pictures and lengthy update
Lillian, Shanshan/ Roma, and I at Tiantan.
Tiantan
Tiantan is probably my favorite park I’ve been to in China so far. I like traditional parks very much, but Tiantan is a whole different style. It’s very spacious with lots of straight lines, a strict north/ south orientation and lots and lots of green grass and trees, rose gardens, as well as sparsely maintained areas with little winding paths between rows of scraggly trees. It’s all there. Here you can see the Temple for Prayer for Good Harvest in the background between the rows of trees.
Shanshan flying a kite. The wind wasn’t too good that day. At least not good enough for our amateur skills. Not that we didn’t plenty of suggestions. Tons of people would turn and look at the little foreigners trying to fly a kite. They were always telling us to run or not run or let out the string or whatnot. Actually they were often right. If you ever wanna start conversations with a lot of random people, just fly a kite in a public place. That day I met the first person I’ve probably met in China who not only had heard of Washington State, but knew right off that I was from the west coast when I told him. Made me so giddy! As soon as I say Washington State, people are always like, “oh yeah, I know that, that’s the capital of the United States.” Then I must try to explain that Washington State is not even remotely the same as Washington DC. This fellow asked what states we were from and I said Washington and he was like “Washington State? That’s the one on the west coast right? North of California?” made my fuckin’ day. Seriously. That’s the first time that’s happened to me in the five months or so I’ve been in China.
In other notes, we are pretty much done with teaching here. We though we had a full week left, but turns out we sorta don’t. we showed up on Monday to the elementary school English office and they were like, you don’t have classes today, the students are doing test preparation. And we were like “tomorrow? Later this week?” but nope, we’re pretty much done. They still have stuff for us to do, like grading papers and stuff, but we’re done teaching. Kind of a shame. But also life is less stressful now.
We finish up here this coming Tuesday and I leave China on the 5th. This apparently leaves me time for some sort of 4th celebration that all the Americans in Beijing have. I would guess something with fireworks and booze. Sounds fun. Will NOT let self be hung-over for 13 hour flight.
After much hassle (compared companies, found good price, ordered ticket, got delivery time, waited for three hours, called the next day, found out their website had been down and they somehow hadn’t actually processed our order and the price had gone up 2,000 kuai over that one day, had to find another way, got info, got directions, took bus out to Xidan, bought ticket, etc.) Lillian was able to change her plane ticket to the fourth, so I have a travel buddy!
We are planning our trip now, and thinking of heading westward. Looking to get in some hiking, some history, a little city time, mountains and perhaps heading out towards areas with minority peoples. Thinking along the lines of Xi’an, Hua Shan, Xining and Dunhuang.
More travel details and some pictures of the school and students forthcoming