The Setting

This post willbe updated as needed. It's a list of places I may refer to on a regular basis. Think of it as a glossary of places.

Important Places:

China: Come on. Do you really need me to explain this one?

Shaanxi Province: This is the province I live in. Not to be confused with the Shanxi Province Next to it. It's about the size of Kansas.

Xi'an: This is where I live. It's a large city near the center of China, and is over 3,000 years old. It has a large wall a bit over eight and a half miles around that encircles the center of the city. Most of the buildings with the old Chinese architectural styles can be found inside the wall.

Kid Castle: A chain of elementary and middle schools that specialize in teaching English. I work for a small group of privately owned ones in southwest Xi'an.

-Jin Du: A Kid Castle School I worked at for about a week. Saffron has been doing some extra classes there recently.

-Jin Yuan: One of the schools I work at. It's about two miles from my house. I could walk there, but it's faster to just take the bus.

-Green Land: Eric's school on the edge of the city. I work there twice a week. It's a nice school, and the kids are great, but I hate working there because I can't come home during my break. it's a 4 hour break in classes and I'm stuck ing the computer room!

-Sara's School: The School Saffron works at. None of us really know what it's called, so we call it Sara's School. It operates in the evenings and on weekends. Think of it as extracurricular study.

-Micheal's School: Once again, We don't know if it even actually has a name, so we call it Micheal's School. Dane works here.

Gauke Hua Yuan (Gaoke Garden): The apartment complex I live at. It looks fairly rusty from the outside, but the apartments are cleaner and much bigger than I expected. It has a small pond area in the middle of it, a little convenience store at the front gate, and a tiny produce stand hidden under a glass canopy near the playground in the middle. The security guards here are nice too.

Lotus Supercenter: A large Walmart-like store about half a mile from my apartment. It's where I go to get most of my food, appliances, and other stuff. This is where I've seen the majority of non-teacher foreigners.

Places of Note That I may Occasionally Mention

Xiaozhai: The downtown area where we go to buy DVDs and cheap clothes. It's also got a McDonalds. There's a bus that goes there from Gaoke, so it's easy to get to. Watch you wallet when it's crouded. There are lots of pickpockets and beggars here.

The Village (Vilages): The village is what the teachers at Gaoke call a back alley market street near oen of the bus stops. It's got cheap restraunts, and looks like what a lot of people think of when someone mentions a Chinese market street. Food there is cheap and good. The number of stares you get will increase tenfold the moment you step in there. Villages are when we call other streets like it.

Computer City: Place to buy cheap computer parts and other electronics.

The Bell Tower: Tourist attraction in the middle of Xi'an It's a really old building with a nice view of the surrounding area. Every hour or so, there's a performance in the center of the building. The music is nice, but the interesting part is that they use bells that are over 500 years old. 27 kuai admission, definitely worth going to see. I plan on going again.

The Drumtower: Tourist attraction in the middle of Xi'an, just down the road from the Bell Tower. I haven't been ther yet, but I plan to.