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Published: October 12th 2009
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Lesson pow wow
This is me Helen our translator and the photographer which was heling with the language barrier. First let me start by saying how much I love everyone's comments. It is a highlight of my day to come back to my room and get to read everyone's comments!!! And Josh...I will NEVER eat the turtle!!!!
Okay, this morning started off a little differently than yesterday morning...we had to check out of our hotel before leaving for the days events due to the fact that we would end the day some 2 hours away in the town of Wuxi. I woke up, got ready, packed my stuff, Skyped with Josh, then headed down stairs to check out and eat breakfast. As I got off the elevator with my luggage I was approached by an employee that wantd to help me with my luggage and would not take no for an answer so I reluctantly said okay. As I was walking toward the front desk I hear a crash!!! The man had dropped my bookbag...which contained my brand new netbook (mini laptop)...he was like "so sorry" and I turned back around so that he could not see the look of horror on my face at the thought of my new netbook being harmed in some way. I waited until
I got to the breakfast table to check and realized that it had indeed been harmed...the hinge is broken and another part is cracked...but the computer is still fully functional...at the moment anyway. It was hard to move on from this terrible start...but to break the suspense...I was able to put it past me for the sake of the rest of the group. 😊 So, I ate toast for breakfast again...I have avoided TD (travel's diarrhea) thus far and I hope to keep it that way. Then we all loaded into the mini bus and headed to JIE for another meeting with the administrators where we listened to them talk about their institute and how much they appreciate our coming to visit them. Helen and I met with our translator (for our lesson that we will teach on Wednesday to the Chinese children) and her first words were...the students will not understand this...too hard!!! I am sure that my face went completely white (what in the world can we do about that now??) But, after more conversation I think that we convinced her that it will be fine...we will see. LOL We did get permission to go outside which means
that we will be exploding coke with Mentos no matter what...which ultimatley means that our lesson will rock...at least in the eyes of the students!
Then after a long morning we headed off to lunch, which turned out to be very similar to last nights dinner minus the alcohol....need I say more. I ate some fruity snacks on the bus on the way to Wuxi 😊. Oh, before leaving for Wuxi (since it is a 2-3 hour drive) we all needed to take a bathroom break. I have been very lucky up until this point that I have always had a western style toilet to use UNTIL NOW...I had to pee on the floor...can I just say that the Chinese must have thighs of steel. I am not going to say anything else on the subject except to say that I was successful!! :D
After lunch we loaded onto another mini bus to travel to Wuxi where the middle schools that we will be teaching in are. We arrived without much incident, and thought that we would have at least an hour to relax before meeting the Wuxi administrators and eating dinner...but no...we had 20 minutes to get
Martin eating....
Martin likes to lick his chop sticks. It is not every once in a while..it is every time that I look up he is licking them...it is not even really licking..it is more like sucking on them...very strange...Martin is a very strange man. to our rooms, freshen up and get back down stairs for our tour of a new senior high school in Wuxi. When we arrived there was a GIANT sign welcoming us (see picture) and Ming and I tried everything that we could to get a good picture with it..I consider our success modest at best. This place was HUGE. They have about 2000 students and 80% of them live on the campus. We learned a lot more about that at another meeting with the administrators. My head was spinning from all of the translation and exaustion. I have never been so happy to see a banana in my life.
After the tour we headed to dinner with the same administrators that we had spent the day with. The dinner was very similar as the evening before with multiple courses being brought out all of the time and sampling everything was "encouraged." I won and lost on being adventurous this evening...I didnot try nearly as many things as the night before BUT (and this is a giant but....) I drank! I know, I know...if you know me at all you are not going to believe this which is why I
Martin sleeping again
This picture is even better than the preivous one. have included photographic evidence. Dr Hua (pronounced Wa) is a very friendly and generous man and when he comes over to me and asks for the honor and privilage of filling my glass I can not say no. I managed last night to avoid it and tonight he was too much for me to deny. I was sipping at first with every toast and then as the evening wore on and people started to feel "happy" every toast was ending with "BOTTOMS UP" and when I finished wihtout an empty glass he would point to me and say "something something something...translated to...you did not do bottoms up!!! Do you not understand the meaning??" I never bottoms uped, but by the end of the evening I would say that I drank at least 1 full glass of red wine, which is probably more alcohol than I have ever had cumlatively in my entire lifetime. So, to finally get to the title of this blog....
As dinner was ending and we all loaded back into the mini bus the sound level and enthusiasm of the group was a bit elevated and the conversation was diverse and captivating to say the least.
The meeting of the giants
This is Dr. Harbor (the tall one) and he is with us. Then two of the administrators from the high school that we visited AT some point in the day Jackie was quoting Mark Twain so on the bus ride home I mentioned that although I really wanted to go straight to bed, I need to blog before I was able to do so and almost in unison they said...one should never blog after drinking...which was soon amended to be, "in the words of Mark Twain...never blog after drinking.
One last note...the hotel in Wuxi is gorgeous but I have a TWIN bed!!! I am totally falling out of bed tonight, the question is just how many times will I fall out?
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minger
non-member comment
yo
In the words of Edgar Allan Poe... "Nevermore!" that's what I think about the drinking!