International Flare

Monday, Sept. 1 – Sunday, Sept. 14

Sorry that we have not posted for 3 weeks. We have been so busy and so tired. We got a chance to go to Kowloon last Saturday. We took the bus route with a group of people. We wanted to find a Chinese/English book to give to a friend and were able to find it there. The taxi ride to the Shenzhen Port, going through immigration at the Hong Kong border, taking the bus across the bridge to the metro station and making a change to the next station took 1 1/2 hours. Coming back was even worse as we had to wait 45 minutes for a taxi. Next time we will take the ferry….more expensive, but ½ the time and very easy. Next time we will also go into Hong Kong Central and skip Kowloon. I wanted to shop for clothes and found 1 shirt only.

We had been trying to make plans for our upcoming Chinese National Holiday – Sept. 27 – Oct. 5. Nothing seemed to be coming together. Then Friday, we were approached by our director and asked if we would be interested in being chaperones for two high school girls who are living with them. They wanted to go to Chengdu (home of the Panda and Terra Cotta Soldiers), Guilin and Yongshou where we wanted to go. They would pay for Tom’s expenses (except food) and I will have to pay my way. They would make all the arrangements. We accepted, and that’s what we’ll be doing. It takes so much pressure off of us. The girls are Korean, but from the New Hampshire on an exchange program for the semester.

Yesterday, the 13th was the QSI annual International Brunch. It turned out really well and we stuffed ourselves with all kinds of great food! We had a good turn out of parents and everyone seemed to have a good time. I was on the committee to help set-up and clean-up. It was headed up by another teacher and was well organized. I didn’t wear any of my international outfits because they would be too hard to work in….I went red, white and blue.

Our shipment finally arrived on Wednesday night. Apparently there was a problem with the shipping company that was to bring our stuff from San Francisco. We found out a couple of weeks ago that our stuff was still in SF. Our shippers were very apologetic and put it on the next available flight to Shenzhen airport. It cleared customs with no problems…..none of our boxes were even opened….everything was in perfect condition. In one sense it was like Christmas….Yeah!!!! And in another sense it made our apartment a mess for a few days until we could unpack and organize it. We put a lot in our spare room and just took the school stuff to school yesterday. Now we have space in our living room again.

Today, Sunday, we got invited to go to lunch with the Chinese man that we gave an English/Chinese book to. It is the New Moon Harvest Holiday and Chinese usually spend this day with family. Since his family is not in the area, he asked us to join him. He ordered for us. It was interesting to each shrimp with the head and antennaes still intact. Somehow seeing those beady little eyes made them hard to eat. Everything was tasty, but different than the typical Chinese food that we are use to in the States. We discovered that in nice restaurants, rice is not automatically served. They request it at the end of the meal. This is a tradition from long ago in a time of famine when there was no rice. So they eat everything else first and then the rice to remind them that they can now have rice.