Sunday, September 16, 2007

Sunday and the students return



Helen and Thomas talked me into another round of souvenirs on Gulanyu. Adorable, of course.



Thomas thought I should take a photo of this Sprite can at lunch to show how everything looks so different, yet you can kind of recognize it.













Now we had thought there were a lot of people here on campus and there were plenty of students about. But today they have started to arrive in droves and our quiet neighborhood is getting more crowded!! It has a nice carnival atmosphere, though. We have random photos today, along with the interior of Christ the King church, where we attended again today. Even that was crowded and with more Western tourists than the past few weeks. We even had the experience of answering a question for them -- they had arrived during the Mass and were trying to ask someone when the Mass started, but when they saw us they immediately came up to us. I've noticed that other westerners always greet us and make eye contact and I find myself doing the same thing. Its kind of a group identity thing -- we are the outsiders so we seek each other out. Although there are lots of Japanese and Filipino people here too who don't speak Chinese. It caused me to think about whether Helen may instinctively look for other Asians in a crowd back in Buffalo? Or is it more about language than race?? But I digress. We ran into one of the staff at XIS (Xiamen International School) who moderates the film club he joined, and she was very nice. Finally a photo of the lovely Foreign Scholars Guest House. Love that Soviet inspired architecture!!
Other outings today -- day 2 of Tai chi for Ann and Michael set out by bus across the city with a grad student and returned with 2 used bikes with child seats on them for about $26...four hours later. Apparently it was a long ride back. We'll have to christen them tomorrow, after getting Helen off to school and having our first Chinese tutoring.

No comments: