China Life: China Life #12

Dear Everyone,

Time is flying past and I'm slacking on my updates.

A few weeks ago I took Noémie and her friend Raphaëlle (Raf) to Shenzhen so that we could see John Owen Jones and friends in concert. He was one of the original Phantoms and Jean Valjeans in Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables. He brought a cast of amazingly talented colleagues and they put on a wonderful show of some of my favourite music. The girls and I spent a night in a hotel and had some fun checking out markets before returning to Guangzhou the following day.

School has been whizzing by with a variety of events: we had a day with the choir at the American School participating in "Sing Up!" which was a collaboration with 5 different international school primary choirs. We also had our Chinese New Year performance which involved my grade 4 students performing their own arrangement of the K-Pop song "Golden" on classroom instruments (that was way out of my comfort zone but it went over well with the crowd) and my grade 5 students created their own commercials with jingles to play in between other acts during the performance. I was glad to have that behind me.

On January 30th I took the kids to the Guangzhou Opera House (what a beautiful building!) to see the Phantom of the Opera. Kieran was less than thrilled that I imposed this cultural event on him, but I'm still glad that I did and the show was fantastic. The next morning he and I were up early to go to Hong Kong, where I had booked him a surfboard rental. That was a bit of an unfortunate adventure; normally when we catch trains here we can book our tickets right at the station and there are departures every 30-60 minutes all day so it's no big deal. Of course, I had forgotten that Chinese New Year had started for many people, and as we were on the metro at 7:00am on our way to Guangzhou East station, I opened the booking app and noticed that the next 4 trains to Hong Kong were full. This was a problem, as the surfboard rental I had booked had a time limit. So I frantically searched departures from other stations and found a train leaving from Guangzhou South (much further away) that would fit within our time frame but I would have to bite the bullet and go first class. OK. So I clicked on the purchase button as we were getting off the metro at the wrong station, and we hurried up to the road to get a taxi to Guangzhou South station. Just as we got into the taxi and drove off, I got a notification that there was an error and my payment for the train tickets had not gone through... and of course when I tried to re-book there was no longer any availability. AUGH!

So here we'd woken up at 6:00am on a Saturday (after a late night out) to take the metro to the wrong station, to catch a cab to a station at which there were also no trains available. I was freaking out but didn't want to worry Kieran too much as he was quite excited about going surfing. So... when the option for "Business Class" came up, I reluctantly clicked on it and spent 4 times the amount I had intended to get us to Hong Kong. We entered the station and I informed Kieran that he was not to ask about money but he was just to follow my lead and enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience. I immediately saw the fancy business-class lounge and led him inside. We were given a number and told to help ourselves to refreshments; that an attendant would come find us and escort us to our train when the time came. So we had some tea and little packaged snack things, and sat in fancy chairs and marvelled over the gilded bathrooms with bidet toilets that opened and closed automatically. It was big and calm and quiet. About 15 minutes before our train was meant to depart, I tried to leave but was told that no-- an attendant will take us down 6 minutes before departure. And yes. Exactly six minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, a lady in a fancy coat and gloves asked us to follow her and she escorted us through the station, past the crowds, past security, and right down to the platform. The train pulled up and she walked us right to our seats and helped us settle in. We were then offered drinks and little snack packs before she wished us a good journey and walked away right as the doors closed behind her and we took off. Kieran and I enjoyed our big automatic seats that reclined flat like beds, and we had a good laugh over the unidentified treats in our snack pack. My translation app informed me that one was "duck" (it was a small bloody-looking piece of mush vacuum-sealed in plastic... we left it behind) and another was a "Fish treat". We kept that one closed. The nuts and raisins were OK though.

Our arrival into Hong Kong took us straight back to reality-- long lines of people at customs and immigration, trying to figure out how to get Hong Kong dollars and find our metro. But we managed, and made our way to Lantau Island. Because we were later than anticipated, we decided to go straight to the beach rather than our hotel. We arrived 3 minutes before Kieran's board rental time began. We found him his board and wetsuit, and shared a pizza at a restaurant next door. Unfortunately a cold front had blown in so it was cool, cloudy and windy. Kieran still had fun playing in the waves but I was chilly and the surf was far from fantastic.

Our hotel was MUCH better than our first Hong Kong trip. The room was cleaner and had an actual bathroom with no sewage smell and no indication that there were rats or murderers lurking. However, our first room did have a termite issue so we asked to be switched and that was fine. The following day Kieran went surfing again (still poor conditions but he was happy being in the water) and then we headed back to Guangzhou. I bought our second-class tickets in advance this time!

The city is getting all decorated now for the Year of the Horse. On our street there is a huge flower market with hundreds of mandarin trees, orchids and other potted flowers that has opened up. Red lanterns are in all of the trees and there are horses everywhere. It's cool to see.

Last Friday was our staff Chinese New Year celebration. It was HUGE. The Chinese department pulls out all the stops for this event and it was lovely. They hired lion dancers to open the show, there was an open bar and a huge buffet with a variety of food. Lots of teachers and staff members performed, and there were number draws throughout the evening. (I won a rechargeable coffee cup... someone else won the equivalent of $1000 Canadian!) On Saturday I headed to the airport to meet my friend Explo, who had been one of the camp counsellors at the French Camp we used to go to in BC. I had seen on Facebook that he was in Vietnam so when I asked when he was coming to China he said, "How about in 2 weeks?"

His flight was scheduled to land at 10:10am and so I had told him that I would meet him around 10:40, knowing that he would need time to get his luggage and through immigration. I left our place at 10:00 because it takes 37 minutes to get from here to the airport by metro. While I was on the metro, I noticed that it stopped at both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2, so I checked the booking that Explo had given me in order to know which stop I should get off at. His booking simply said, "Guangzhou Baiyun Airport". So then I decided to look up his airline and find out where it arrives... and that's when I learned that there is a Terminal 3 that I've never been to. (It just re-opened on January 22 apparently). I still was not stressed, knowing that there had to be a way of getting there from both T1 and T2. So I got off at T2 and went straight to the information desk, where they told me to go downstairs and wait for a shuttle bus. By this time it was 10:40. Long story short, by the time I raced into T3 and found the arrivals gate, I was almost an hour late. Luckily Explo was there and found me pretty quickly.

We had a great (fast!) weekend here and it was so fun to have our first visitor. We went for a walk to the Plum Blossom valley on Saturday, and that night the kids came with us to a Lantern festival where we walked around and looked at lots of light displays. On Sunday he and Kieran and I did all sorts of exploring in Guangzhou. We saw temples, museums, canals, markets, parks, etc., and went to a rice bowl place for lunch. That night he made pad Thai for us. On Monday he came to school with me and volunteered in a variety of classrooms. Then in the evening we all went out for hot pot (like a Chinese broth fondue) with Raf. He left yesterday morning, en route to Hong Kong before a cycling trip in Taiwan and Japan.

Now we are just finishing up our last week of school before the next holiday (Chinese New Year). Off to Nepal on Friday night!