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Tuesday was destined to rain - again. It was cloudy and felt like it was going to bust loose soon. I let the girls sleep in as I realized they are still college-aged students. But about 10:00 I needed some translation services and I felt good about calling out Jessie’s name in a low voice, and she responded quickly. To my surprise she appeared out of her room dressed and ready to go within seconds. She apparently was already up and going long before I called her.
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Wednesday brought excitement that I was getting closer to getting my sweet wife in Hengyang. But I needed to get the apartment cleaned. Edwin and Mary hired a cleaning lady that comes by once a week or so. They helped me arrange for her to come by my apartment and spend about four hours or so cleaning. The cost of ¥50 (~$7.50 USD) for four hours of work seemed way too low and I wanted to pay her more. It was explained to me, again, that tipping and paying more than requested is considered an insult in China. It’s like saying, “If I would have paid you more would you have done the job right?” The woman spoke no English so when she arrived I had Mia walk through the apartment with her and go over the chores of things I had created as a “To-Do” list. None-the-less, I had the apartment cleaned and I was very grateful for her services.
I was up early because I knew that Donna would be at the airport in Chicago waiting to board the plane for her trip here. I had told her to call me from the gate to tell me she was on her way. I was expecting that call about 7:00 a.m. here which is about 6:00 p.m. the evening before in Chicago. On cue, the call came and she was on her way! I had one last class appearance to attend. It was Barbara Last’s class. I answered the same questions I had from the previous classes with a few exceptions. It was still fun. And then at the end I announced that I had been waiting all week to make the following statement, “My work here has now come to an end and now that I have spoken to Mrs. Last’s class, I have spoken to my last class!” They didn’t understand my humor but I was so proud of myself.
Friday morning couldn’t come too soon for me. It was the day Donna was to arrive. As planned, Mimzy and Cindy showed up at 8:00 o’clock to escort me to the airport in Changsha to pick up Donna. As we talked on our route to a taxi I discovered that they were both missing class to help me. When I questioned that they told me that they had never been on the high-speed train, or to the Changsha airport, and it was an activity that they did not want to miss. They knew that I was paying for their train tickets and they wanted to go! The $25.00 each way for both of them was a small price to pay for the comfort of knowing I had Chinese speaking guides and translators by my side at all times!
The morning sun was up and Donna had been in bed (with a varying amount of overnight solid sleep) for about 11 or more hours. I knew that my jet lag had turned around rather easily with the same kind of schedule. I thought she would be good to go if she could get out of bed and stay up again all day again. No Chinese naps for her. Fortunately, she’s not a napper anyway. After some coffee, tea and some breakfast foods we were ready to explore the new world before us.
It was Sunday morning. Jessica and Mia wanted to make breakfast for the Myers and us. They made a very traditional breakfast much like I had been served at Jessica’s house a few weekends previous. The noodles with sausage and egg that was served was just as good as I had been served earlier by her family’s live-in cook, Luo. We also had real brewed coffee brought down by the Myers. It was more than I usually ate for breakfast but Donna is a much better breakfast eater than I, and I wanted her to experience this cuisine as best she could while she was here. We ate the noodles and sausage soup with chopsticks! Of course, we were supposed to pick up the bowl when it only had the liquid contents remaining and drink the final portion of the dish
As had now become our routine, albeit short, we had breakfast with the Myers. They brought the brewed coffee and we brought the Friendship Bread that we had purchased the previous day. It was to be our next to last meal together, at least in China for this summer. I have so enjoyed the fellowship of this amazing couple.
We had planned to go to the electronics store that morning so that I could perhaps buy a few digital items that I wanted that thought I could get cheap while I was here. I was looking for a flash drive or two that were bigger than the ones I currently owned. I wanted a bigger digital card for my cameras, but mainly wanted a card reader for my most recently purchased SDHD card. I brought a card reader with me for the old digital cards and I thought that it would work for the new disk. It didn’t, and I wanted to download my photos from my camera to my laptop more as a security and back up to my files than the concern of not having enough digital space left for the rest of my trip. Tuesday was the start of our vacation portion of this trip. Donna, as usual, had researched many of the sites she wanted us to visit and had done her usual due diligence. We had made arrangements to Meet Tina in the lobby of our Hotel at 9 o’clock this morning. We had also planned to sit for a few minutes with Tina to see what she wanted to do for the week and to see what she could, or was willing, to help us with.
Tina, Liu Nia, was one of my best students at Harding in Searcy. She had high English TOEFL scores and could have been in any Freshman Speech class, but I recruited her to take the ESL class I was offering to help me with my Chinese students who were not so fluent in English. Ever since I had announced my intentions to travel to Beijing, Tina had been offering her assistance to show us around her hometown when we arrived. After Tuesday’s visit into the Forbidden City, and knowing that I would go to the Great Wall the next day, I was expecting a down day. But The Temple of Heaven proved me wrong. The Temple of Heaven is a worthwhile visiting place in Beijing. It is much bigger than the Forbidden City and smaller than the Summer Palace (however, we never made it to the Summer Palace).
We had agreed to meet Tina at the North Gate of the Temple. She arrived there by whatever public transportation was available from her house in the ‘burbs to this central Beijing location. We taxied to the Temple and had arranged this easy and convenient meeting place. Tina had wanted us to meet there because our afternoon destination was directly across the street, “The Pearl Market.” Breakfast was great! The Park Plaza Hotel caters to Americans and other foreigners very well. While they had some traditional Chinese offerings for breakfast they always had plenty of the kinds of foods that we and other non-Chinese folks were used to for breakfast.
Today was a day that every tourist looks forward to when they come to China. Climbing the Great Wall was on our agenda for the day. According to some information I found on the Internet, the Great Wall stretches from Shanhaiguann on the east to Nur Inner on the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. The most comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has recently concluded that the entire Great Wall, with all of its branches, stretches for 8,851.8 km (5,500.3 miles). This is made up of 6,259.6 km (3,889.5 mi) of sections of actual wall, 359.7 km (223.5 mi) of trenches and 2,232.5 km (1,387.2 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers. |
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