Well, the open day was Saturday, and I think it went pretty well overall. I took lots of pictures, which I’ll try to put up soonish. Speaking of which, there are also pictures of the trip to Macau up now. The debate went pretty poorly; or rather, it went just as I thought it would. The prepared sections were okay, all the students spoke as well as I though they could. The cross-examination was a mess of awkward, and at the end I gave a few stumbling comments for which I could not feign enthusiasm. Happily, Julia won the Best Orator award, which is great. She did a truly wonderful job with everything in the debate.
Last night we watched Once, which I highly recommend if you like that sort of movie where nothing much happens. Which I love. This morning Linds and I slept wonderfully late. We tried to make it to GZ in time to catch a Canadian film as part of the documentary film fest here, but the bus we were planning to take was already full.
It was nice to get out and walk around though. We happened across a dragon dance at one point. In front of a Thai restaurant, there was some sort of ceremony, featuring a table of bai jiu (white liquor), roast pig, incense, and flowers; men with a drum and gong; and two dancing dragons. It was very cool, partially because it was so random. We also happened down an alley to find a pleasantly busy Buddhist temple. We could hear the nuns singing in one building, and the monks were out in the main temple, praying and chanting while the head monk read verses. There were three impressively large Buddha statues in the main hall with two great stelae on either side of the central one. While getting a little lost, we also found where People’s Park is; it looks quite nice. So it was an interesting day.
We also tried to go shopping, but couldn’t find the right street we wanted. We walked around Haizhu Square and all over and around Beijing Lu. Supposedly right off of Beijing Lu are streets like Painting Street, Jade Street, Pearl Street, etc, but we couldn’t find them. We’ll try again some other time. If not, Yi De Lu is also right there, which has lots of wholesale markets. We did manage to find a very long alleyway in which was sold nothing but underwear and swimsuits, though also some outerwear and, near the end, belts. I bought some lucky underwear. (Your Chinese Zodiac year is unlucky, requiring the wearing of lucky red underwear. I was born in the Year of the Pig; 2007 is the Year of the Pig. Hence, 2007 should have been rather unlucky for me without red underwear. I bought some today: red briefs with two gold pigs printed on the back. I’m quite pleased to have found some with pigs as most of what they sell is to get ready for next year, the Year of the Rat.)
