All posts tagged: around town

Around Town: Campus Garden

  In the ever increasing hustle and bustle of our growing campus, the campus garden is yet one place to find quiet and relaxation from a very busy day. It’s located in the heart of our campus – an oasis with benches that invite passersby to sit down and rest, to enjoy nature, and maybe take your assignments with you and enjoy some extra fresh air, while doing your work. The garden is maybe one of my most favorite places on campus.

Around Town: Bike Ride Around Town

Spring is certainly in the air, and that means the time for our bike-rides has started again. With some of my colleagues and friends, I like to get out, and usually we ride somewhere out to the fields just to get away from the hustle and bustle of town. In the recent two years, there has been a lot of construction going on out there – they have been building a lot of roads. But since there is hardly any traffic those roads are perfect for our bycicles, though we also love to go off road on one of the many trails that connect the fields with the villages.

Around Town: Discovering Spring

Though it has been rather chilly, lately, spring is in full swing. The other day the sun came out and it was such a gorgeous day, that I decided to get my camera out and do some discovering. Even though it’s still a bit early, I did find what I was looking for and I’m sharing it with you today:

Around Town: New Super Waka

They are everywhere in the area: the Waka supermarkets. Our campus alone has several of them. In the beginning of the year, another Waka just opened its doors down the road from our campus. To date, it’s the biggest supermarket in town – a real asset around here. Now, we don’t have to make the laborious trip to the city anymore, when we need butter or the likes. They even have cheese – an absolute rarity in these parts. Never before has cheese or butter been sold in this town, which means it’s a definite step up from when I first arrived here!

Around Town: Campus 2

You may remember that a little more than a month ago, I posted a photo of one of the main roads of our campus during the winter holiday: it was completely deserted. That prospect now, however, has completely vanished. Ever since school started again about two weeks ago, our campus as been buzzing with students wherever you turn. The photo you can see here shows our main shopping road at a time when it actually wasn’t busy at all. This place often can get a lot more crowded!

Around Town: Lantern Festival

Of course, with the Lantern Festival being the day, the highlight of all the fire cracking – when for one night everyone is going berserk with lighting fireworks – I had to make a little more effort than on the Chinese New Year’s Eve to get some better shots of the fireworks. Now, the town’s official fireworks show had just been canceled, due to the drought around here and the town officials’ decision to invest the money in watering the fields instead of blowing it up with the fireworks. So, the best shot I would have to get some good pictures – I figured – was the roof of the teacher’s flat. So, I grabbed my camera, positioned myself alongside some of my colleagues, and then I watched. And pressed the shutter, of course! Take a look yourself:

Around town: Snow!

It snowed! Yes! Finally, our world has turned white, too! It usually turns dirty rather soon, with all the coal that’s burnt all around. But at least for now I’m happy. Not, only do I love the snow, but it also is the first time in months that we’ve had anything wet coming down from the sky! With some of my colleagues, we were even arguing the other day, whether it was September or October that it rained last – as none of us clearly remembers anymore. But no matter who is right or not, the fact is – there hasn’t been any precipitation (that’s Niederschlag, for my German friends, lol) since the fall of last year. So having snow now – I’m sure – makes almost everyone here happy!

Around Town: Getting Ready For Spring Festival

Spring Festival, the most important holiday in this nation, is just a few days away. And everywhere people are getting ready for the biggest event of the year. Here in town, streets are being lined with the obligatory red lanterns, and trees get decorated nicely with twinkle lights. It actually looks quite like it does at Christmas in other parts of the world. By the way, as we are speaking of Christmas already – look what I found just the other day when going into town for dinner: You are right! It’s a gingerbread house! The real deal. Saw it in the window of a restaurant and it did make me feel quite like Christmas. Did I ever mention that here in China no one really cares about whether it is the season or not to have Christmas decoration out!?

Around Town: Campus

This is what our campus looks like during the winter holiday, when students are gone: Empty! During the semester you’ll never find the campus anywhere near as deserted as this, as there are crowds of students everywhere (pretty much at any given time). And I must confess, though I miss the interaction with the students, I really do enjoy our campus being this quiet and solitary. It’s a rare occasion and therefore must be savored, especially since the number of students grows every year!

Around Town: To the Mountain

It’s our favorite retreat: the mountain about 30 km from our town. It’s not really anything special, not even the place the majority of Chinese around us would choose for a hike – they prefer the neighboring highest peak in the area that has stairs leading all the way up to the top. But when it comes to hiking, we like the “non-stairy” business, the natural trails. While everyone in this area knows about the neighbor peak, hardly anyone knows about the gorge that leads just past said peak between the mountains. We just found this place early in spring last year, but it was our first time to go there since the beginning of winter. And with all the undergrowth gone, we found a lot of new trails that we’ll definitely explore in the future.