Saturday May 29th

OH Wow! Satuday was such an awesome Day!Oh but I want to preface all of my blog posts saying my english has gone out! I'm so used to listening and even speaking to everyone in broken english that It is kind of messing me up. So Saturday morning we met some of the students and MORE FRIENDS at 9 am out by our gate. They had asked to hang out with us and take us shopping. WE were super exited to get out and see the city and to hang out with them. There were 5 of them who we spent time with. We got into the taxi and drove to Shasher (this is only what it sounds like I don't know how to spell it). Shasher is the big downtown of the city and the shopping district. We went to this huge shopping center where we went and looked around. THey tried to get us to buy a pair of shoes, but the biggest size of shoe they have here is a 39 which equates to like a 7. The shoes were cute though. We got a mirror though for our room, but mainly we were there just to spend time with everyone. Oh, also madison got a shirt that was in English but we couldn't understand what it said even. After we left the shopping center we found a street vendor and got corn on the cob which is always delicious and took the bus to the city wall.
Ok about the busses, since I haven't talked about transportation yet. There is pretty much 3 ways to travel. One is by walking, which isn't practical when you are across town and don't know where you are. We actually walk several places within a mile or two but not much past that. Another way is to take a taxi. for the taxi we have a sheet of paper that has where we want to go in Chinese. This is convienient in a way but a little more money. It isn't alot comparitivley. The most we have payed has been 13 qui which is about 2$, but that is still over the price of a meal. A meal ranges for one person around 5 qui at the most really unless it is a nice resaurant. Another form of transportation is by bus. Bus is 1 qui, so it is less money than a taxi. Busses are very crowded though and you are usually standing for long distances going over pot holes, swerving (normal asian traffic stuff) and abrupt stops with little room to move or breathe. I have gotten fairly use to busses as they are so helpful. One of the bad things is you must have a Chinese person with you or you will have no clue what to do!!
Ok back to the story. So we went to the city wall where we played a few carnival type games along the river there and took photos. We also went to a street vendor where they got us a pretty Chinese knot thing that stands for saftey in Chinese. It was so sweet! I absolutely love it. Come to think of it though, most "souveniers" I will bring back are gifts or things we have been taught by our students to make as well. We went to lunch at a random place off the street. It wasn't too clean, chopsticks had mildew on them, but the food was excellent. We had of course tomato and Eggs (a Jingzhou staple), a beef dish, purple cabbage, and greenbeans(cooked diff.). It was a great lunch we had. Well we walked back to campus and left very sad froma great day spent together. We invited them to come to our apartment one day cause we are going to cook them mexican food (we brought tortillas for this reason). They are some awesome friends we met.
After we got done with that we got ready for the dinner and show with the other foreign teachers here for the same purpose we are. This was a good time to sit around with them and other chinese "members" and talk. I enjoyed the time together alot. the show was this magic 5 minutes sortof. I got it on tape. It is pretty cool as he changed opera masks and that was the magic. I can't wait to see the Beijing Opera.
Cool Story!!!! After dinner Madison and I decided to walk around the streets in Downtown Shasher by ourselves and see the street life and several little shops set up. We decided we would be ok cause we had the sheet with our campus written on it to give the Taxi driver. So we went and had great fun seein the city and occasionally we would be stopped and someone would practice their english with us. We enjoyed it alot. We went into a cd/pirated dvd store (you can't buy non-pirated dvds anywhere all of them are pirated). I got two cd's I am so exited about. One is chinese music with the traditional chinese music on it and the other one is "12 girls Band" based out of Shanghai and who are chinese musicians that play the traditional instruments. I am so Exited to hear them. We also looked at the many homeade selling things and found a really cute headband someone made. We enjoyed looking at this stuff so much! It just lined the streets in Downtown. Well towards the end when we were tired around 10pm we decided to go back. We found a taxi place and hailed a taxi. The firt taxi got someone else and so we saw a second one who stopped for us. I was inside the car and madison was getting in when we realized neither one of us had the paper to give the cab driver to tell them where to go. We don't speak Chinese well enough and the name of the campus is difficult to say and neither one of us remembered it anyway. As she was getting in though I heard him say "Where do you want to go". It didn't click that this was in english until a few seconds. None of the previous taxi drivers (there have been alot) have spoken any english whatesoever. It was a shock! So we replied back with the english name of the University and he said ok and started talking with us. Asking us where we are from and how long we have been in china, etc. We couldn't communicate which campus as there are 5 campuses in the city North, South, East, West, Central. So we started worrying a little but trusted that HE brought us to this taxi driver he has the power to see that we get to the right place as well. It was amazing and we got to the right campus even the right gate at the campus! It was aweprovoking. HE is so good and we are so thankful. What are the chances we get one of the only english speaking taxi drivers that night at that specific place? I doubt it was chance but HIM. We were stuck and didn't know what we would have done to get home. It was late and many people were shutting down the city including the lights. Praise be to him and we have such great goosebumps right now, even still. So that is my reletively very eventful amazing day. I'm off to get some noodles for breakfast/lunch.
GB us All,
Lindsay Smith