Hide and Seek
So we had a scheduled Chinese lesson from Ping yesterday that fizzled. Jed worked at being a bad student as he wasn’t feeling it and I just sort of lay there. Jed even made the suggestion that we might be better students in an environment other than our pad. So after a short time struggling to get us to pronounce correctly while her friend Sunny sat and listened to music we successfully took the wind out of Ping’s sails. Well, that and Vivian arrived. So the new plan became to go to Hualin Mall to go ice skating. I’ve never ice skated. As we began our trek Vivian’s mood went South as she indicated she was hungry but we didn’t really stop to feed her. Once we finally arrived at the mall and got to the fifth floor ice skating rink she went to the food court, (imagine a row of Panda Express), to get something to eat and then join us on the ice. Jed had decided against getting on the ice and at 6′4″ I imagine it was a ‘harder they fall’ concern. It initially turned out to be just Ping and I on the ice but Sunny joined us after a bit. It was a pretty small rink and had lots of kids and beginner skaters. Now, since I used to go roller-skating back in about ‘78 I was optimistic that some of those principals would apply. They did. After an initial spill that convinced me I wasn’t as good as I hoped I’d be I was able to take it down a notch and skate pretty well. I had to be careful not to cause a major pileup as I was surrounded by kids. One kid who was really good, (apparently he was also a youth coach or something but looked 12-14), skated around near me shoo-ing kids off of me and generally just watching out for me. For a brief moment Jed and Vivian appeared up in the observation area but never joined us. The kids were a blast chasing me around. One small girl stepped right into my path and I was able to scoop her up and put her down without either of us falling. Whew. Ping had only skated once before a few years ago and Sunny seemed as if maybe it was her first time so we all got a pretty good workout. After about an hour we decided we’d had about enough. Ice skating is tough work but I can also see the appeal as it was a lot of fun.
We turned in our skates and went to find Jed and Vivian thinking they must have gone back to the food court. Nope. We couldn’t find them. Since Ping had given her cell phone to Jed we thought we’d just give them a call. Nope. No answer. The three of us then walked up and down the five floors of the mall three times for the next half hour until Sunny had to leave to go to school. Ping and I made one last trek to the top. You know, in case we weren’t tired enough. Turns out they still weren’t there. We made another unsuccessful call and decided to walk towards the Square in case they had ended up at the coffee place or The Habitat. Still no luck so we decided to get something to eat. We went to this soup house thing where you select kebab sticks with vegetables on them basically choosing which ingredients you want in your very fresh soup as they kind of flash cook it up right in front of you. Very yummy. It was now about 8:30 and we had finished skating three hours prior. Made a stop at the music/dvd store where Ping bought a cd and I picked up King Arthur on dvd. Another call and it is nearing 9:00 so we decide to head back to the pad and see if they had returned to where we started. Nope. We watched the last fifteen minutes of Cheaper by the Dozen that she had started watching with me the previous week and then put in Forrest Gump. I haven’t seen it in years and it is amazing the number of pop culture references that someone from China who has never been exposed to all of the history and culture of America might not get. Finally at about 10:30 Vivian called and gave a sigh saying ‘Finally!’. Hell no. I just handed the phone to Ping. I don’t what they said, sounded Chinese to me. Ping and I watched a bit more Forrest Gump and I walked her out to a cab around 11:00. I went down to the net café for about an hour and went home and went to bed.
I told my contact in Sichuan yesterday that I would let her know today, (Sunday), if I would accept the offered position. I’m feeling tired of the lack of activity here but I am nervous about packing up and going to Sichuan. Kind of ironic, eh? I packed right up and moved to China but now am nervous about changing provinces. She replied telling me to contact her when I get to Chengdu so she seems confident I’ll accept. The contract is until June 30th and includes medical. Many of the jobs out there are 12 month contracts and rarely have medical insurance. I’m thinking I’m going to go into the office tomorrow and ask for my passport and hop a train to Taiyuan in an effort to head off to Chengdu and then the small, (1.5 million), town of Santai. If I can get the medical certificate that’d be good too. I’ve looked up the train schedule and it is about 27 hours from Taiyuan to Chengdu. Better buy a soft seat. So it would seem that I’ll likely not be in Santai before Wednesday. The school here still has a chance but they’ll need to put me in another city and reimburse me for my considerable expenses to date. But they have a chance. Sichuan is the actual spelling of what we often call Szechuan so the appeal of the sub-tropical, small town with clean air and great food is pretty strong. I’ll let you all know before I bail Datong.
- O