Tianmu Lake

My days off this week were Tuesday and Friday. Convenient. This kind of scheduling (as well as the random day-to-day nonsense) is why I don’t think I could work at a training school for a long period of time. Nonetheless, I’m glad I took the World English contract, because I have met a lot of cool people by working here. If I had spent the last three weeks at the Wujin Star school, I probably still wouldn’t have any friends in Changzhou.

Last Tuesday, two of our students asked Bart and me to go to Tianmu Lake with them. They put a lot of work into planning and preparing for this, even before we accepted the invitation, and when we finally agreed on when to go, all the other students congratulated me, “I hear you are going to Tianmu Lake. That is so cool!”

Tianmu Lake was my first vacation, and, despite being incredibly hot and humid, it was nice. It’s definitely not like going to Fish Lake or Yuba Lake. Tianmu Lake has three islands that you can take a boat to, and each island has several activities and things to see.

Unfortunately, when we first got there, this obnoxious man-child started tagging along with us, trying to befriend the Americans. He would not leave us alone. If we got too far ahead of him, he would ditch his family in a frantic run to catch back up with us.

He finally got the hint, though, when we didn’t accept his offer for beer and lunch. Skipping lunch was a small price to pay to get rid of him. I feel like, between his presence and the hot weather, our students got the impression we didn’t have a good time. But that’s not true.

It’s just hard to explain to someone who you don’t have a strong, common language with that you really are appreciative of them for taking you to the lake. All they see is a sweating, blubbering foreigner. It’s at times like this when I really hate being so far behind in my Chinese.

17 July 2008 | China | Comments | Home
tags: attractions

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