Comings and Goings

On Wednesday morning, Andrew was all packed and ready to fly to Bangkok. From Bangkok, he was going to spend a few days in Chiang Mai progressing the building and distribution of the water purifiers, before returning to Bangkok for his flight back to England and on to Norway. And then the news broke that 3,000 demonstrators had stormed Bangkok airport and had taken over the control tower. All flights in and out of Bangkok were grounded! Andrew’s visa for China expired on Saturday, so he had to leave by then. But how? He spent hours on the phone (including to the travel agent who hadn’t heard about the problem) and the internet. He rebooked his flight for Saturday, plus a provisional booking to Hong Kong, just in case. And then, on Thursday morning came a call to say that there was a flight to Chiang Mai that afternoon and he was on it. So off he went, still not knowing whether he would be able to get to Bangkok for his flight to London on Monday.

On Wednesday evening, we went to an American Thanksgiving meal at the International Coffee Shop. A lot of Chinese young people were also present, so we were not the only ones who had never been to a Thanksgiving meal before. We enjoyed the roast turkey even though they couldn’t find any cranberry sauce. And we were intrigued by the choc chip cookies (or were they pumpkin cakes with chocolate?) which were on our plates with the other vegetables. After the meal, we heard all about Squantas, the native American who helped the Pilgrim Fathers find food. The evening finished with singing the doxology and Edelweiss - with actions. You didn’t know Edelweiss had actions? The Chinese do!

Christine Carver, a friend from Tewkesbury, is being sponsored by the European Union to study in Beijing. And this week they have sent her to Kunming. She stayed with us Saturday night before returning to Beijing on Sunday afternoon. It was great to catch up with her news, swap stories about flooding, etc. We hope to see her in Kunming again while we are here.

At last we have discovered how to receive mail from UK - have it sent to Judy’s school. Apparently this stems from the Chinese tradition that where you belong is your place of work rather than your home. But the good news is that in the past week two items of mails for us arrived successfully from UK. As the address is a mixture of Chinese and English, I’m going to try scanning it and including it in this blog in case anyone wants to print it out and stick it to an envelope!