such a blast volcano boarding in Leon and loved the town of Grenada.  I can't wait to go back!

Now I have plenty to look forward to in 2015.  I should finally be able to pay off my student loans and I have several amazing trips in the works for this year.  When I come back after Christmas I have plans to go to Myanmar for 10 days and then Cambodia or the Philippines in April.  I'll also be checking out the west coast for the first time this summer, heading to Vegas for the first time to celebrate a friends birthday, and possibly heading back to England and Brussels in July.  Heres hoping 2015 is even better than 2014!

Thanksgiving Success

Being away from home during the Holidays never gets any easier.  This year marked my 5th(!!) Thanksgiving abroad.  And while I still miss my Uncle Tom's carrots, I am finding it a lot easier to celebrate with friends from all over the world as my culinary skills improve.

This year, a small group of us decided to try out a restaurant here in Shanghai that was serving up an all-you-can-eat/drink Cajun Thanksgiving.   It was delicious.  They had all of the Thanksgiving classics that I was missing (minus green bean casserole and the famous carrots mentioned above), plus some amazing Andouille stuffing and a Shrimp Cheesecake that definitely need to be added to my list for future gatherings.  I had a great time and I actually got to eat a Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving, 12 hours before everyone back home.  I'd consider that a major success.

Since so many of my friends in Shanghai don't normally get to celebrate Thanksgiving, a friend decided to host a party at her apartment and I agreed to cook the turkey.  Everyone who knows about my bone phobia is probably wondering how I managed to pull if off, but with a little help and only a few tears I was able to cook a 16lb turkey in a toaster oven and it turned out pretty well...if I do say so myself.  Check out the picture below of it cooking:

Photo Credit: Danille

We had a great night celebrating with people from South Africa, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, England, Ireland, China, and the US.  These are the days that remind me why I love teaching halfway around the world and can tolerate (barely) being away from home during the holidays.  

Now its only 3 weeks until I am back in (hopefully) warmer Florida, celebrating Christmas with my family.  Woo!

xoxo

Surviving Chinese Winter

Having lived in places that rarely see temperatures below 50 degrees for the past 10 years, you can imagine how poorly I am adapting to the "frigid" climate here in Shanghai.  Today it was 10 degrees Celsius...which I think roughly translate to 50 Fahrenheit.  I bundled up with a winter coat and gloves to bike to work and still found it unbearable.  I honestly do not how how I will survive once it gets really cold.

Apartments here have no central heating or insulation, so its typically colder in my apartment than it is outside. Luckily I have found a space heater, portable radiator, and an electric blanket to help keep me warm.  And hopefully I won't burn my apartment down in the process.


Besides complaining about the cold I have been keeping myself quite busy.  Two weeks ago I took 30 9th grade students to a Miao village in rural China for a week.  It was an amazing experience, but we were very excited to get back to civilisation after 4 freezing nights with the water buffalo.

 Beigao, the village we stayed in, is up in the mountains of Guizhou provence southwest of Shanghai. To get there, we flew into the capital of Guizhou and drove an hour to a "small town" of about 600,000 people.  From there, we had to hike four and a half hours up the mountain to get to the village.  It was challenging and cold, but we had a lot of fun.  We spent the next four days living with the villagers who welcomed us with eager, open arms.

Miao people are extremely friendly, but they live a completely different life from us city folk.  In Miao culture, water buffalo are considered sacred, so most of the families kept one in their home.  The buffalo usually slept downstairs and the people had rooms upstairs.  I was lucky enough to stay in the teacher's house.  He didn't have a buffalo but he did have several pigs.  I had to walk through the pig sty to get to the bathroom, which was pretty interesting.  Most of the boys, though, had to share their bathroom with the livestock so I consider the pigs a blessing.

We all shared delicious meals together and the students spent time working on building an irrigation system for the villagers.  They built their very first road into the village last year and needed some help building a drainage system to keep the road functional.  The students also got to try fishing in the freezing cold rice patties, and helped an elderly lady prepare food for her animals.  (They removed corn kernels off the cob....they were not impressed.) The best day was when we hiked to a neighboring village and our students taught the locals English for the day.  It was great to see them all interact together.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip:

My room in the village.  Notice the sweet poster of the Chicago Bulls from 1993:

Village life

And our students showing off their smartphones and taking selfies with the locals

The following weekend I took some more students to an Model United Nations conference in Hangzhou, about an hour's train ride outside of Shanghai.  It was a great trip and the students did well, but I had been with kids for a week straight and had a whole new week to look forward too.

This past weekend I had my New Staff Retreat, which meant I had to work on Saturday and spent my 15th day in a row working.  Sunday was a much needed rest day.

Now I have Thanksgiving to look forward to.  Tomorrow I'll be celebrating Cajun style with some of my American and Canadian friends.  We've found a Cajun restaurant that is putting on a feast for some of the expats and we are all excited about the deep-fried turkey, grits, and other Cajun delicacies that we'll get to experience.  I'm also going to a potluck on Saturday with lots of friends from work and around Shanghai, so I'll be lucky enough to have 2 Thanksgivings this year.  I'm certainly not complaining!

Hope everyone at home has a great holiday and enjoys a lot of pumpkin flavored deliciousness and some honey glazed carrots.

xoxo

Itchy Feet

I've only been in Shanghai for a few months but I'm already ready to travel again.  Don't get me wrong, I love Shanghai.  I'm really happy that this is the place I've decided to settle down for a while. But unlike Honduras, I haven't had the chance (or taken the opportunity, rather) to leave the city over the weekends because there is too much to see and do here.

I have decided to come home at Christmas because I'm not quite ready to make the leap to travel alone during such a family-oriented holiday, and while I'm really excited to spend time with my family and friends, I can't help but feel like I'm missing out on a great travel opportunity.  I'm right at the hub to jump off to so many exciting places in South East Asia that my plans for the year are all over the place.  I guess its a good thing that I am planning on staying a few years or I would never be able to see everything I wanted to. So in order to make up for my lack of travel at Christmas, I am planning a whirlwind summer tour.

At the moment I do have some trips in the works:

• February- Myanmar to see some good friends from college/Honduras and explore the temples of Bangan.
• April- Malaysian Borneo or the Philippines for some beach/diving time
• Summer 2015: Washington (beginning of the summer), Las Vegas (end of the summer), and...??

So now I need some help decided where to go with my remaining four weeks of vacation.  I know, the life of an international teacher is hard...but I will certainly have worked for that time off and be in desperate need of a holiday.

I've made a few tentative plans to head to Brussels.  I've never been to Belgium and everything I read about it makes me want to book a ticket immediately.  I'd also love to go back to the UK and see some friends.  My current thoughts are to head back to London for a few days and then take the train up north into Liverpool, Blackpool, and Manchester.  I've been to London 4-5 times and everyone knows how much I love it there.  Every time I make it to London, though, I seem to skip out on Northern England and I'm ready to check out a new part of the country.  It will have been a year and a half since I've been in the UK and that is clearly way too long.

My other option would be to head to Scandinavia for a few weeks.  I'm dying to go to Copenhagen and Stockholm and I could only handle the climate that far north in the summer.  I know it will be a lot more expensive than hanging out at home, but I can resist a new adventure. 

Now, during this time I also need to spend some time with my family in Florida and catch up with friends.  It will be a busy 5 weeks no matter what I decide to do, so why not explore a little more before heading back to China?  

Help!  Any suggestions on my summer plans or hidden SE Asian gems?

So...I'm the Worst

Clearly keeping up with this blog is turning out to be a lot more difficult than I thought.

Before I moved to Shanghai I figured that I would be bored and lonely living by myself for the first time.  It has basically been the exact opposite.  I'm never home for any extended period of time and I am constantly running from one thing to the next, which is great (minus the fact that I am insanely tired, but more on that to come).

So since I've been here last I have continued to explore Shanghai on the weekends and go to Crossfit during the week.  There have been so many places I've seen that I can't even remember them all, but everything has been great.  I promise to take you when you come to visit =)

Some Major Highlights:

Chili Cook Off-
So much good food, beer, and bourbon.  It was like a real cook off back home.  The weather was even nice.  Afterwards we found an amazing Laser Tag Bar.  We need these in the US.  There is no better way to play laser tag.

During the first week of October we had our Mid Autumn Holiday and a friend of mine from Honduras came over to Shanghai for a visit.    We found all sorts of pop up bars, fun events, and great activities to get up to.  My favourite was the Persian restaurant we stumbled upon.  They had great hookah, traditional music, and a fantastic owner who gave us free brandy.  I finally got a chance to visit the Science and Technology Museum, which was probably the biggest mistake I've made in China since there were about a million people who all had the same great idea we did.  It was impossible to navigate around, but I saw enough to know it is definitely worth a trip back.  I also had the chance to go down Shouning Street--the place Anthony Bourdain wandered down on Parts Unknown--to sample to sea food (delicious) and countless bottles of beer (too much fun.)  It was a great night out!

Courtney enjoying the sheesha

Shouning Street Delicacies 

Crawfish we eventually ate :-\

After my wonderful week off I headed back to the US to see my very best friend get married.  I spent 6 days in Charleston and had an amazing time.  The wedding was awesome, it was great to see all of my friends and family, and got to explore a fun new city in the process.  The weather was perfect, so coming to Shanghai was a bit of a shock because fall has officially arrived here.  Thank god my mom brought all of my winter clothes up from Florida for me to bring back.  (Thanks mom!)

Rehearsal Dinner

Throw Back since wedding photos weren't available yet

I am definitely looking forward to a quite few weeks here in Shanghai before the craziness of November begins.  (Think lots of additional work commitments and trips away from the city.) Hopefully I'll be able to start learning the ukelele I bought in September and haven't had a chance to play yet.

Now I promise to try to keep this updated a little better so you can actually get a feel for what is going on in my like.

So far in China...

So I've been in Shanghai for 3 weeks now.  Where has the time gone?  I've been pretty horrible at sending updates, mostly because of the 12 hour time difference and the fact that Facebook, gmail, and Snapchat are all blocked here.  I'll try to briefly catch you up on life in China.

My Flat
The school I'm working for has set me up with an awesome apartment about 2 blocks from work.  It takes me less than 10 minutes to ride my bike (yes, I bought a bike!) in every morning, which is a major plus.  I have three bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and amazing views.  One day I promise to take a few pictures and post them up here.

School
Work has been going pretty good.  I've been insanely busy, but am enjoying my new school so far.  I am teaching 3 years of ESL Social Studies and 2 sections of English, so I'm keeping a full schedule.  My students are all really cute and extremely well behaved (for the most part).  I have kids from all over the world, which is a nice change from my previous two jobs.  I'm also working with other teachers from just about everywhere, which is pretty exciting.  In my SS department alone we have teachers from the US, Canada, Colombia, Australia and South Africa.  I'm loving all of the diversity.

Life
This is the most exciting part of living in Shanghai.  I feel like I was made for this city.  Since I've moved in, I haven't spent more than an hour inside of my apartment unless I am sleeping.  There is so much of the city to explore and it is an exciting place to be.

I'm living on the Pudong side of the river, which is a little bit more quite than the hip/ "real China" Puxi side.  It has been working out well as I've been able to get in to a good routine with work and the gym during the week and go out and explore during the weekends.

In Pudong I've joined a crossfit gym and bike there 4-5 times a week.  It's been a lot of fun and I've been able to meet some fun Chinese locals and learn a few words of Chinese.  My neighbourhood is pretty quite, but I still have a bunch of shops, restaurants, and cafes close by.  The financial district is also on my side of the river, and the buildings here looks like something out of a Batman movie.

You'll be happy to note that we also have a Hooters, TGI Fridays, Tescos (my favourite little shop from London), Dominos, and plenty of other American chains to make sure I don't get too homesick.


In Puxi there are a ton of bars/clubs/restaurants and it is really lively.  I've been out there almost every weekend with friends and have had a great time.  There are a lot more "Chinese Style" buildings here as well.  Again, I promise to take some pictures.

Last weekend I was also able to travel outside of the city.  I went with a small group to Zhu Ji, about 2 hours south of Shanghai.  We did a day trip hiking and exploring some waterfalls in the area.  It was great to get outside of the city and explore some of rural China.  We booked the trip through a group called Shanghai Outing Club, and I already have more plans to do another hike during my break in October.  

Hopefully I can keep this blog a little more up to date and fill everyone in.  I promise to get better at responding to my e-mails as well.  =)

I'm loving Shanghai so far and am definitely planning on staying throughout my two year contract, maybe even a little longer, so start planning a trip!  I do have two extra bedrooms!

xoxo

It's About Time

So after 6 years of serious travel and 4 years of living abroad, I figured it was time to give this whole blogging idea a go.  Email groups, Facebook contacts, and other social media aren't enough to keep everyone in the loop, so hopefully this blog can provide somewhat regular updates on my nomadic lifestyle.


Here are the highlights:

• I've left Honduras.  Right now I'm bouncing around the East Coast visiting friends and family before my next big adventure.
• I took a job in Shanghai.  I leave for China August 2.  eek!
• I'll be teaching Science and ESL Humanities at an international school in Pudong, Shanghai for the foreseeable future.
• I will be back in the US in October for my bestie's wedding.  Woo!
• After that, I'll be in Asia at least until the end of June.

Stay tuned for updates on life in Shanghai and all of my travels around Asia. =)