School Day, Shopping, & BBQ

Another uneventful night! We must be lucky, and I bet that changes soon. Linda woke up about an hour early, so I played the sneaky dad and picked her up, paced a bit, and then lay down with Linda on my chest. It worked; she fell right to sleep again and squeezed another hour out of her! Payback was not as bad as I thought it would be, but there was a little tonight as she did take a little bit to get her asleep tonight. Needless to say, this trip isn’t too bad since we are getting some sleep.

Today was very “busy” as we chose to take the optional trip to the school down the road. We visited a class and those kids were sharp and quite excited to see us. It was a 5^th grade class and they have been learning English, so this was part of their study and test to see how well they did. We had a blast. At first we were divided into sections so a family had about 7 children to ask questions and in turn be interrogated. Yes, there were more boys than girls, but not as bad as you may think. This little session was quite interesting as the boys really liked the sports talk, either about basketball or football (soccer), and the girls were not too interested in that. Both were quite good with Linda who soaked up as much attention as she could stand.

When we completed the classroom session the children got to show us their school. I must say that it was one nice place. The classroom we started in was pretty Spartan until you notice the little computers built into the desk and the pull-up section for the monitor. Their main classroom had desks very similar to what I remember and they were grouped in 4s or 5s. We had the opportunity to watch the classes come out and do their mid-morning exercises. Their library was not bustling with books, but it was stocked pretty well and nicely laid out. Then the kids were so excited to show us the “animals”, so we trekked up the stairs, 6 levels from my count, onto the roof. There they had plants growing and on one corner had some animals! A monkey, a goat, an emus or ostrich (I can’t tell the difference), some chickens, and a couple of other critters I did not get a close look at. The garden had a variety of plants. These kids get a pretty good all round education from what I could see. Before we left, two boys just had to show the swimming pool. It was a 3 lane pool, enclosed, and pretty well maintained. All 3 boys claimed they could swim the length of it at what I guess to be 25 meters in length. Phew, too bad they don’t have AC because we were sweating profusely from running up and down stairs!

We spent some time walking up and down some streets and doing some shopping. It looks like
we will be heading back to a couple of places since I did not have the cash on me when we went browsing. There are some incredible prices to be had around here and I bet if we were able to take time and travel a bit further away from the hotel it would be much better. Alas, we will have to stick with our local area do to time constraints. We leave early Friday morning and we have a trip to a Buddhist Temple tomorrow morning and our trip to the US Consulate for Linda’s visa!

Before dinner we had the Holt customary group photo by the red couches located in the hotel. We dressed Linda in a dress we acquired in Nanchang. The other girls were also dressed similarly. Oh, how darling they all were. We definitely had a nice batch of children. (Bias, I am.)

The highlight of the day was the Holt BBQ at the restaurant by the pool. Here you select your choice of meat and/or vegetables to be grilled and they grill it up. Not a bad fair. The fun was when you finished or close to finishing a wait person would swoop in and take your plate. On one occasion I had gotten up for another round and left a small plate with cantaloupe all cut up for Linda. Mel was feeding something to Linda and they swooped in and snatched the plate. I had to get another slice of cantaloupe for her. Amazing! They tried a second time, but everyone at the table stopped them. At the beginning of the meal, they brought out these little dishes of steamed eggs of which we decided not to feed to Linda until we returned home. At first we had two at our table as we had two children. I came back from the buffet and we had another one and I was informed they had to turn down two others! What’s with the steamed eggs?! Towards the end I was finishing up my salad and I had maybe two bites left when staff came by and asked if I was finished. Jeez, can’t a guy finish what’s on his plate? As soon as I had taken the last bite, I commented, “Now they can take my plate.” Sure enough, the plate vanished. Amazing! This annoying sequence happened all through dinner and turned into a joke. At least we enjoyed what was served.

Have a great day, all. We can’t wait to be home!