my last night

Hi,

Well, it is my last night here. I have been very busy over the past two weeks. First I had to finish my paperwork for the university. Then I had shopping and visiting to do, closing the bank account (not easy), exchanging money (not easy), arranging my home inspection (they want to be sure that I have not damaged or stolen anything), arranging transportation, dental work, none of which is easy to do. Thank you so much, fan ling! If she wasn't there, then she was only a phone call away to talk to them for me. But it is all done. Tomorrow the school will drive me to Nanjing, then I will take a train to Shanghai. I will stay overnight there, not sure where yet but I will find somewhere, and then it will be off to the airport early on Thursday to catch my 9:45am flight. I arrive in Detroit at 11:50am Thursday. Then I will have a pleasant? layover of 10 hours! I leave at 9:50pm and arrive in Ottawa at 11:30pm.

In the past two weeks, I went to the beach at Lianyungang with fan ling for 3 days (I owed her and she had so much fun! Nicest time I have had.The smiles were great to see), visited Lydia (shen hui, I think she should have been born blonde haha) and the Expo and the Bund in Shanghai, saw Lijun and her fiance in Suzhou and gathered up some gifts and had some very nice dinners with friends. It has been a busy time. I couldn't get to see many others that I wanted to but I couldn't do everything.

Fan ling has been such a great help to me and she is a sweet girl. She wants to get out of Dodge. She has lived here all of her life except for the 4 years when she was in university in Hefei about 3 hours from here. This is a small city. It is like looking for a good job in Charlottetown; not easy, and in China for a girl even tougher. This is a male-dominated society. I think it is where we were about 30-40 years ago. But catching up very quickly. She has dreams. She has never had a boyfriend. She wants to meet a foreigner. Maybe live in Canada. Or she wants to have her own English training school. She doesn't know. She just wants to speak English and live somewhere other than Ma'anshan. Shanghai would be ok with her. She wanted to be an English major but her scores in The National Exams were not high enough to give her a choice so she had to take the major that she did. I could rant on that for hours but I will save it for now. She has helped me so much over the past 6 months.

I was supposed to go to Lianyungang with Cherry (jian ping) but there were no tickets. We were both very disappointed. She is a nice person. She has been going through many difficult decisions lately but has apparently decided. She will get married next Jan 1, their 1st anniversary since their first date.

Tomorrow the school will send two people to inspect my apartment. They need two because the inspector cannot speak English. THey will arrive about 9:45. Then at 10:00, my car and driver will arrive to take me to Nanjing. THey are supposed to take me to Shanghai but the school says that they can't go to Shanghai because of the Expo. I think that is BS. So i said then you can buy my ticket to Shanghai. I never heard back on that statement. I have 3 bags plus my laptop. Tomorrow I should arrive in Shanghai about 2:00 or 3:00. I will check my baggage at the train station and then look for a place to stay. THey have a good system for baggage. You pay so much a piece per hour, not too much. There are no lockers but you are relieved of your luggage and it is safe. I think I will look near the subway stop for the maglev. That is the very high-speed train to the airport. It takes less than 10 minutes. By bus it may be 45 minutes or more if the traffic is too bad. I would like to stay further downtown but I am not sure when the subway starts. I will have dinner with Lydia (shen hui). This girl is fun to be with. She is smart but she has no sense of direction; is an English major but gets confused. Ditzy. We were to meet at 6 and it took me an hour to meet her because she was at the wrong place and didn't read my messages, etc. We got lost twice trying to get to her area of the city. This city has at least 15 Million people. I don't know where she lives! She is about 4'11 and heavy. Not fat but a solid girl. We went to Jiuhuashan and she wanted me to take a picture of her with this big concrete elephant. But she couldn't get up there. No problem.Chinese girls are light. Not her! I went to lift her up and she didn't move! So, suck in my breath and I got her up. I couldn't believe that such a small girl would be so heavy. She is not fat but she is defintely solid. I tease her unmercilessly. Not about weight or height (she is short), I test her on her ideas. I will have dinner with her tomorrow night. I enjoy her company. I push her. And sometimes she complains because I talk about things that she can't imagine. But she sent me a message the other night saying that I open her eyes to different cultures. So that is good. I guess the best way to describe it is that I push her. I want her to accomplish her goals but in order to do that she has to have a more open mind. The world is not like it was in university. There are many people who do things that I don't like but I accept their right to do them as long as it is legal. For her, she cannot accept that anyone would do anything that she does not approve of. But her approvals are slowly changing.

Anyway, I have so much to say but I need to go sleep now.

If I haven't visited you before I leave, it is not because I didn't want to. I ran out of time. At least I will get some of summer at home!

Don