Back in Yichang...what a great holiday back home!

My 8 weeks holiday back home in Australia flew past very quickly and I find myself back in a steamy hot Yichang, settling back to the Chinese lifestyle. I haven't blogged because I haven't had time. My last 3 weeks back home were full of activity as I tried to show Nettie as much of my lifestyle as I could. We really had a great time and she fitted in so easily. Because her English is so great and she is so easy to get along with...it's easy to forget that she hadn't experienced the western lifestyle before and was seeing, tasting and experiencing many things for the first time in her life. We really had the most amazing time and not only myself but my family all feel very pleased to have her in our life. Between us we gathered hundreds of photos...these are just some of them.

Whale watching cruise in Albany

Tree top walk in Walpole

With friends from my hockey team in York


Busselton...It's always so beautiful
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Getting a cuddle with a joey (baby Kangaroo)

With my Mum,Dad,Jess (sister in law)and Geoff (brother)

More Family : Lin, John, Mum, Dad, Stuart, Harry and Emma

Kings Park

For all those who we just didn't have time to catch up with ...I'm sorry. It really is amazing how quickly time goes past.

Lucky to love and be loved

Sometimes I think it's important to stop and realise how lucky we are. I have loving parents and friends that I share very special bonds with. We all love to feel loved but an even more amazing feeling is being able to return love unconditionally and do and give as much as you can to make others feel loved and add to making others lives feel full and happy.

With a few weeks left here in Western Australia before I head back for another 10 month run in China, I'm filled with a mixture of emotions. I'm extremely excited that my closest of friends from China accepted the invitation to join me here in Australia for the last few weeks of my holiday. I will get the chance to give back some of the amazing generosity she shows to me when I am in her home country. For someone who has not experienced a western country, I think Australia will be an amazing adventure for her. It will be a lot of fun for me as well as Nettie, introducing her to my hometown, different foods and showing her the sights. Her English is very, very good and I know she will value this opportunity to be in a completely English speaking environment and learn so much from being here.
With the arrival of my dear friend comes the reality of leaving my parents here again in just a few weeks time. I love and miss them very much when I am in China but the support that they always show for whatever I choose to do has got me to where I am now and I hold on to the fact that they want me to experience as much of life as I can and never hold myself back.
I will fly back to China with my friend which is comforting and I wonder how different things will be. Last year I was flying into the unknown..."what would China be like, would the job be o.k?, how would the people treat me? would I make friends?" Obviously all these things made a big enough impact on my life for me to return again. This time it's not unknown...I have learnt much of the language and made great friends. The school is very good to me and I enjoy teaching the kids.
How will this impact on my second year in China? Will I be more adventurous and brave :-)Generally feel more comfortable and at ease in such a different lifestyle?
It's all part of life's big learning curve :-) The amazing thing about loving people unconditionally is the biggest buzz that you get when you give to please and how somehow, it works around in a complete circle of giving and more giving, which comes back to you ten fold...and so on and so on..

Strange But True!

Tonight (with thanks to a Mozilla Firefox add on) I sat down and watched live streaming of CCTV 5 (China Sports channel)on TV-Fox. I made the experience even more like my past 11 months in China, by eating a bowl of instant noodles whilst I watched :-)

York Rainbow

York Rainbow, on top of Mount Brown, originally uploaded by sooy2.

I took Daisy for a walk around on Mount Brown yesterday...The weather has been sprinkling us with rain on and off and we were lucky enough to catch this rainbow whilst we were uo top...very pretty!

Revamp

Hmmm not sure if I like the new look blog page yet??

Stop whinging people and start thanking !

People often like to complain....whinge, whinge, whinge. Sometimes I wish I had a voice recorder going so people can hear themselves back. The other thing I notice a lot is how people love to discuss tragedy and bad news... I think there should be a channel on T.V and radio dedicated to good stuff, providing a tonic or remedy to help even out the flow of bad news that we are flooded with.
Anyway I have decided to write about a couple of things that I am truly thankful for.

1 : I have been meaning to mention this for a while.... SKYPE : Thank you, thank you a billion times thank you. SKYPE keeps me in free regular contact with my family and friends by text, voice and video (and cheap phone calls and text messages to phones). The world is a much smaller place thanks to you. Living so far away from my loved ones becomes much easier with regular contact.

and today

DELL COMPUTERS : I have had Dell computers for a few years now and never had any problems. My last laptop is still under warranty (just) and it has been playing up quite a bit lately. After talking with technicians and being guided through some very useful ways to update, diagnose and fix problems...they decided to have a look for themselves. They sent a technician to my house and he completely pulled my laptop to pieces, put in a brand new motherboard, fan and heat sensor, sync thingy?
He has also ordered new speakers as mine don't seem to be playing loud enough and someone will come again on Monday to fit them.
So to Dell....BIG THANKS !

My World...where have I been?

Today I thought I'd have some fun with google maps and start adding the places in the world that I have lived and visited. Its a lot of fun and as you can see I have included the map on my blog. If you click on "My World" it will open the full map showing that I have lived and travelled in England, Ireland, China and Australia. I really should start putting the many places I've been to in my home state of W.A but there are so many I haven't got around to them all yet. Next I'll try and work out how to add the photo's to the locations :-)