Da jia hao!!! That's 'Hello everyone!!!' We thought we'd share a few photos of some things here in Boading. Very few people speak English beyond, "hello" and "Nice to meet you" (similar to our extent of Chinese but we are improving with our weekly lessons and need for survival), but having English on your clothes is common. It leads to many shirts that we read as we walk along that don't seem to make any sense to us. But it would be rude, we think, to take pictures of people or their shirts and there are so many odd ones that we forget what they say before we have a chance to write them down. But here are some examples on various things. Superlatives are common, even if they don't exactly go together. But all in all, it's tons better communication than our Chinese.
Just a few of the sights that made us take a second look.
Fall is arriving here in China. We've had to break out the woolies to keep us warm at night. The heat in our building won't turn on for a few more weeks. It hasn't been that cold yet, but I hope the heat comes on soon.
We had a lot of rain yesterday so today the air is clean. Everyone's mood seems to cheer up when the air is clean. Cabin fever can get to you very quickly in these small apartments.
This weekend our boss is taking the English teachers to Beijing. We hope to see a few places we didn't see on our previous trip. Should be fun. They promised we'd eat a meal at a western restaurant, like Sizzlers or TGI Fridays. Can't wait.
Ni hao, y'all. Things here in Baoding are going well. We had a very busy week of classes. We also met about 100 students for English Corner where students can practice speaking English in a more relaxed setting. We met outdoors after dinner time, where we played some games and danced to the Cupid Shuffle. It was a hit.
This photo was taken in front of the Beijing Art Museum with the much younger couple teaching with us- Lauren and Cuyler. The sculpture reminds us of the helmet or bean in a downtown Chicago park.
Its Sports Day on campus this weekend. Classes were cancelled today and the students participated in track and field events. They were having a good time cheering on their classmates. Marianne was again very popular with the students. She was in many group photos, again. I have to start makin' some money off this.
Marianne with her many fans.
The girl next to Marianne is Felice. She is our Chinese teacher. We have a quiz on Monday. Gotta study.
Below are a couple of short videos of the sports action. The Back-to-back race was very exciting. These teams needs to work on their technique a little more.
Here, the boys are running a heat of the 800 meters. They all start out great, but they are usually struggling at the end.
I met one of my students there and he told me he's running in the 5,000 meter race on Saturday. I asked him if he ever ran that far before and he said 'No.' I asked him if he's been training for the race, and he said, 'Well, I've been riding my bike.' I'm not sure if he'll be in class on Monday.
At 12:00, everyone took a break for lunch and a nap.
We promised some more photos of our trip to Shanghai.
This are the fountains at the People's Square. Its a nice space in a busy city.
The city is very beautiful at night. Many building are lit up and neon lights are everywhere. Along the river is a promenade called 'The Bund'. People flock here to get some great night views of the city.
This is old part of Shanghai. As you can see it is a very popular place to visit. It was tough to get through this part of the city, but we made it and eventually found our way back to the hotel for a well deserved nap.
We ran into these folks on Nanjing Rd early one morning. Marianne had a hankering for a Mr. Donut and on our way we saw the seniors doing their tai chi and dancing. From midday to midnight, this pedestrian street is packed with shoppers and people-watchers, but at 8am it belongs to the seniors.
We found a nice Italian restaurant that serve a great Caprese salad with fresh mozerella. We went there twice. We also found a place that had good burgers and quesadillas. So after loading up on western food and four days of sightseeing in Shanghai it was time to head back to Baoding. We had a long but good train ride back, and met some nice students along the way that wanted to practice their English.
The young man to the left had a 14 hour train ride to his university in southern China. No big deal.
The young man below was a student at Nanjing University. They both promised to be our tour guides if we came to their city.
'Hey' to all our family and friends. We've had a great week off for the Fall Moon Festival. It was also the National Holiday this week. That's like our July 4th. Both holidays in one week meant that most people were also off. So the trains were packed and the big cities were full of people celebrating the holidays. We decided to take the time to travel to Shanghai. We had to take a train to Beijing first so we spent a day there. We stayed in a hostel for the first time. It was a great experience. We would do it again.
It was the Happy Dragon Courtyard Hostel. It was a fun place with very good food.
This was the door to our room. The accommodations were simple, but comfortable. The staff spoke English very well and they were very helpful.
We had a full day to touring around. We started at Tian'anmen Square and the Working People's Cultural Palace near the Forbidden City.
As you can see, the weather was perfect, and the air was very good. After spending a few hours here, we headed to the Beijing Art Museum. It is a very good museum specializing in mostly modern art. I think this piece was very well done.
I was getting hungry after a full day of being a tourist. So we headed back to the Happy Dragon for some pizza. It was very good. They had a great rooftop dining area in the cafe. It was neat. The sun was setting and the cool breeze was so comfortable. We were with Cuyler and Lauren. They are the young couple who's teaching with us in Baoding. They had been doing their own touring, so we shared stories of what we saw in Beijing.
The next morning it was time to go to Shanghai. We took 4+ hr ride to Shanghai on the bullet train.
The top speed was 191 mph. Nice ride.
Marianne here: Shanghai has the Wall Street of China and so it's very cosmopolitan with many large skyscrapers.Historically it was under European influence and so many of the older buildings are right out of London, France and the US.
After learning how to navigate the subways of Beijing, we got comfortable with the Shanghai metro system- us and millions of other visitors. Although we saw many more westerners here than we ever see in our own town of Baoding, there were also many folks in from the country for the break and many had never seen anyone who looked like me.Therefore many people wanted to take their picture with us or of us and once a few started, it was like an avalanche. Many times we just had to fight off the paparazzi and escape. Maybe we should have just started charging and recoup our travel expenses.
We certainly have more photos and stories to share but we'll end it here for now to concentrate on prep for our classes. We'll post again as soon as we can.
