Food Poisoning

I was very lucky, minus a small stint of food poisoning in Laos.  Last year I experienced no major food catastrophes.  This year I was lucky enough to experience 'pharohing'.  If you don't know what this is, imagine the "walk like an egyptian dance" and food poisoning and that should describe it to you.

I ate some lunch that day, and I went to the gym.  Then went and ate a huge meal of dumplings.  About a half an hour later, I had to kick people out of my house so I could get sick in peace.  I spent one whole night 'pharohing'.  Luckily I didn't have class the next morning.  So I slept in and then went to class in the afternoon.

But this made me reflect.  Developing countries and developed countries are not so different.  You can get food poisoning in both, though people in developed countries like to pretend their food safety is much better.  You are more likely to get food poisoning in a developing country, but if you are careful you should be fine.

Mid-Autumn Festival, Meishan Longgong

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th Day of the 8th lunar month.  China's national day is October 1st, it makes sense that the two might overlap every once in a while!  This year, they did with a vengeance. September 30th was the Mid-Autumn Festival, a festival where everyone gives moon cakes wrapped in beautiful boxes!  The boxes are beautiful, but most people are not fans of moon cakes.  Moon cakes are similar to fruit cakes, everyone once in a while you can get a good one but it is rare and most people would rather just move on!

Well, for my Mid-Autumn Festival I was delighted to be invited to join an ex-student and his family for dinner in a restaurant.  They came to pick me up, as I slide into the back seat with my ex-student I couldn't help noticing the military style hat on the dashboard.  The hat with the pin of the CPC proudly displayed on it.  Richard then smiled and said "Let me introduce you to my parents.  My father works high up in the government, I don't know how to say it.  My mother works at Yuelu Mountain, if you ever want a tour let me know."  I think I gulped really loudly at this point, but no one seemed to notice. We went to a dinner and I have to say, this was the smoothest dinner I have ever been to.  Richard translated almost everything to the best of his ability, I toasted people and impressed them with my ability to drink red wine.  Which to those of you who know me from home know my tolerance is not particularly impressive.  But it turns out Richard's godfather is a high up from Guizhou Provence and they have invited me to visit them in Guizhou Provence and I think I will take them up on it.  Here is the part of the evening where I realized just how important Richard's father was.  Richard had to crop his dad out of all my photos from the evening!

 So national day I took it easy and prepped for a week of my friend Andy.  But once he was here it was a week of eating, games, and visiting Changsha. My favorite excursion and possibly the most difficult was the trip to Meishan Longgong, Something Mountain Dragon Palace.  It was beautiful.  It took 6 hours to get it and was the most draining trip I have been on in a while.

Here was our transportation for the day:
1. Taxi to the Train Station only to find out there were no tickets to Xinhua.
2. Taxi to the West Bus Station.
3. Bus to Xinhua (5.5 hours)
4. Bus to Meishan Longgong Parking lot
5. Ferry Boat
6. Bus to the Cave
7. Boat ride in the cave.  (Watch your head!)
8. Bus back to boat
9. Boat back to parking lot
10.  Bus back to Xinhua.

11.  Bus from Xinhua East Bus Station to the regular Bus Station
12. Bus from Xinhua Reg. Bus Station to Changsha South Bus Station.
13.  Taxi home!

For one hour at a cave it was a bit much.  But the cave was awesome!  It was lit up on the inside with tons of colored lights.  Some of the other tourists (We were the only foreigners) were grating on us a bit, they were smoking, touching the walls that said "Don't Touch", and of course climbing over railings to take pictures.

So we walked and commented but did little else about it.  It was an enjoyable cave, but the trip down was terrible.  The trip back was almost worst, because there were no movies only Chinese KTV.  The weather was bad, but it was important to see the countryside I think.  Seeing green things growing is so healing for me.  Also remembering that not all of China is flashing lights and big cities full of money.  There is a lot of poverty in the countryside and a lot of places that look like they can't even dream of what and Ipad, let alone ever dream of leaving the country.

Sports Day: No class

Schools in China are notorious for forcing their students to study and be in class for extremely long time periods.  When they get a day off, it usually  means they have to have class on Saturday or Sunday to make up for the day off.  So this friday we didn't have class, but only because we had made it up two weeks ago on the saturday of all the protests.  Instead we had a giant sports meeting for the kids.  This is a time for the students to relax, cheer on their classmates and cut loose a bit.  It is really nice to see, all these smiling faces that are normally fighting to stay awake in class, or studying furiously in a classroom.

Friday morning I woke up to them testing the P.A. system, playing patriotic music over and over trying to practice some of their last minute marching.  As you may recall from my blog last year, sports day involves an opening ceremony where all the classes march past the stage by class, they are graded on how in synch they are, how original their chant is, and I am sure other things.  Last year I watched from the sidelines.  This time however, Chris and I were invited up on stage to sit with the principal and other office members.  So we stood and clapped for every class that went by.  There are 24 classes of Senior 1s (sophomores), 21 classes of Senior 2s (juniors) and I think 22 classes of Senior 3's (Seniors).  So by the time they finished we were all super sweaty and dying, sitting in the direct morning sun!  But then we had the best view for the full demonstration of in synch morning exercises done by the Senior 1s.Watch it Here

Then we were asked to run with the teachers, 800m.  I hate running, but was talked into it by Chris.  So  I reluctantly was lead to the starting line which was surrounded by students.  They were all like "Patty, you are going to run?"  I reluctantly nodded, and the shot was fired and we all ran part way around the track, through the school and then back on to the track.  My students were cheering for me, it was fantastic, thrilling, and completely mortifying!  Odd how often those three happen to me in China!  After I ran I walked around to talk to my students and was able to see some of the other events.  High jump, long jump, running, an obstacle course relay and more.  My favorite to watch was the obstacle course relay, it was intensely amusing.  The students had to run and crawl under those three bars, jump over a desk,

run across a balance beam go around a post and run back jumping over two green squares.  Some of the people would run and try to slide across the astroturf and slip under the bars.  I only saw one successful attempt at this, the rest just looked really painful.  I was a little sad to leave sports day, but enjoyed the rest of the afternoon working on my apartment and listening to the cheers from afar.  I have to admit, seeing my students this happy makes me happy.  This also inspires me to try and make my classes a little more challenging and a little more fun!  My students are intelligent, creative young adults in their own right, and days like friday just serve to remind me of how awesome they are, and why I do what I do!