A railing went up and the rain came down.
Our day began as usual at 7:30 with English class, and it marked my second day of teaching alone. I have adopted a somewhat eccentric manner with these students for two reasons: 1) they are younger and it keeps their attention better, and 2) it is at times a good substitute for my lackluster Chinese. I essentially reviewed what I taught yesterday, as their are still a good number of blank faces when I ask questions. I will consider it an accomplishment if these kids master what I taught on the first day by the end of the week (our last day of teaching is Saturday). They are having a fair amount of trouble with the phrase "What day of the week is it?" They know what it means and they know how to respond to it, but it is a lot of words for them to say all in a row, and most of them don't have a great deal of reading skills, so they have to rely mostly on memorization to learn the question. The new material I did teach today was numbers. They knew everything up to one hundred, and I continued teaching them all the numbers up to one million. Towards the end of class, they seemed to grasp the way our number system works (where we have a new word for a number every multiple of 1000). They also are starting to understand the rationale behind our names for numbers (7500 is called "seven thousand five hundred" because it is the sum of 7000 and 500).
After class, some policemen came by and asked to see our documentation. This is not all that unusual in China, as they just want to keep their constituents safe. That, and they don't have all that much to do (case in point: they sent five officers to check on us). Tao Yuan and Cherry do not need paperwork, as they are Chinese citizens, but Eric and I had to get our passports (Eric is an Australian citizen).
It rained in the afternoon, but some work was done in the morning (although obviously not by us). A railing was put up around the upper tier of the lower worksite, and after going down to see it, I can say that it looks really good.
I realized as I was writing this that I haven't to this point attempted a physical description of where we are building our park. As you may have guessed, there are two small-ish worksites. The larger one is about 200 feet by 200 feet. Being on a hill, it has two level tiers. The lower level is mainly covered in the tiling that I mentioned, but there is also that large sandbox and a dirt patch in the corner where we will be placing a large rock for aesthetic value. The upper tier has a very large tree, more tiling, and the path that we dug out. It is around this part that the railing was put up. The upper worksite (closer to town) is smaller, only about 50 feet by 100 feet, and this is right next to a small pond, so will mainly serve as a pavilion sort of area. There will be the same tiling (which hasn't yet been laid down) and some tables and seats (which we have already picked out).
Given that we are nearing completion, we decided on Monday as the date for our departure from Gaoxiang. The park should be finished by then, and we can do the accounting/marketing off-site, while Eric tours me around some other parts of China. We will probably spend a couple of days in Hangzhou, as well as a few days in Shanghai, before I return to Beijing for my flight home.
Tao Yuan left this morning, as he had business to attend to at home. So now there are only three of us, but there is less work to do, so it should be fine. At this point, I am probably the most useless, because the accounting hasn't yet been translated into English (and won't for a couple of days), and it is done in very obscure and technical Chinese, with which I have exactly zero experience.
I am rather tired (you may have noticed my post last night was later than usual), so I should head to bed. See you tomorrow.
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Glad to learn you will have some free time to see other parts of China. From what I hear, Shanghai should be exciting ... kind of a Chinese New York City. We had an ideal boating day and went to Birch Island with Subway sandwiches. While the water was cold, it was not as cold as the last time we were there. As you might expect, I was the only one swimming to the beach. Chancre-Face and Linda arrive tonight and the weather should permit a hamburger cookout on Saddle tomorrow. Have not yet hit a golf ball, but it hasn't seemed to matter to me.
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