This morning I left the hotel at 7:15 and walked to Starbucks. I knocked on Teresa's door to get her order, I already had Doc's. As I was walking there I thought, "How'm I going to carry all of these back with me?" It's probably 1/2 mile from the hotel to Starbucks. It was rush hour in the city, lots of cars and lots of bikes and scooters, so I really didn't feel unsafe walking. It was the first time I walked anywhere by myself in 1 1/2 weeks. I also wondered how I was going to cross the street, when we walked the last time we just jay walked, but it was at 10 o'clock at night, so not as much traffic. I didn't need to worry, they have crossing guards, not school related. The crossing guards were pretty strict too, they wanted to make sure I did not cross when I wasn't supposed to. The lights here are the type that everyone crosses at the same time. I figured that out half way across the street, noticed I had 15 seconds to cross and took off diagonal across the street. While I was walking, Dustin Laemmlen passed me running. As I"m ordering in Starbucks, he came in, soon Cory joined as well - he heard me take Teresa's order. Prior to their arrival I told the gal in Starbucks I needed a carrier for 3. They fixed up a handled carrier bag to make it double decker, that was far more effective that the 4 way trays we use. To put things in perspective, Teresa's latte is the same cost as a 1 hour massage.
I've resolved myself to the steamed buns for breakfast, I am craving a huge bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins. I had bean sprouts for breakfast this morning and bit into something that was floral and made my mouth tingle for a while.
The weather for the last few days has been fairly cool, I've been wearing the sweaters that I packed quite a bit. At night, it rains in Chengdu.
This morning's activity was a monastery in the heart of Chengdu. It was nice and green and peaceful. Outside the monastery is a shopping street with lots of food and craft stalls. One of the stalls passed had whole birds that had been plucked, placed on sticks and cooked. SInce they still had the heads attached it was more than some could take. The crafts are cool, traditional instruments, art work, chopsticks, jewelry, etc. The chopsticks are beautiful, but I have chopsticks from Japan that I've hardly used.
There's a pharmacy across the street, so I went there with Adele to buy some decongestant since Bree and others are battling colds. Adele has a cool app on her phone that allows her to use her finger to write the english letters to a word, then it translates it mandarin. I was looking Fisherman's Friend since I saw them in Beijing, but they didn't have them, so I got another chinese decongestant. Adele works for Mr. Qing in the foreign affairs office, assisting colleges to visit China and Chinese students to study abroad. She is almost 30 and has a 3 yr old daughter.
Lunch was good, a lot of individual plates on the lazy susan. While a lot of dishes were spicy, there was also a dish with a liquid in it and little dumplings filled with what tasted like peanut butter. Those were soooo good, i saved them for dessert. We also had the filled steamed rolls. One of them tasted like it was filled with pulled pork, another with beef stew. Afterwards another trip to Starbucks for that delish green tea black sesame frappucino (to cool down my mouth from the spices.)
Then a 1/2 hour drive to the Guangya school for a concert. The concert is in the gym, so the sound is very live. the entire stadium is filled, the floor is empty, except for a long table with 8 distinguished guests, including Mr. Cheeng. This is a middle school, the students are 12 - 16 yrs old. Both Bree and Donna are sitting out the concert, so Jamie is taking Donna's part on the Beach Boys medley, Faith already knew Bree's solos. Before the concert when the students were getting seated, the Vanguard students worked the crowd, threw mini Vanguard beach balls in the crowd and Lane ran around the entire gym getting them to do a wave. One half get it right away, it took 2 times for the entire gym to get it right. When the crowd cheers it is like a rock concert, it is so loud, but fun. Jeff started dunking one of the beach balls and then had to sign a stack of autographs (it helps that is blond and good looking.) If you want to be a big hit in China, have either blond hair or dreds, everyone want to touch Tavani's dreds.
The concert went well. when they did NSync's "This I Promise You", the two girls and guys they picked from the audience seemed to enjoy it more than when they picked college age audience members; the crowd went wild several times.
Near the end of the concert, a couple of students started talking to me. One was a young girl that was interviewing me for the school TV show. She asked me if I thought the concert went well and did they perform perfectly, I told her I couldn't answer that question, she'd have to ask a member of the band. Then she asked me how I liked the school uniforms. I said I did and asked why there were 2 different ones, some of them were in PE class when they came to the concert. I also talked to 2 boys, one was 12 and shy, the other was 15 and very talkaktive. He told me that this was a foreign language school, most were learning english and also French and German. He told me that I was very friendly. He had traveled to Europe and no one was friendly there. I asked where he went and he answered "Germany". I told him not to be concerned, the German people can be reserved.
The funny thing is the banner that goes behind the stage says that the Vanguard Singers and Band have won the American Choir Competition 4 times - there is no such thing.
Dinner was at the clubhouse of the richest community in Chengdu (basically down the street from the school). It's beautiful. lots of Travertine on the floors and walls. Dinner is either Shrimp and Pork rice, Pork Stew or Beef Curry. I took the Pork Stew, it was very good. Everyone loved it and the atmosphere. The homes in the neighborhood are between 10M and 70M Yuan. One of the concerts is here tomorrow, so we went to the stage area, it's going to be a production.
After we got back to the hotel, Teresa and I went for our nightly massage. Wonderful. The girl told me that my back was very tight - yes I know, that's why I'm doing this.
We have several sick kids 2 that have colds, one is coming down with a cold, one has had digestive problems, so Doc set a curfew of 11pm. It's the first time he's done that.
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