…and lots of pictures not posted yet.
Today I am leaving Guiyang, possibly forever. I’m heading to Chengdu, then Chongqing, down the Yangtze to Yichang for a look at the Three Gorges Dam, then maybe to Xi’an before stomping into Beijing on July 8th.
Last night, I went with one of my students to the home of one of her former teachers, where we had an excellent view into the stadium to see the big Jay Chou concert. That was pretty amazing.
I’ve been saying a lot of goodbyes and doing a lot of cleaning and packing…trying to cram a lot of stuff into not too much space. Er, I guess that’s what packing is.
More soon…I’m under a deadline to get cleaned up and get out today.
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Wan Hang and Henry model a Fender guitar and a bottle of Bud at Pizza Hut in Guiyang!
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Yesterday morning, the Olympic torch passed through Guiyang. I’d heard that its planned swing through Jinyang had been cancelled, but clearly I either misunderstood or was misinformed. In any case, at a time when the torch was about to pass probably no more than half a mile, a mile tops, from the school, the foreign teachers were all roped into an interminable, pointless early morning meeting (only the second one we’ve had to go to all year). Some of us get the sense that this was done intentionally in order to keep us off the streets. One of my colleagues, frustrated, cleared out of the meeting and tried to get outside to see what was going on. The guard would not open the gate to let him get out. Finally, when he started climbing the fence, the guard let him out, but the torch had already gone by.
As for the rest of us, we were stuck with watching live TV coverage in one of the classrooms, where we recognized streets and buildings that are probably a ten-minute walk up the street. We were mad. In fairness, however, none of the several thousand students were allowed to go watch, and neither were their Chinese teachers.
In the end, it still seems like an insult, because the rest of the time, we’re pretty much allowed to come and go as we please.
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This is Wan Hang (though you don’t get the full impression here because she did a closed-mouth smile in this picture, maybe to hide her braces):
And the guy to the left of me here is Henry (I think maybe he has braces too):
They were both at my birthday party, but you didn’t really get a good view of them…these pictures are from a couple of weeks ago.
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As much as I disliked living here before, these days I’m finding it pretty sweet. In fact, unless I’m forgetting something, I haven’t left Jinyang in nearly a month.
In addition to the availability of Western-style fast food (as previously mentioned…many times), there are better grocery stores here now, plus several farmers’ market-type places and a convenience store that’s open until midnight. There’s also a bar that has karaoke, although I haven’t been there in some time. I think the last time I was there with some of the other teachers, we exhausted all the English songs they have that we know.
Come to think of it…having not left Jinyang in a whole month, that probably means that I have also not used any motorized form of transportation for a whole month (including elevators). That’s got to be pretty healthy and green. Or it would be healthy if I wasn’t eating huge amounts of fast food chicken and ramen noodles all the time…maybe it’s a wash overall.
It didn’t start out that way, but life has actually become pretty good here, and there are a lot of people and things I’ll miss.
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I’ll have to tell everybody more about my great birthday…there are some photos that were taken by one of the other teachers that I hope to get a hold of soon. There was a cake, candles, and I wore the birthday crown!
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