As I said earlier, I was leaving the very same night as the excursion day. After dinner, I basically hung out with a few of the other teachers who weren't leaving Beijing until the next day.

However, I did see off two provincial teammates who were going off to Bengbu in Anhui (and contrary to popular belief, Bengbu is not some sort of foot disease). They were Debra Achenbach from Tennessee and Christine Hamada from the Detroit area.

Debra is a fine southern girl from Tennessee who was a nurse before deciding to go to China. She had some really bad hospital stories. For example, she came into a room where a patient had gone flatline (ie. no heartbeat), so they were going to do the electroshock thing. She was in charge of it and she would say, "Clear!" just before she did the shock. Well, wouldn't you know it, nothing happened. Debra's thinking to herself, is everything connected to the patient. Meanwhile, there are other nurses and doctors trying respiratory resuscitation (sp?). She yells again, "Clear!" Still no luck. Well, guess what's wrong with the situation here. Upon closer examination of the machine, she eventually noticed that it was unplugged. Wouldn't you love to be the patient in that situation? Heh heh.

Christine is an obvious Wings fan and according to what she's said, she gets a lot of Canadian television in her part of the States. Before we left California, we had a discussion about Canadian TV. There was a kids show called The Friendly Giant. Apparently, I'm only the 2nd non-family person she's asked that has seen the show. We also went into a little discussion about Due South, hockey, and bad drivers. I think she should be issued a Canadian passport right away.

Once they were off I had to get my stuff ready for my own departure. I wasn't exactly looking forward to moving around two 60+ pound pieces of luggage and two fairly heavy pieces of carry-on.

After I finished packing and everything was prepared, I hooked up with another two of provincial teammates, Shannon Dong and Lois Ingles. We went off to the garden in the back of the hotel and were just walking and talking.

Shannon is a Chinese-American from Phoenix, Arizona. In other words, she's a desert rat. She was an elementary school teacher for a couple of years just before she hooked up with ELIC. She's speaks Cantonese just like me, so we would often talk to each other, but she has that Toysan accent going for her, if you know what I mean. She was my partner in that "Hey Girl, Look Over Here" skit I did. I was basically trying to woo her. But in real life, she's quite a sweet girl and kind of the energetic sort.

Lois is an older woman from the Eastern Seaboard. She had been a elementary school teacher for many, many years already. Her daughter actually knows my teammate Bethany. She's a very sweet woman who has a wonderful smile. She's really eager to learn more about the Chinese culture and the language. She's also a source of great encouragement and advice. It's been nice having her around during training and more.

So were just walking around in this garden, when we heard these Chinese drums banging in the background. It sounded like the kind of music you only ever hear during Chinese New Year. Obviously, we were drawn to the music.

There was something going on out near the front of the hotel. There was a group of ladies doing a fan dance right by the hotel. Off to the side was a small little entourage of musicians. There were the huge drums beating away with a horselike power. Chinese cymbals were crashing just behind them. Then, there was also that Chinese wind instrument that I closely associate with Chinese weddings. It looks sort of like a gourd and it makes a high sort of nasally sound. I really don't know how to better describe it.

Shannon got a little adventurous and asked some of the local spectators about what was going on. They told her that the band got out almost every evening and started playing. A bunch of ladies would come with their fans and dance around. It was basically a sort of daily exercise for them. Shannon even had the nerve to ask whether any men would dance. Come on, it's a FAN DANCE. The fans were these frilly pink things. However, the locals said that there was one man dancing with the ladies just the night before. Go figure.

The locals were also slightly bemused by talking to two Chinese people who could barely speak and understand Mandarin. The obvious questions of where are you from and everything popped up. I think one of the simplest answers I can give in such a situatation is to say I'm Cantonese. They usually take that as a good reason as to why my Mandarin is so poor. I even got comments that I was too young to be a "Foreign Expert." I was wearing an ID tag around my neck. True enough, I think I'm only officially classified as a "Foreign Teacher."

Well, sorry if I've bored you to death ... again. Don't forget that I write this thing not only for you guys, but also for myself. I might not remember everything in a year's time. Until the next entry, goodbye.