Hello Hubei! (part 1)

Hello everyone! So here's the beginning of my posts about my time as a teacher in Hubei province. I will be teaching at Hubei University of Arts and Science, a college located on the outskirts of a small city called Xiangyang (pronounced like "Shyong-YONG").

 

(sites from the city)

Xiangyang is really small and relatively unknown, even in China. It's biggest claim to fame is that several hundred years ago (in the early ADs), a military genius named Zhuge Liang (JOO-guh Leeong) spent several years there just pondering life because the area was so quiet and secluded (and boy, he got that right!). Zhuge Liang played a huge part in one the most famous battles in one of the most famous wars in Chinese history: the battle of Red Cliff in the War of the Three Kingdoms. There's even a Chinese movie about it that's actually really good if you have the patience for foreign language films.

 

(Zhuge Liang: he's really famous for carrying around a fan made of bird's feathers all the time, and you can see it in this picture)

So in a nutshell, I basically understood to a general extent what I was getting into over here. I knew it was going to be more rural than even Kunming was, though not as rural as Peru...but this would be the longest I had been on such an adventure. I also knew that even though I had some kind of understanding of what I was going to see here, nothing was really going to prepare me for what was there.

And I was right.

It was a very long plane ride: I had to make connections in Dallas, Los Angeles, and then Guangzhou, each with several hours layover time. But I was very VERY lucky to have spent the entire time in some way, shape, or form not by myself. On my first plane ride, I happened to be sitting next to a really lovely Filipino couple who were moving from Boston to Dallas. They told me about their experiences in the Phillippines and how they moved to America, and I told them about my adventures in China and Peru. Ironically, the husband had the same name as my uncle, who is also Filipino! They were so sweet, by the end of the trip they said that they'd never forget me. DAWWWW. Anyway, I thought I'd be making the next connecting flight by myself, but before I got on the plane, I ran into one of the other teachers who was going on the trip with me. And then another. They had both added me on Facebook before we left, and I was glad of it or else I would have gotten on the plane with them and never known there were other teachers on board. After that, all the other teachers (ten in total) met together in LA, and we traveled together the rest of the way there.

The trip was two long days, and I'm really not the best flyer. My eyes get red, and I'm naturally scared of heights so I don't like to be up in the air so long. The typical 14-15 hour flight I can do. But for at least one flight we were traveling for 22 hours, and then still had one more flight to go. But that's what happens when you're trying to meet up with people from all over the place and THEN trying to go to a city that's really rural. I was glad it was over by the time we landed.