Wanderlust: 1000 rmb or less for 2 bedrooms will be a bit difficult to find - figure 1200rmb or maybe more, depending on what you want. 1000rmb for a single bedroom with ordinary (not sitdown) toilet is possible in the main area of town. I don't know about Chenggong.

The high hourly wages for teaching English here are virtually all for foreign native-language speakers teaching rich kids - the average, for ordinary teachers teaching ordinary students in ordinary schools is nowhere near that. Strengthen the rich if you will, but it just makes you complicit in advancing privilege, and participating in it. In the long run the snake will swallow its tail.

To learn to speak a language you obviously have to practice speaking it a lot. However, to improve your vocabulary beyond a certain point (i.e., that of everyday language usage), you need to READ a lot - in written material you will find a lot of words and usages that you will only rarely hear in daily conversation.

@yankee: Safe as it was before - still kills anything alive, doesn't do anything for chemical impurities etc. in the water. Probably should boil it slightly longer here than at sea level because of the lower boiling point at altitude, but I don't boil it for more than a few minutes.

Don't know why you don't trust the bottled water. I do. although I don't use it at home - I boil tap water, don't use carbon filtration (though I think I probably should, though I doubt if most people do), comes out cheaper than bottled water and is convenient.