What A Great Day !

Yesterday was a really great day for me! So.... maybe the last few posts mention “Nettie” a lot. That is because she has been very helpful and kind and basically spent the last three days showing me things, helping me out and yesterday I was lucky enough to get to spend the day not only Nettie but also with her family. We started the day by heading to a different district in Yichang called “Dangyang“ .There is a beautiful Buddhist Temple there (Yuquan Temple)http://www.lotour.com/member/travel/13401/product-259465.html It is quite stunning and is a great feeling to visit there.


I can’t think of the right way of explaining, maybe it was the feeling of history which accompanied the buildings and surrounds…this is something that is not at our beautiful temples in Australia as they are fairly new and modern. It was a real treat for me and I would like to visit more often.

There is a beautiful lake there called “Pearl Lake” when you clap your hands and make noise bubbles rise up from the bottom.

The surrounds of the Temple are really magical.
After some time here we headed out for Lunch courtesy of one of Nettie’s husbands work acquaintances. It was in a farming community and the atmosphere was great, very different to the hustle and bustle of the city and modern restaurants and the food we ate was all locally grown, fresh and on to the table for lunch. Nettie’s daughter “Carol” was particularly taken with one of the little dogs that lived there…It seems that she has a love of dogs like I do and is drawn to them all the time. As you can see Carol is quite adorable and very cool :-)

After lunch we went up the road a bit to do some fishing… I caught a fish (look closely:-)you may have to enlarge the picture!


Whilst we were in Dangyang, a phone call came through inviting us for dinner with the parents of one of the students that Nettie and I both teach English to. This is very odd for me to understand. In Australia this kind of thing is not done and infact it is almost frowned upon to have any kind of relationship with students and their families outside of the school . Here it is common it seems for students and their families to befriend you and this dinner last night was a real eye opener for me. Basically the parents invite their child’s teachers to a elaborate dinner as a way of saying thanks, they can also ask each of the teachers how their child is doing with their studies. Now the meal was amazing….I tried my first taste of Beijing Duck (Very, very yummy)and I have not seen so much food…It just kept coming and coming. I must say though that I felt like a fish out of water, for the first time I was a little overcome by the occasion, obviously there was only Chinese being spoken (except for a commentary for me by Nettie) the room was full of teachers from my school, I was totally out of my depth and was afraid to even mutter one word in Chinese (up until now this has never happened before) and I feel a bit disappointed with myself that I kind of withdrew into a hole. This is something I have made a conscious effort to change about myself since coming to China, to not withdraw when meeting and spending time with people…but last night…was too difficult. I am hoping that they do not think I was unfriendly…I honestly just didn’t really know what to do and I couldn’t speak. I was also conscious of trying to not do the wrong things as far as etiquette whilst eating etc and I still really JUST DON”T KNOW!! Still it was interesting to see, the food was great, I watched and learnt some more Chinese customs and in all probably had one of the best days since I have arrived in China.