Nice Day For A White Wedding
Crazy day yesterday. Kevin, my recruiter and contact got married yesterday. We were riding there with the two women that work in the school office, Maggie and Anna, and were late as they haggled down the price of the flowers they took. The reception was very nice and there was a serious amount of all kinds of food. I wouldn’t say I am the master of my chopsticks but I’m not starving. Now that I think about it it could be all the finger food I’m eating.
Teachers from all over came into town for the wedding so it was great to see and talk to so many that have already been doing it. Some have only been here weeks,
others over a year.
The day before we met up with a bunch of the teachers and hung out downtown. Downtown is a loose description as this is a rural provincal city of ~2.5 million. It is very urban. All the cities look like they’ve been bombed but the people are constantly sweeping.
We bought some pijiou(sp?), (beer), and were walking around town for a while. Mostly because we could. We stopped at the fountain in the middle of the city square and were taking a break when somehow an unopened pijiou burst. I set my beer down and was helping Dan clean up the green glass when I looked over to see my pijiou had been moved in on by an old man. I was okay with it and sat to have a picture with the guy but he took off.
Dan wanted to go to an internet cafe so we agreed on where and when to meet later. Jed and I along with Robert, a teacher from Taiyuan, roamed through the ghetto back alleys for miles. Got some great photos. We ended up with a small herd, (pod?, gaggle?), of children following us. The kids are always excited to see us and we are often met with, “Hello. How are you”. While waiting for some kebabs to cook up we taught a young boy how to play rock/paper/scissors. They are always delighted to have their pictures taken and I got a great shot of the otherwise camera shy Jed walking down an alley with about ten kids in tow. We finally ducked back in to the Black Bright, (I had the name wrong), that we serendipitiously came across. It was over an hour before the kids finally got bored enough to leave the front steps of the bar.
Of course when we got to the meeting place there was no Dan so we swung by Carlos’ apartment. No Dan. So we headed around the corner to the internet cafe where we had to calmly talk Dan into backing away from the keyboard. He had been playing a game for 4 plus hours. Crazy. All the way to China to lose yourself in a video game.
It is Tuesday morning here and I’m going to head back to the apartment and see if we have a plan. The plan today may be no plan. There are some great tourist attractions near that Jed and I really want to take in before we end up assigned to another city.
I don’t know if I can keep up this pace. Maybe, I’ll try to be a little less long winded. Tell me what you think.
Yours in Buddha!