CHINA 2010 THURSDAY 2nd SEPTEMBER

It had rained during the night the drops pinging on the metal railings and window frames, and thunderstorm disturbed me as well, so it was not surprising that we had had a power cut at some point. Keith had to reset the breaker in our lounge and had pressed the wrong button on the steriliser so that had to run for half an hour. By the time I got up the rain was heavy and blowing in all directions between the buildings. It also felt very cold!
After lunch I joined Keith in the Training Centre to answer some of the questions put to me by his students. During this time Keith was able to catch up with some of his paper work and wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying but when they all began to laugh he knew I was talking about him. I had said he would rather have a cold beer than a Taiwanese fun drink! After my session I joined in with a group discussion about what 3 items we could take on a deserted island. Once we had written these down we split into 3 teams, 4 people to each team. We all lost points for one reason or another, mainly because Keith had said place in order the items we thought were the most important from the 12 we now had and none of us had done that only our team leader remembering them in their heads. There was a lot of doubling up on our answers but that was allowed and there was a lot of laughter explaining the reasons for our choice of items. I had included a good book and told my leader that if I became bored I could read and if I didn’t like the book I could make a fire with it! One member included a compass – we were on a deserted island I said so he crossed it off his list. “No, it may not be such a bad idea if you go walk about.” “ Ah” said our leader “but we have the sun” – “not if he goes walkabout at night” was my response. The object was to get them to talk not so much as which items were the most important and Keith certainly achieved that.
The dark clouds remained threatening all afternoon and so he finished the class a little earlier than 4pm hoping they could get back to their hotel before the rain. The rain never came but it certainly was a lot cooler.
We went to ‘The Soup Expert’ again and this time our waiter let one of the girls take our order with a little help from the young cashier, who we are convinced has a reasonable knowledge of English but doesn’t get the opportunity to practice it.
Returning home Keith found an email from Saga Holidays – they have again cancelled our trip to Thailand due to the lack of clients! We are not very happy with them.