(the Guangzhou vol) all just happend to be there too (because of the VIA Post Switch, where two VIA vols at different posts switched jobs for a week, so Ligaya and Tracy were on their last day in Guangzhou and Ben was just coming home from Xining, so awesome that their trips overlapped). It was SOOOOO nice to see all of them!The most interesting thing about my impression of the city of Guangzhou is how green it is -- we spent so much time in parks and on playgrounds. It was a really nice change from the usual concrete, glass, and pollution of other major cities in China. Our cab drivers complained about the pollution in general, but for the days we were there, the sky was blue and the weather was like 70 degrees. It was gorgeous.
Parks in China all come with not only normal playground stuff for kids like
slides and seesaws, but also exercise equipment for adults. It's SOO awesome! There are people working out on the (just metal but always colorful) eliptical-type things, people doing sit-ups on the bench-y type thing, people doing quad leg lifts on that machine. It's not hard core by any means, but it's a pretty good workout for the old people who come. They even have a massager machine (like a swing-y thing with two rods with bumps) that you can use to massage your muscles out after. :)
This is me failing to do a straight-up chin-up. Sad, huh? I blame my shoulder. :) But yeah, all the muscles are gone... And those saggy, faded jeans in the picture? Yeah, I'd been wearing those every day for four weeks (yum) because they were the only jeans I had. Another awesome thing about Guangzhou is that it is the shopping capital of China! The next day, we just shopped till we dropped. I bought two near pairs of jeans, for a total of $9. Sweet, yeah? They're tight and short. Yay for China! I like them short because then they don't skim the dirty ground or get wet in the cafeteria (GROSS), so it works out. No one in China cares what I look like anyway. :)
We were just park maniacs, and after dim s
um, we spent the rest of the day at Yuexiu Park in the middle of the city. We found a nice grassy hillside overlooking a river and sat down to just take it all in. It was so nice to see GRASS. WOW. I never knew how much I loved and appreciated the feeling of grass under my feet. I just wanted to roll around in it and slide down the hill, but I was scared I wouldn't be able to stop myself and would just keep going into the river at the bottom, haha, so I settled for doing cartwheels and jumping up to try to touch tree branches. SO FUN! :)
The best thing about the whole trip was Ben's students putting on a surprise Welcome Back Ben/Farewell Ligaya and Tracy party. Ben works at GETCH, Guangzhou English Training Center for the Handicapped, and he has about 60 or so students, among whom he has lived and worked for the last year and a half. He's an amazing guy, really has a special gift, and he would do anything for his students. They, in turn, love him to death, and rely on him for a lot of help, whether it be calling him to come help carry their groceries home or just asking him to take the time to listen to their individual battles with having a handicap in a handicap-averse country like China. It's pretty tough sometimes, but at the same time I feel it was moments like this night that make his job/post so rewarding.
Ben had just gotten back from Xining and all night, his students were like "Ben, why'd you
come back? We didn't even miss you!" (kind of sad, yeah?) and Ben was just like :( but then around 9 pm, we heard singing and one of his students told him (and us) to look outside. Ben lives on the fifth floor, so we looked down over the balcony onto the open/play area and all his students were standing in a heart-sha
pe holding up their cell phones (it was dark so it was magical) singing 月亮代表我的心 (the song Nhu and I sang at that hengyang foreign teachers banquet - yueliang daibiao wo de xin) and it was just so amazing. So moving. I thought I was going to cry, and the party wasn't even for me! Haha... then we all gathered in the meeting room and there were snacks and drinks on the table and the students had put together a program of mini games and contests, SO fun, dancing and singing contests, and it was just hilarious. The dance party was great. :)The rest of the trip went by quickly, as we just went shopping all day the next day, ate at a vegetarian restaurant (which was SOOO ono, I was blown away), and then took a train home. Good trip. :)
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