The main road through FuLi is torn up. New pipes and new road are being installed. For several weeks walking my normal route was impossible, so I started taking the back way. What a find that was!

The back way takes me through these vegetable farms. A dozen or more farmers work this area's plots. In the mornings they pull weeds or harvest crops to take to the market.

In the afternoons they dig new beds, plant new starts or water their established plants. These buckets with their bottom spouts make watering more plants possible, but look awkward and heavy for someone like me. I've never seen irrigation pipes or hoses used here.

The people in my neighborhood don't use sprinklers or hoses in their home gardens either. They fill a bucket with water and then use a smaller "scoop" to throw water over the plants. (My landlord has a hose to water the plants around his house. It's one of the few hoses I've seen here. Most people use buckets or basins of water to water plants or wash vehicles.)

These vegetables are growing in gardens across the road and up from our building. I see the water around the beds and am reminded that our neighborhood was once rice paddies. In fact, this area become mostly homes in just the last five years.

This little patch of garden is near DuTou school.

This garden is growing in front of the home next to the college. Wherever there is an open bit of land, someone plants some vegetables. It is my understanding that people do not own land. The government owns the land. People lease the land they farm and the land they build houses on. They plant small vegetable patches around their homes, along roads, in vacant lots... in any open spot. The vegetables then are stir-fried with a bit of meat and eaten with rice for lunch and dinner. Often twice a day. Often seven days a week. And that's a bunch of vegetables.

I wonder if I'll return to walking FuLi's main road when the road renovations are completed. Probably not exclusively. I enjoy the sight of the vegetables too much. I'm sure I'll need to occasionally see what's growing along the back way.

After I'd been in Yangshuo a couple of weeks, Owen asked me to help him out. He needed a teacher on Fridays in Guilin at a school he has worked with for a couple of years. How could I turn him down? This is the man paying the rent for the apartment I live in. And besides, the pay would be nice.

So, I now leave the apartment Friday mornings at 5:45. It's very dark at 5:45. Remarkably I am seldom the only one astir, although there aren't too many of us out and about! If I wait until 6, the street lights are off and then it really is dark. Besides, I like to be on a bus by 6 as I want to be in Guilin as soon after 7:30 as possible. The buses stop often along the road north. If the crew spots someone standing along the road, they slow yelling "Guilin, Guilin." The bus soon fills with people, some country people with their produce headed to markets in Guilin. I have been the only foreigner on the bus, except the two mornings I took another volunteer with me.

With any luck I've made it to Guilin, caught a taxi out to the neighborhood where the school is and am enjoying a bowl of these dumplings by 8:00. I stumbled onto this little place the second Friday in Guilin. I'm now a regular there. The dumplings are very small. They are made with a thin skin. I love the letuce that is added. And the broth warms me on cold mornings. As does this smile and the care I get from the couple who run the place. I'm disappointed if I miss this breakfast.

Qinfeng Experimental School is a short walk from the restaurant down this narrow street. It's the four story buildings with the red lettering. There are taller apartment buildings behind the school. I think it's called an experimental school because it's grades K through 9. Usually grades K-6 are in a primary school and grades 7-9 are in a junior middle school. I am aware of one other difference. There are no bells....they play music in place of bells. Perhaps that's part of the "experiment" too.

I teach two middle school grade three groups. They would be called ninth graders in the States. This is their last year at this school. I have class 1 and class 2. That distinction means they are the top students of their level. I meet with each group for two consecutive forty minute periods. It's been fun and challenging to be back with this age student. I'm their oral English experience for the week. The students are not grouped by English ability. And they are together taking the same classes all day...may have been together since kindergarten. They stay in the same room and the teachers move in and out. All this makes for a different group dynamic than we have in American schools. The group dynamic has its pluses and minuses. But all that aside, it is fun to be with some students who can actually converse a bit with me. Most of these students have been studying English for six years...granted as a foreign language, but still after six years the more outspoken are speaking.

A definite plus to teaching at Qinfeng has been meeting Ben. Ben is the foreign affairs officer. He spent a summer going to school in Illinois in 2001. His English is very good. And he is a very nice man. Besides that his wife manages a travel agency. Such a bonus! Another side note: Ben has over a thousand orchids. He says the care of them fills all his extra moments.

Between 12:30 and 1:00 I'm back on a bus headed south to Yangshuo. The morning goes quickly. I'm happy with all that this Friday morning teaching has added to my experience in China.

Two weeks ago I awoke on Wednesday and as usual went to the kitchen to heat water for my morning tea. As I turned on the light over the gas elements, I heard and, out of the corner of my eye, caught sight of a quick scurrying. I moved the trash can and witnessed another scurry. I groaned at the thought of cockroaches.
Thursday night I awoke to the sound of scurrying in my room. I opened a cardboard box on the table near my bed and something jumped out to dart under the bed. The jump didn't seem like a cockroach though. I went back to bed and minutes later saw a mouse scampering across the top of the dresser. Mice? Not cockroaches?
I didn't sleep well the rest of the night. I am not fond of mice or cockroaches...especially in my room.
Saturday is my morning to tidy up. I reached for the trash can near my bed and heard a noise. There was a mouse in a plastic bag in the trash basket. I was stunned. It wasn't running or jumping, so I tied the plastic bag up. And put it in another plastic bag which I tied up and put in another plastic bag which I tied up. At this point I made myself stop with the plastic bags and took them to the curb for pick up.

I knew the mouse might find his way out of the bags. I hoped he would run for open country and not back into the apartment. I washed my hands several times even though I hadn't touched the little bugger at all.

I started asking the Owen College students what I could do with my mouse problem. One said I could feed a cat. Clever. Several others thought I could buy poison at the drugstore or traps or sticky paper at the market. Some also told me that they have eaten rat/mouse and it is quite good. I suggested they come over to the apartment, catch the remaining mice and prepare them for a tasting. They only laughed.

I have found the sticky paper the students talked about. However I haven't seen anymore mice since I deposited that one in the garbage. Perhaps I saw that one mouse four times. Perhaps the other mice ran away when they realized what a holy terror I can be. I'm crossing my fingers.
Betts and Laurie have a rat that runs across their patio just outside the front door. Laurie is going to try the sticky paper on him. We're curious to see if the paper really works and what rat stew tastes like.

The mian baozi can carry up to ten passengers. I've wondered about that as I was fairly sure the 6 and the character for ren (people) on the outside of the van meant six passengers.

Well... Monday I was headed home from FuLi in a mian baozi carrying nine passengers. Suddenly the driver crossed the left lane of traffic and stopped on the left shoulder of the road. I could see roadwork in the right lane but no other stopped traffic. The driver was on his cell phone, but the van was idling, so I didn't think he was dealing with a breakdown. And why were we parked over on the left shoulder?

The girls next to me, we were seated on the very back bench seat, started talking. One mentioned liu (six) pointing to the van seats and pointing to the first six of us to patronize this bus.

Then I knew.

Within minutes three of the passengers stepped out to the road. The driver took the 1 by 6 board seat and shoved it along the inside wall toward me in the back. He removed the brackets that support the board seat and placed them under his seat.

We closed up the van, crossed over to the right lane of traffic, passed the three former passengers walking along the road and continued on with six passengers inside. Soon we drove by some uniformed official-looking men standing beside the road watching the traffic. Just beyond their view, the driver pulled over and stopped again.

We waited a few minutes until two of the ejected passenges walked up, the third one was no longer with them. The driver put the brackets and the board seat back in place and we continued on to Yangshuo with eight passengers.

We had passed inspection.

Last weekend I took this picture of Tony standing by some bamboo. This is the large bamboo that grows along the Li River. When you walk among these large plants, they sigh and creak. It took me a minute to realize the noises I was hearing came from the bamboo. I was also surprised to learn bamboo is classified as a grass.
After looking at the picture of Tony and the large bamboo, I started thinking about all the ways I have seen bamboo used in China. Here are a few....
The large species is used to make the bamboo rafts. Bamboo rafts are plentiful on the Li Jiang and Yu Long, the two rivers flowing through this area. Tourists love to travel the rivers on the rafts. But some country people rely on their rafts for transportation, and for some their rafts are the stages from which they work.
The boatmen on the chuan I take to cross the Li all use a steel tipped bamboo pole to push and shove the boats to and from the docks when the motors are silenced.

Farmers use strips of bamboo to delineate their plots.
Here is an arbor made of bamboo.
This bamboo fence is a bit more substantial than the one seen earlier.

Bamboo is often the material of the yoke country people employ to carry loads over their shoulder. I watched a woman swiftly float her bamboo yoke across the back of her neck from left shoulder to right as she walked with a small bounce made possible by slightly bent knees.
The main part of these buckets look to be made of bamboo.

Here is an example of the many styles of bamboo baskets common in everyday life.
The people in FuLi make fans. These slices of bamboo will be used in the making of the larger variety.

A bamboo pole outside a window is a favored way to dry clothing.
Amazingly, bamboo is also a favored material for scaffolding in China!

And we have rattan chairs in our apartment. Oops! Rattan is not bamboo. It's a palm. And I thought it was bamboo!

The karst in the Guilin/Yangshuo area are spectacular. Nowhere else in China will you find this dramatic terrain. Some refer to them as mountains, some as hills and some as formations. They are the backdrop to our life here.

They are visible from my kitchen window.

They are visible from the windows at the college. The neighboring buildings compete but can't completely block the karst out.

Karst frame the view as I cross the Li River mornings on my way to DuTou.

And I am awed by them a I travel in the minivan between FuLi and Yangshuo. This picture was actually taken yesterday as a group of us biked to FuLi and then on to Xingping. Finally I was able to take some photos of the countryside I travel through on my way to school.

At one point last month I was trying to decide if I should bike to school each day. This photo shows the tunnel and the buses that were two of the many reasons I in the end decided to stick with the minivan buses. But yesterday there I was with the big buses and trucks and everything else biking through the tunneled karst. Never say never.

Xingping is on the Li River. We ate lunch at a farmer's restaurant not far from these karst. They were the inspiration for the karst on the 20 RMB note.

I have read and been told that the karst formed because their material was stronger or more compact than the limestone that surrounded them. Therefore they remained when the other limestone washed away. At least I think that's what I've read and been told. I have to admit, I don't much care. I am simply captured by their visual drama.

My eye yesterday went from the orange, persimmon and pomelo groves to the karst. From the farmers harvesting their second crop of rice to the karst. From the vegetable patches to the karst. They make an intriguing backdrop.