Travel Agency Trials!

Friday, September 19. I have two classes in the morning. Both go reasonably well, but one class definitely has a much lower level of English competency. I give them what I think is a relatively simple assignment but they just don't understand. Clearly, I'm going to have to bring it down to a lower and slower level for some of my classes.

The weather continues to be very, very hot and humid (oh, did I not mention that before? It's just a fact of life here!).

I take a nap in the afternoon, then go to the travel agency to try to get some info about going to Suzhou/Nanjing during our "holiday week." October 1st is National Day in China. Because there is really no such thing in China as discretionary vacation time (at least for most people), typically all of China travels during this week! I'm thinking of going to Suzhou (the "Garden City") and Nanjing/Zhenjiang (Pearl Buck sites!). But I still don't know exactly which days we have "off." Like everything else in China, it's made public very last minute. On top of which, in China it is not possible to buy train tickets until 5 days before you want to travel (unless of course you have lots of guanxi). I don't understand the reason for this but it seems to be the modus operandi.

Later, the travel agency was hilarious. There were a couple of young women who spoke a little English and of course I speak virtually no Chinese. So between the two of us, two cell phone calls (one by "Penny" to a colleague who speaks better English and one by me to Diana, our assistant Field Director, who speaks Chinese), and one of those free, instant translation sites on the computer, we managed to understand each other! At least I was able to find out in general how much things would cost. As mentioned above, you cannot buy train tickets until 5 days before you want to travel so you can imagine what a madhouse it will be then! So I have to go back to travel agency next week. But it's much easier buying tickets through an agency than going to the train station. That's a complete zoo. I've done it once, just for the cultural experience, but definitely don't need to do it again!


Note: at the travel agency, there were piles of brochures for Disneyland in HongKong! all in Chinese of course, but the mouse is recognizable in any language.


David and Tiffany invited JuJu and me to dinner tonight. JuJu has offered to give Tiffany some Chinese cooking lessons. I am more than happy to watch and to eat! We have a lovely evening, and JuJu makes a kind of soup with scrambled eggs, tomatoes and water, then cooks noodles in it. Also, mushrooms (but not mushrooms that we've ever seen in the US, except maybe in Chinatown) and a cucumber salad with sesame oil and a little soy sauce. It's fabulous.

The bad news is that JuJu tells us that we will not have the whole week off for the National Day holiday. We have to teach on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday preceding October 1st. So this week, we will teach Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat (our regular Tuesday classes), Sun (our regular Wednesday classes) and Monday (the usual Monday classes) before we can leave. So now I'm not sure what to do. I really want to go to Suzhou and Nanjing but it's a long train ride and I don't want to come back on Sunday because I need a little time to recuperate before teaching again on Monday. Grrr. There's a huge variation among schools in terms of how much time they give off for these things. Well, maybe by the time we can buy tickets, I'll actually know which days I have off too.