Vacation week

Well, I am off to experience what promises to be quite an experience. I am leaving in a few minutes to get on the train to HuangShan, where David and I are heading first for our vacation. October 1 celebrates the 59th birthday of the People's Republic of China; which means that we have a week vacation for national day. The train ride alone promises to be an experience because it is a standing only train. We have heard it will be absolutely packed and not exactly comfortable. But I am not sure that anyone with whom I have talked has actually ridden this variety of train, so after tonight/tomorrow I will be able to tell some of my Chinese friends about their own country.

I had a nice tutoring session tonight with April, one of my students. Well, I call her April, but her real name is Yang JingYuan. As you can tell, April rolls off my tongue a little better. On Friday night, after a tutoring session with Yang Jing, another one of my students, she invited me to dinner. We walked a little ways down the road outside of the university. Once inside, I enjoyed some wonderful niu rou la mien, or beef and noodles, served with cilantro in a delicious broth. It is a very popular dish in China. The dinner was made even more enjoyable by the owner's kid, and some of his friends. They were probably 6 or 7, and apparently don't see too many foreigners. So they kept coming up to me and staring, maybe saying "hello" and running away. Jing taught me how to ask what one's name is, and I was able to get a response from one of the kids. The awe was not limited to the kids though, an older man at the next table also got in his share of staring; as well as announcing the presence of the foreigner to most of the people who entered the restaurant, and he seemed to be egging on the kids to try to talk to me. It's just a little different to be looked at with so much awe or wonder. I didn't feel like an animal in a zoo or a freak at all, it's understandable in a nation which was closed off to the world until 28 years ago and is 92% racially homogenous. Well, it's time to take a taxi to the train station and most definitely give up the American 3 foot personal space bubble.