The Day

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This has definitely been a long day with all the trials and tribulations. I could barely drag my butt out of bed this morning to start off with. Lunch, would could have been bad, ended up okay. The school we teach for has arranged for us to eat meals at our hotel. Like most good hotels in China they have a restaurant, however, we have determined they only serve lunch and dinner. We eat in our own private room three times a day, however, at breakfast we are the only ones there. They obviously buy food out on the street and bring it to us. Plus our sweet little waitress is not there to take care of us in the morning. At lunch and dinner she is always there with big smiles. She has the air on for us and takes good care of us. She speaks a little English and Megan speaks a little Chinese, so it is fun, but she is so nice and so earnest. You can tell she so wants to communicate with us more. Today Megan headed down to the second floor for lunch ahead of me. Shortly she was back saying the restaurant was fool. She said our waitress was very apologetic and from what Megan understood she said she would see us later. We had seen a large group entering the hotel from an outside entrance and apparenlty they had filled up the whole restaurant, including OUR room.

No worries though. We headed to the street where I had lived previous trips to buy noodles on the street or lunch crepes. Being that is was the heat of the day we opted to take a taxi. When we arrived across from Xinyang Technical College, where I have taught in the past, alas the street vendors had already closed up, or maybe it was too early. It was only a little past noon though. We decided to start walking back towards our hotel and watch for what might come up. The dilema is however, when you are in a foreign country where you don't speak or read the language and they don't understand yours it is kind of hard to read from a menu. We were lucky this time because just a short bit down the street a restaurant was open - well kinda a restaurant - pictures soon. They had seating inside and she cooked on the street. As we went to check it out we saw she was cooking some delicious looking fried rice. Megan said I want that, so we pointed and ordered and sat down. The advantage of this type restaurant is you can see what they are cooking and point to it。 I saw they also had noodles so I ordered them。 We had a delicious meal of stir fried rice and stir fried noodles。 YUMMY Then we decided to walk back to the hotel to work it out.

I returned to the school early to download my pictures, so I can post them to here. Another thing we take for granted - being able to read what is on our computers。 I tried to download them here but I can't read anything so I can't。 I don't like using the computer at the school too much, but I will do that so you can all have pictures. YEAH

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Comments

[Karen]

Hi Linda
Not sure if you get these comments or not, but thought I would try. I certainly do feel for you!! Can't wait to see the pictures you have taken. I can remember we had our private restraunt room also. They are really so nonschallot (sp) about so many things. I was totally lucky when we were in XiXian. They provided an internet connection hook up for us in the hotel room and I had brought my laptop. Was wonderful. God Bless you and be safe. Love, Karen