October Happenings

Friday, Oct. 24

I took my class to Fairy Lake Botanical Park about an hour from Shekou. The bus ride alone was an experience. While driving on the freeway, our bus driver missed his exit. So what did he do? Well, the only natural thing….he started backing up the bus!!!! It’s pretty scary that it didn’t even freak me out. We backed up about a hundred feet, and finally the other teacher sitting next to me in the front seat who could speak some Chinese, communicated to the driver that going backwards was not safe with a bus full of children. He needed to be driving forward and just take the next exit. He argued with her for a few minutes until she told him that his boss would not want him to be driving unsafely with children. He quickly put it back in a forward gear. It was amazing that the other cars were not even honking at him.

The park was very nice. We visited the cactus area, the shady plant area, and the petrified forest. They have transplanted these petrified trees from all over China and made a little forest there. It was pretty cool.



Thursday, Oct. 23,

I was walking home from work and ran into about 10 ladies from work. They were going to have dinner at a “hot pot.” They asked me to join them, and I decided to be spontaneous and let Tom fend for himself. I was so glad I did. I had so much fun. Three of the ladies that came were Chinese and did the ordering. We went into a private room with a big table with a hot plate in the center. The waiter brought in a big shallow pot divided into two parts filled with soup broth. Stella ordered all kinds of vegetables and some very thinly sliced raw beef. One half of the pot was for the meat. Everyone put some veggies and beef in the hot pot and in a few minutes, it was ready to eat. They also had various sauces for you to blend. I copied Helen Du. We mixed soy sauce, some vinegar, sesame sauce, mashed garlic, and mashed ginger. It was great. They had several slotted ladles to take out your veggies and meat. We put what we wanted on our plates and put sauce over them. It was sooooo good and very healthy!!!!




Monday-Thursday, Oct. 20-23


We had Spirit Week at school. We had to dress in school colors, have “crazy hair” day, dress backwards, and Pajama Day. I had a punk rock black wig and black glasses. A lot of people didn’t realize it was me. All day long I was calling the kids “Dude.” Every other word was “Dude!” One kid in my class actually shaved his head to look like a soccer ball! Pajama Day was my favorite. We took it easy that day and ended with the kids laying on the bean bags and me reading from The BFG. It was good to have a fun week.


Saturday, Oct. 18

I went to Dong Men today with a group of ladies from work. Five of us shared a taxi and hung out together for the afternoon. Our main purpose was to go to a huge fabric warehouse to buy material to have some clothes made. We had a lot of fun. I bought some material to have a blouse, skirt, and a pair of pants made. You had to bargain for the price of the material. It was pretty funny. One guy kept trying to get me to buy some plain cotton material for 23 Yuan a meter. I stuck to 20. He yelled at me, “OK!” He thought I was a good bargainer. He had to climb on top of some material and do a balancing act to get out the bolt I wanted. Now, I need to take the material to the tailor.