Stranger No More

The first week of July I agreed to help Teresa with a couple of recruiting trips in order to try to get more students for summer school. The first weekend trip took us to the edge of Yunnan province to a small town whose name I don’t recall now. While this only gave me a glimpse of Yunnan, I will say it was an amazingly beautiful area and it left me longing to see more. We extended the two day trip to take a train out into the deep country for another day of recruiting. For me this involved just smiling and looking non-Chinese, both areas I excel in. The small appearing community we landed in was crammed into a steep valley with towering peaks. It was a very vertical town that took no more space than Santai but contains nearly four times the population at about 400K.

I awoke a bit before the group, (along with Teresa and I had come her assistant and two male friends), and went for a walk before rejoining them at the hotel. It was a great walk that let me check out only two streets and a bridge due to the layout and the time constraint. Like so many places in China I was met with friendly smiles, invites to converse and the sniping ‘hello’s’ as I walked by. The Hello Sniping is an interesting phenomenon in China that involves both adults and students that are too shy to get caught in a conversation but still want to show off their English skills to their friends by hollering ‘hello’ as you have already passed them. If you turn towards them at all they will usually giggle and shrink away although sometimes they will relish the opportunity to engage in a conversation. No matter how long you are in China it is not uncommon when you meet someone for them to say, ‘Welcome to China! Happy every day!’.
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Yeah, I’ve been pretty slack about updates but I’m still here and have some great stuff to share. I expect to have time this next week to catch you all up to date on the stuff I remember - a reason to to not wait. Thanks for checking in and I’ll get back to y’all soon.