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Published: October 27th 2007
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Debbie, Tim, Liz and I at the Sports Meeting
The sign says something about "Canada International School" Although I just, finally, made my post about the trip to Shanghai last weekend, you all get a double-whammy this week.
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the students at Nanjing No. 13 School had what they call a "Sports Meeting" (equivalent to a Track and Field Meet). Tuesday morning we were asked to attend the Opening Ceremonies for the Sports Meeting. In Canada, the opening of a track and field meet would consist of a 2 minute announcement about sportsmanship followed by the national anthem. But not in China. The Opening Ceremonies on this Tuesday morning were modelled after the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games and involved all the students marching into the stadium in groups and standing in the middle of the field for an hour and a half as all the other students marched in. Not only did they stand there for an hour and a half, but they stood there in perfect rows and didn't talk to one another! Following the opening ceremonies, all the students lined up on the field for morning exercises. The students do morning exercises every morning, but I have not witnessed it until now. It involves music being played
Stephan, a Teletubbie, and Doraemon
Stephan is a German student that is at our school. He carried this sign so proudly, right between the two mascots. on the loudspeaker that counts from one to eight repeatedly while all the students, in perfect unison, do all kinds of stretches. There is a link for a video showing part of this morning exercise routine at the beginning of this post. There are some pictures of us posted on the school website, seen here:
Nanjing No. 13 School Website On Wednesday, Mike, the principal, took us on a mystery trip. Mrs. Hu, the Senior 3 headmaster, and Elaine also went with us. Within seconds of getting on the bus, Mrs. Hu asked the driver where we were going, so it was no longer a surprise. We were headed for the Venice of China - Suzhou. After a 3 hour bus trip, we reached our destination and met our tour guide for the day, Jenny. We had a delicious lunch at a hotel that reminded me of the food that we call Chinese food back in Canada. Then Jenny took us to a place with lots of small shops, like many of the other places we have been to barter for things. Mrs. Hu warned us not to buy anything from these vendors, but she ended up with the most purchases! Amongst all
Our students!
The Senior 1's, 2's and 3's all running together. the shops are small canals and bridges. One of the bridges is apparently the most painted bridge in all of China. We took a boat ride down the canals and we also got to see a few houses that were owned by some of the richest people in the Ming Dynasty.
On the way home is when the story gets interesting! We left Suzhou at about 3:30pm and drove for almost an hour before the driver drove off the highway. We figured out that he was stopping for gas. No big deal, right? Wrong. Big deal. Big, big deal. The gas station didn't have diesel gas. Okay, so we try another station, right? Wrong again. We tried 4 more stations, none of which had any diesel gas. And it had taken us about 10-15 minutes to drive from each station to the next, so at this point we figured we were VERY low on gas! At the 5th station, we got off the bus and just sat there for about 20 minutes while Mrs. Hu and the driver both talked on their cellphones. Us English-speaking people had no clue what was going on and just couldn't believe what was
happening. It didn't look like we were going to get out of there for a while. So, we all pile back into the bus and are told that we are just going to keep driving down the highway until we run out of gas and then someone will come meet us there with some gas. Ummm....okay. So we drive for another 20 minutes and by this time, I can tell that the bus is running on just fumes. Luckily, before we run out of gas, the bus driver spots another gas station and pulls off the highway. We figure there must be diesel fuel here because there is a lineup of about 50 cars. And I use the word "lineup" very lightly, because it was more just a mangled mess of trucks all fighting for the next spot at the pump. Our driver got out and started to bribe another driver with cigarettes to let us in front of him!! He obliged without accepting the cigarettes. We weren't allowed to fill up, but could only put 100 RMB (about $15 CDN) in the tank. I guess this was enough to get us back to Nanjing, because we did eventually make
it back safely, albeit about an hour and a half later than we had intended.
More pictures of Suzhou:
Suzhou
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Franco
Franklin H
Enjoyed your photos of Suzhou. Been to China, but it wasn't on our itinerary, unfortunately.