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http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/ …..a visa to go to China? Should be easy but my friends from Melbourne, Bruce & Kerry have been working hard for theirs, for their planned trip at the end of June & into July. They've jumped through a few hoops while I've been trying to organise trips & accommodation & plan travel from Chongqing, through Hunan & down to Guilin before they fly back. They were originally asked for a complete list of ALL places they would be staying over the 3 weeks they'll be here, which sent me into a spin as I prepared to, overnight, book all the accommodation then compile all the information to send for them to persuade the authorities it would be safe to let them in. However the next time they went the provisional itinerary was accepted. It leaves me with more time to fill in the blanks, as well as do everything else as the end of the school year approaches at an ever accelerating rate.....
…..I managed to book 2 of my remaining “personal days” holiday on Tuesday & Wednesday, for Danny's birthday. He used to play music with me in Yangzhou before he moved
Wuxi, Jiangsu
Another rapidly developing city of over 6.5 million that most people outside China have never heard of to Wuxi, about halfway between Yangzhou & Shanghai. It's a busy place, as are all Chinese cities. It's classed as a second tier city which means, with a population of only around 6,500,000 it's not in the big league, but it's booming & prosperous & gives every impression of being a big city. I spotted several apartment blocks of more than 40 storeys under construction. The combined main bus & train stations I'm pretty sure are bigger than the International Airport where I come from. The bus station waiting rooms consist of 56 gates on 3 levels which, (I haven't checked recently), I'm sure is a bit bigger than the Adelaide coach station.....
…..smoke! I always disliked smoke & now that the harvesting is finished around this end, rather, edge, of Yangzhou the little hired combine harvesters have left in an increasing pall of grey smog as the stubble in the fields is burned off. I hope it doesn't last too long.....
…..Paul & I have lunch today with the future Secretary of the UN, at least, that's her ambition. If anyone is likely to make it, it's probably Sun Xiaowen, or Julia, one of my students &
Red Lion, Wuxi
Danny with a guest singer the first from our school to make it to the finals of the prestigious CCTV English competition in Beijing. Her parents have invited us & Alice, one of her Elementary school English teachers, to lunch at the swish '9 weeks' restaurant across the road from the school. Usually too expensive for humble teachers but they appear to be very appreciative of extra help we've all given. Their daughter is another example of an only child who is smart, well mannered & just a really nice kid.....
…..poor Tianyi (George), my Sunday student, who didn't make it to the finals. He is devastated for a while. I get a flurry of text messages on the theme of, “I failed”. While I think kids should learn to accept that they can't succeed at everything I don't think they should dwell on the negatives so I manage to convert the theme to, “You didn't succeed THIS TIME”. He's back to his normal, cheerful self, ready for another crack at it next year.....
…..the other two girls from my Grade 8 classes at school didn't quite make it to the finals but I'm able to give them some positive feedback for their
Julia and parents
Thank you for the thank you lunch. pretty creditable marks & they're also being very philosophical about it. They are appreciative of feedback by phone or SMS while in Wuxi, in the evening or early in the morning, trying to come up with characters & a plot for an impromptu play they have to perform plus a one minute speech on, wait for it, “The colour of happiness”. How about “aubergine”?.....
…..I've been trying to get Shen Yue's son to speak English by tapping into his interest in insects & photography so now I give him my old Canon SX-1 & we wander around, Monday lunchtime, looking for insects to photograph. We find a good one this week, as yet unidentified, (see photos).....
….I think we have all come to the conclusion that we'll never be able to understand Chinese as it is spoken in Yangzhou, just as a Chinese person who ends up in Glasgow or Louisiana might give up on English. The good news is if I speak to people NOT from Yangzhou it's possible to have a conversation. Simple, halting & with a lot of clarification required, not a great achievement after 3 years actually living in a country, but progress nonetheless.
The 23 year old Moslem guy who runs his own little La Mian noodle shop near Gloria Jean's is always ready to chat with the foreigners who now frequent his place since Alex discovered it & I can actually understand him. He's from Lanzhou, in Gansu province, about 1,500km from here.....
…..I cancel my Saturday night gig at the restaurant so I can attend the birthday dinner of our Dutch friend Klass. Nice place, great spread & a mixture of his friends from work, at the Power Generator manufacturing company, & others, (us). Despite the language difficulties he seems to have a really friendly bunch of colleagues.....
…..congratulations to Sunshine for the most inappropriate English sentence construction of the week. After sitting on the curved, tubular arm of a chair for a few minutes, as we wait to be seated she gets up & announces, “My ass not good feel”. Of course, I know what she means.....
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Glyn
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Cities
Like you, we were always amazed at finding enormous cities we'd never heard of. The first for us was Chongching.... before the Yangtse boat trip. xx Glyn and Bren