Happy Helloween Party!

 

It’s almost Happy Helloween Party time!  Be sure to greet your neighbors with a special “Hello-ween”.  Although Helloween time is popular for commercial and party reasons, there is no official holiday here in China.  It will be a normal school day for our students.  Last year there was a huge celebration at the kindergarten with costumes, fake webbing, bobbing for apples, and trick-or-treating around the classrooms.  This year they decided not to do this again and for a good reason.  The university will host its annual sport’s weekend! 

This is a time where average university students compete in various track and field events.  Because these students do not regularly compete or carry on a basic exercise routine, many come in jeans and sweaters.  Some get winded and quit races before they finish.  Sadly, foreigners are not allowed to compete, so I may opt out and travel with some of the neighbors in my building of foreign 'experts', (this is our housing block for all visiting professors and foreign language teachers). 

Recently I met another group of foreigners that go camping and hiking on the weekends.  I will join them this weekend for an excursion.  Not too many details were involved, but I found a tent, sleeping bag, and ground mat.  The weather is not hot anymore, but certainly not too cold.  The coldest it gets here at this time of year is around 50 F/10 C).  Thankfully my sleeping bag is rated for -5 C.  My cold-blooded nature will be protected in the sleeping bag oven. 

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Ah…. Cooler weather finally rolls in and with this comes sore necks and runny noses.  The children at the kindergarten are practicing the habit of using a tissue, (ALL BY THEMSELVES), and covering their mouths when they sneeze.  These may sound like common courtesies, but in China, young children rarely exercise them.  Most adults wipe everything for a child and public coughing, sneezing, and spitting is a common sight here among people of all ages. 

I've finished my third week with one particular classroom.  This month I’ve been spending one week in each of the four classrooms rather than one day/week in each room.  It allows for more time with each classroom more time to develop and assist each classroom environment as necessary. 

My own throat is a bit sore, but thankfully I am in the land of delightful citrus varieties.  I can load up on vitamin C through green oranges, tangerines, and the most amazing miniature tangerines known as tiny sweet honey oranges.  They are the width of a Ping-Pong ball and just as good as the name suggests.  The tea and honey is also quite abundant, so I imagine recovery will take place in the next day or so. Hopefully sore throats to not disturb the Happy Helloween Party time in the rest of the world.

Jo and Ted's Excellent Adventure

The adventure started early Tuesday morning.  After catching a cab to the train station and boarding the train we traveled at around 200 km/hr. to the city of Yichang.  We walked around the city and ate few street snacks before heading to the Wooden Fish town in hopes of catching a last minute bus to Dajiuhu.  During the five-hour bus trip we stopped for a bathroom break around location of the first kiwi fruits.  Vendors with various sized kiwis lined the road for the remainder of the trip.  Although the ride was spectacular with amazing views of the towering ancient mountains, we arrived late into Wooden Fish town.  A police officer told us that his father could spare a room at his home for the night.  The father showed up on a motorbike and invited us to hop on for a short trip to his place. 

The bike carried us to his home, which has been recently converted into somewhat of a hotel.  Not a legal hotel by any means, but certainly a place with many lockable rooms, clean beds, and a bit of shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom.  The price was right and after a full day of travels we were happy to each have our own warm and clean bed.  The owner also called a friend to take us to Dajiuhu in the morning.  A passenger van arrived around 6:30 AM and we were whisked away to another site where more tourists waited for a ride.  The van had only 5 extra seats, but he managed to squeeze in a 6^th person.  The people were a mixture from Wuhan and Beijing.  They were busy discussing how much easier it would have been to have traveled with an agency. 

Although we had no intention to travel to the Dragon Rack geological park, the park was unavoidable if we wanted to visit Dajiuhu.  Before entering we purchased two passes to Dragon, (or peasant) Rack and Dajiuhu National parks.  The credit card-esque ticket had a superimposed image of the famous Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys in front of the geological park.  After admitting us all into the park, our passenger van was stopped by the police.  The driver was known to have carried in tourists before, but on this day he was fined for not being a licensed tourist bus and was forced to take us back to where we bought the tickets.  Luckily he did not charge us for driving to the ticket site and he waited in the long line for us to get bus tours with a licensed company.  

On the licensed bus we watched videos on repeat showing imagines of the park and the playful monkeys.  I kept a lookout for wildlife, but with the thousands of tourists during the national holiday, the wildlife was limited to a few common birds and many common insects.  After three hours of travel our first stop was Dajiuhu.  We had one hour to enjoy the national wetland park and to climb up to a lookout tower and see the many natural lakes of the area.  Next we had almost an hour to climb around the rock structures of Dragon Rack and read about their not-so-obvious resemblance to various images, such as “girl looking into mirror” or “meeting gate of the immortals”. 

The trip had a few more stopovers in lookout points of interest.  The golden monkey falls was fairly spectacular.  The final stop of the trip took us to see a few of the famous Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys play around in cages.  Thankfully the cages had enough space for the monkeys to move and swing, and a guard to keep people from throwing stuff into their cages. 

When we got back we were starved.  After finding place to stay for the night we stopped at the first restaurant we could find.  The tables were full, but a table of University students recognized me from the bus ride into the town and invited us to sit with them.  We shared a feast of several dishes and a hot pot before pouring ourselves into bed.  Our goal of the morning was to get to Dangyang, the town of a teacher from the school.  She had invited us to spend the days of the national holiday with her and her former classmates.  In order to get there, we would need to first get back to Yichang.  The direct tickets were sold out for the day so we took a short trip to a town about an hour away and then found seats in a bus to Yichang.  We arrived in Dangyang before the late afternoon and Lucy picked us up from the bus station.

Everything about Lucy is lovable.  She and her classmates have done well in life and they enjoy getting together during the break times.  In the three days we were there we had a banquet every day.  The children were just as happy as the adults to have a foreign guest.  They were extremely hospitable and invited us to play/watch/learn mahjong.  I proved to be too much of a slowpoke to keep up with the pros.  I’ve never seen marked stones fly around so quickly. 

In addition to the food, fun, and mahjong, we visited a small village museum, a large man-made dam, (built in 1957 by over 100,000 workers with only mud, stones, and other natural materials), a large Buddhist temple, and the 4^th largest reservoir in this country.   A friend of Lucy’s gave us a ride back to the city for a few days of rest before returning to work.  I’m looking forward to starting workweek and introducing a way to honor a person’s birthday in the Montessori classroom this Wednesday.