We'll send some more photos via email from Halong Bay & our meeting with some university VIPs today, but here is a little more background information on what we're doing.
Halong Bay: We spent part of Monday, all of Tuesday and part of Wednesday last week on a junk in the bay which is a tourist area because of the hundreds of small karsts/islands in the bay. Our weather wasn't sunny like the postcards, but we were able to see many, many islands, several fishing villages and had a chance to get off the boat four times to explore a large cave, climb one of the islands, go for a small boat ride through a fishing village and another boat ride under a low arch into a little lagoon which had a lot of monkeys climbing on the rocks looking for food. We left the bay on February 16 and saw on the news that one junk (out of hundreds) sunk on February 17.
Teaching at Xi'an International University: We were originally scheduled to being teaching on February 21. But we learned in mid-January that the semester start date was changed to March 2. There are 30,000 students here and it's a cultural experience to have such a last-minute change. We offered some alternative ways to make up the class time because we had all the arrangements for our 10 weeks abroad set, as well as our kids' plans to join us for the last week on a whirlwind tour of Xi'an, Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau. The university was very flexible and we'll teach for only 5 weeks instead of 6. Our last class day is April 1. Our kids & spouses will arrive April 2 and after seeing a few highlights of Xi'an and its Terra Cotta Warriors, we'll be on our way. Don is teaching a course to 8 different groups of students (30 English major students/class) on Western/American culture and its impact on US economics. He will cover all of this in 10 hours of instruction with each group! I'll work with the 100 teachers in their English Department on teaching methods and the US education system and I'll be working with students on conversational English.
University VIPs: Today we met with officials from the foreign language department, one from housing & logistics and the 4th VIP was sick & had to miss the lunch. They took us to a Brazilian bar-b-que restaurant with German influence (beer). It seemed Chinese to us, but servers brought us multiple skewers with various types of meat throughout the meal which would be the Brazilian touch. The veggies, fruits & desserts were buffet style. The meal included two 3-liter drafts of beer on our table; one dark and one light. There were many toasts with beer and Pepsi (me). We thought the purpose was informational but actually it was more of a welcome ceremony and very generous of them. Communication and expectations continue to be a cultural difference with our direct style of rolling up the sleeves and getting to business with accurate details. They prefer the less direct, let's wait until this is needed approach.
Tomorrow we plan to go to the Terra Cotta Warriors for the first time and follow it with Thursday in the Old City and a bike ride around the Old City Wall. The weather report looks good for time outside: dry & low 60s.
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