Floating a Paper Lantern

Friday, March 20. I had arranged with Jed to call him this morning (Thursday evening in the U.S.). After several unsuccessful attempts to reach him, he finally picks up his phone. Turns out he had forgotten that we were going to talk and is out to dinner with friends. I'm really happy that a phone call with his mother is not at the top of his social agenda! We reschedule another time for next week. I have two classes this morning, then lunch and a nap.

In the afternoon, all of the Senior English teachers observe Tyler's class. He is teaching about the development of Chinese characters and, as it is all in English, I learn a lot too. Following that is a meeting of the teachers to critique Tyler's class. They do some of it in English so I can actually understand and learn from it (!) but then it naturally and understandably segues into Chinese.

At 5:30, D&T and I meet the Senior English teachers at the school gate to have dinner at restaurant along the river. It is a pleasant evening (despite the heat today), and the entire restaurant is al fresco, right on the riverbank. One of the teachers remarks how nice it is to be along the river where "the air is so fresh and clean." Well, we can only hope. One of the dishes we have tonight is fish along with clumps of bright yellow roe - I'm wondering if it's shad. Certainly it could be the right season for it, considering that we are much further south here than in Connecticut.

We take a taxi back to Zhuzhou Teachers College to meet Rock and 3 freshmen young women (June, Jasmine and Jungle!). They show us where they have English Corner every week. It's on Thursdays from 7 to 9, so we will try to go to that most of the time following our own Thursday English Corner. They are so happy to be with us; it's positively endearing. We walk up to Yandi Square and just hang out there in the pleasant evening air. Rock shows us where the furniture market is - it's actually sort of underneath the square! The girls think we should light one of the paper lanterns, so we all write wishes on it and light the little flame underneath. It takes a few minutes for it to fill with hot air, but then it floats off. We watch it for awhile - it is heading over to our school, then off into the wild blue yonder.

At about 9 p.m., all the "young people" head over to the shops for drinks (milk tea and such), and I walk back to school.