5/23/09
Hello to all!! My brother Tim in Atlanta is actually posting this for us because of recent developments with the internet here in China. Thanks, Tim!!
Along with adventure travel comes irony. And irony abounds here in our small city of DanYang, China. Everything seems to be going great here as far as teaching, enjoying our city, seeing the other areas of China on the weekends, but two nights ago our home 24/7 DSL internet access began to hiccup for a few hours. First we could not get online at all, and then when we did finally get back online it was intermittent, and once it finally seemed to settle down and all was well in cyberspace, suddenly we could no longer even access Google with any confidence. Hmmmmm....
By yesterday morning the situation had worsened. We can access Google, sometimes, but other sites are blocked and the only real site that is being blocked that we give a damn about is Blogger.com because that is our blog domain host. Just to verify my hosts are not tapping my phones and restricting just our internet access, I hopped on my bike and went over to a local internet cafe this morning and sure enough, www.Blogger.com has been completely blocked here in China for the time being. Ditto YouTube.com...there's chat on the net about why but I can't read it because the powers that be are blocking any search results that even mention Blogger...that is the wide reaching power of Communism in a nutshell...
For some reason, there is no explanation available from anyone of course, we can no longer access the host of our blog, Blogger. I've heard of this happening before we got over here, you can look at which sites are blocked at www.greatfirewallofchina.com, but I was thinking ahead last year and created a back-up blog on another site, Travelblog.org, just in case.
The irony is we can't ask anybody why our blog host is blocked, or any other sites for that matter, because then it would be apparent that we are trying to access forbidden sites here in China. Duh.
So I will be sending out an update soon to everyone I think is reading our blog and send them over to our back-up blog instead. Maybe things will loosen up in a week or two, maybe they will get more restricted, we honestly have no idea. It's all part of the adventure in the Middle Kingdom.
Talk soon...
To read the old blog you can go here, www.gypsykingadventures.blogspot.comTo read our new, updated blog you can go here, http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/GypsyKing/
Thanks for reading!
Sean & Jenny
In our spare time...
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Also enjoyed:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Why are we reading what we are reading? 75 Books Everyone Should Read by Esquire
Hello!
- Sean n Jenn
- DanYang, Jiangsu Province, China
- Jenn and I met on Match.com and our first date was such a disaster that we still laugh about it! We had fun, our first kiss, we danced, I made her cry, we drove home alone wondering why even date in the first place. But I liked her. A lot. I apologized the next day and asked for another chance. She was sweet, and forgiving. And still is. And we couldn't deny the electricity, like two souls merged together by chance, and fate? Almost two years later we began to dream about a different life - a life of adventure, where everyday presents new challenges and experiences and we both do something that matters, adds value. Being adventurous thrill-seekers, we downsized everything, started saving, took some weekend seminars, and turned off the TV. We decided to stop talking the talk and started walking the walk. We chose the first year of our adventure to be in China. We moved here, found jobs and a great school(s), and are now teaching English as a second language in the #1 and #2 high schools in our new city, DanYang, and the adventures are just beginning. This is our first blog...
