Mark and Mary decided to go to Sichuan province in the west of China to see her aunt. Before they left, however, they bathed their 2 week old puppy, causing her to become very sick. 3 days and 270rmb ($38) later, Lily and I have been the ones dealing with her.

Little Puppy

While doing this, we’ve been working hard to prepare lessons and strategy for our new teaching business. We had 220 business cards printed for 40rmb ($5.80), bought 3 books for 278rmb ($39), and we’ve begun handing them out to her friends and family to distribute.

Last night we had dinner at her uncle’s house again, and this time I had the pleasure of meeting his girlfriend. Besides that fact, he made another amazing meal! Lily spent a good deal of time talking to his girlfriend about our plans, as she’s very wealthy and has a daughter with many friends.

Her uncle offered to drive us home in his brand new Subaru, a car one in America might scoff at, but after living here so long is a nice change. It even uses an automatic transmission and he offered to let me drive it whenever I wanted. I’m definitely taking him up on this deal sooner rather than later.

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The other night I met a Mexican girl at Mike’s by the name of Paula. After a great deal of talking and plotting, we’ve tentatively decided on April 2010 for a 1 month Mexican-style run through her country. I know that with my new business I’ll be able to afford the 25,000rmb ($3,700) trip in a years time. What excites me the most about this trip is the fact that I’ll be staying with locals, eating local food, and seeing what locals see (and how they really live). The less touristy this trip is, the better. I’m talking full-on Mayan ruins, jungles, whales, hiking, kayaking, and whatever else I can do!

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As of 3 months ago, Wuhan installed free public bike rentals throughout the many city districts. It’s free to apply for a card that’s valid for 3 years, and it’s available to foreigners as well. They give you 4 hours before you have to return the bike (to any station in the city), but the best part is that you can take a bike from 1 station, drop it off at another one, pick up a new bike, and your 4 hours allotment is back! I plan to take full advantage of this, but have to wait a few more days for my ID card to return.

I’m also going to get my Chinese drivers license so I can legally drive Lily’s uncle’s car.

The kicker though, is that because these hours are during the work day and school, most of our time will be free to do anything we want. So that means bringing in the laptop and playing video games. Nothing better than a job where you are paid to do nothing. I’m so in love with China right now

I’ve started buying appliances and other things so that I can actually begin my life here. Up until now, I’ve been living with nothing in my house other than my laptop and internet. But I am going to buy a mini stove and other things so I can start preparing my own meals from scratch. I know you’re thinking, “what, Sean actually being useful in the kitchen and making things from scratch??” Well in China the cheapest way to live (and healthiest) is to make your own salsa, your own pizza, and whatever else you want to eat, because a lot of the foods westerners are used to eating just either don’t exist here, or are way too expensive to buy, so it’s much cheaper to learn to make them yourself. Hell, I’m going to learn how to make bagels

PS – Added 300 more pictures/videos to the Thailand album (total of 464 now) and 50 pictures to China album. For your information, the pictures on these albums that look like just a black screen, if you double-click on them they will play the video for you.