Yichang Visit

Last Thursday, Katie and I flew back to Yichang for a visit. We had three days off at our school because of some nebulous local anniversary/holiday. Combine those three days with the weekend and our relatively light/flexible teaching schedules and it worked out that we could spend almost a week in Yichang. It was a little strange being back in Yichang and back at TGU but not actually living there, but it was nice to see old friends and students. It was especially fun to hang out with Brad and Amy and make a trip out to Yidu to see Mary Beth, Jennifer, and Mira. We also made a trip back to Yichang Foreign Languages School, the middle school that we taught at for two years. One of my students from TGU is student-teaching there. Interesting to go back to my old middle school and find one of my old university students (who was a freshman when I first taught him) teaching a completely new generation of students there . . . made me feel, um, a little old. All in all, despite the slightly gray weather, a moderate bout with a cold/flu for both me and Katie, and the nightmare that is the Kunming bus station, it was a nice trip and a fun time. It's nice to have a hometown in China where I know I'll always have friends and memories.

Oh, and a fun happening on the way home . . . I went through my first Chinese drive-through! One of the McDonald's in Kunming has a drive-through which is a completely novel concept in China, so much so that it seems most people don't know what it is, why it's there, or how to use it. It's the only drive-through I've ever seen in China. Conveniently, that McDonalds is located halfway between the airport and the long-distance bus station, and Katie and I happened to have a surprisingly jolly, accomodating cab driver who picked us up at the airport. We easily talked the cabbie into making a run through the drive through on the way to the bus station. How fun! Big Macs on the fly. It felt so . . . American . . . except that we had to order in Chinese . . . and our fries got lost in translation. And, McDonalds in China now has Coke Zero which is also novel and progressive here in a land that knows nothing of "diet" foods.