| Wednesday, August 8, 2001 |
From: Meg Thomsen meginchina@yahoo.com
Subject: Blue Sky Ahead
Hello to the Best People on Earth!
Hope that all is well at home. Life is good in China, and it's been a week chock-full of adventure. We finished teaching model school last Friday, and I felt a little sad that it was over! I feel good, though. My students will see me on the street and say things like "That man is smoking a non-point source of air pollution." I taught them how to sing "Country Roads", and now whenever I come home, I hear my host sister singing it in her sweet tinny voice "Country roads, take me home to the place I belong." If only John Denver knew of his new fan base in Sichuan!
Last weekend was the Big Test of our language skills. We had to form small groups and leave Deyang for the weekend, using our newly-acquired language skills to buy bus tickets and hotel rooms. Julie, Heidi and I went to Qingcheng Hou Shan, a Taoist mountain about three hours from here. We got off the bus, and it was raining like crazy, so when we saw a cable car going halfway up the mountain, we were pretty happy, because all of our bags were completely soaked by this time. Well, in the line, we were helped by a "friendly stranger" who then leaped onto the cable car with us. Turns out that she owns a hotel halfway up the mountain, and wanted to take us there. I use the term "hotel" loosely. We ended up naming it The Cesuo Hotel, because of its pervasive cesuo (bathroom) odor.
Our room had two broken windows and no lock on the door, and cost 60 kwai (about $7.50) for a three-person room. We decided to get on out of there, and hike to the top of the mountain. We ran into two friends on the mountain, Matt and David, and also made friends with a very nice Chinese family on the trail. It was still raining, and the trail was muddy and slippery, but after a few hours, the sun began to shine, and the nine of us trudged to the top to find the most beautiful temple you can imagine! The rain, the long bus trip there, and the Cesuo Hotel all faded into the distance as the blue sky and temple came into view. There were monks gliding through in their colorful robes, and Taoist scholars in black robes noiselessly turning as bells chimed. We had a delicious meal of potatoes, rice and tea at the summit, and ran back down to the Cesuo Hotel smiling.
All right, so by the time we hiked down if was dark and completely scary (a kind stranger eventually ended up taking pity on us and leading us down with his flashlight), and the Cesuo Hotel was full of drunk people playing mahjongg, so we pushed a table in front of the door and slept holding our knives and wallets. But all of these things were nothing compared to the beauty and purity of that temple.
I hope that all is well with you, my favorite people. It's been great receiving your e-mails (although currently, we're not getting a lot postal mail. Maybe the guy who reads English at the post office is sick? Maybe no one's writing to us? Maybe the Peace Corps staff is getting a vicarious thrill from wearing my Birkenstocks around that my mother sent me a month ago? Who knows? That's what I say about almost everything in China. Who knows?)
We will find out in two weeks where we'll be teaching!
Love, Meg
Meg's Mom's Related Links: