My mother visited at the end of February and it was a great way to finish one month and kick-start the next. She arrived bearing wonderful goodies: dried fruit, chai tea, socks and undies; all essential goods after living abroad for five months.
We started traveling right away, not wanting to waste any of her time, in the glittering gambling Mecca of Asia: Macau. It was a nice trip in which we visited the famous churches and found our way to museums and the many specialty pastry shops. These shops are filled to the brim with jerked meats, egg-cream pies, dried-meat pancakes and the almond cookie, most famous of them all. We happily did our duty to sample cookies at every opportunity and our taste buds were very happy for it. The scene in Macau had not changed much since I last visited in 2005 except for the casinos. The sheer number of casinos was really surprising with half a dozen or more still under construction. My mother and I took to the video poker machines in the Venetian where I was the big winner of the day with $20 Hong Kong Dollars! Which is roughly the equivalent of $2.50 USD!
Yangshou was the next place we visited. It is a beautiful small town only an hour’s flight from Guangzhou and then another hour or so by car from Guilin. The town of Yangshou is surrounded by Karsts, the narrow parabola shaped hills, and intersecting rivers. It rained or misted the entire time we were there and still the inclement weather couldn't possibly make the mountains any less majestic or bamboo rafting any less tempting. The rain and low-lying clouds added a mysticism and surrealism to an already breathtaking landscape. Some of the highlights from our time there must be the cooking class, the driving tour to the stone city, the 
bamboo raft down the river (even though I was nearly a popsicle at the end), the night show and ginger tea enjoyed next to the crackling fireplace.
After our wonderful time in the lush and open Yangshou it was very difficult to leave and return to the concrete urbaneness of Guangzhou. But it had to be done since a flight back to the states was in store for my mother and more work was ahead for me. But before my mother left we went to the Guangzhou Zoo which was just as much fun as the first time. This time I was able to feed a giraffe and see the Pandas which were both things I missed the first time around.
March flew by fairly quickly with some events standing out from the rest. The most significant event was the departure of our boss. It started as a simple going-away party which morphed into a very joyous event once our boss said her final goodbyes and proceeded to leave the building and our lives!
My roommate had a friend come and visit from the states. She seemed very nice and it was fun to join them in exploring places in the city I hadn’t been to before. One such place was Chen Clan Academy; a beautiful traditional Chinese building dating back centuries. We also went to Hong Kong which is always an enjoyable day trip.
The flooding of Guangzhou was another noteworthy event. From only two hours of rainfall Guangzhou became flooded. It was astonishing. It had just started to drizzle as the last class of the day started. After an hour it was raining so heavily it was impossible to see out the windows. Another hour passed, the rain had nearly ceased and the building had a mote! There was at least three feet of water at one intersection and a foot or more at the others. And this was just the first round. We became soaked as we walked home and again as we walked to the restaurant. Taking a taxi, unfortunately, was out of the question. Due to all the rain the traffic was horrendous and many of the cars became boats for a time.
Besides these interesting things March came and went very smoothly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment