Stranger No More

At the first of each month the students typically receive a short holiday. No school Friday afternoon at noon until Sunday evening around 7pm. This is the longest time they are without classes each month. Students who live in the school take the opportunity to visit their parents to do laundry, receive allowance for the next month and just get some down time at home. Students who live in the community and go home every night when classes end at 10pm take this time to relax and socialize.

On Saturday the 1st I was invited by some grade three students to go to hot pot with them. It is still odd to be eating and drinking beer with eighteen year olds. Thankfully none of these guys smoked and I didn’t have to admonish them for that. We finished up at dinner and decided to walk around the corner to Allen Story a large chain of bars with locations throughout China. We were joined by Daisy a student from grade two who speaks English very well. We watched the singers and enjoyed another round before calling it a night. As we dispersed in several directions Daisy invited Edward and I to her home for lunch the next day. She invited me to her home last year for lunch, her parents a very nice and her mother is a fantastic cook. We both happily accepted the invitation.

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On Elly’s blog she calls out blogs by foreigners in China and the obligatory, Omigod, the bus/taxi/car driver was so crazy entry. She is right, of course. I have mine. Elly lives in Beijing and the best part of her making the callout is that she is a bright, articulate Chinese woman, (beautiful, too), blogging in her second language. If I ever finish my post about my trip to Tibet you’ll be able to read about how I met Elly. If.
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So I finally went to China Post today to mail some gifts I bought in Shanghai. Specifically I wanted to mail my sister and mother some Chinese clothes for them to wear to see the Peking Acrobats in Madison later this month. I included some items from Tibet last summer as well as something from Song Pan last Spring. Yeah, it is high time that some mail went out of Santai.

Nothing is simple. I’d love to tell you how fantastic my spoken Chinese is and how I get along so well in day to day life. I’d be lying.
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With no great plan for my several week Spring Festival Holiday I was excited when Mark asked if I wanted to go to Shanghai to hang out with Cameron with him. My friend Roberto who used to live in Chengdu lives there now so the prospect of seeing Roberto again, (Very Cool Dude), added to the appeal of a visiting China’s largest city.

As the holiday approached I heard from Mark that he was having cash flow problems and wouldn’t be able go. Since tickets hadn’t been purchased I wasn’t too worried but I was now without plans. After a little thought I decided to head East anyway and contacted Roberto to see what he was up to.
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Last nights lesson at CCES, (the school for young learners that I work part-time at), was about action words. After a good solid review of words like write, hop, run, jump, dance, draw, sing and bounce it was time to learn the words in sentences.

We moved onto to short phrases incorporating those words.
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