We marked Shrove Tuesday a day late this year for reasons which we cannot quite remember. One of Judy’s colleagues is French and sent us some crepes the previous weekend which were much appreciated, but on Ash Wednesday Judy made English style pancakes which we shared with some Chinese friends. They were amused and impressed by the pancake tossing ceremony and very much enjoyed eating the results.
Judy has been given another class at Robert’s School. This one is at the other branch of the school where few of the Western staff go and is from 1915-2115 on Friday nights with 9 and 10 year olds. The first week she had 9 out of 12 children, just a nice number, although the children had never had an English native speaker before and she couldn’t explain things in Chinese. They were studying Bonnie Prince Charlie and the ’45 Rebellion (who thinks up these subjects?) Did you know that Charlie’s mother was Polish and his fifth name was Casimir? Last week she arrived at the lesson to find that they had added another class to her original 12 and she now had 22 crammed into her small classroom. It was a nightmare!
Peter was invited to attend the first morning of an ICIMOD beekeeping workshop at the Agricultural University. ICIMOD (http://www.icimod.org/) is a group of 8 countries around the Himalayas and Hindu Cush committed to improving the lives of the people who live in these mountainous areas. He met a young Cornishman working in Afghanistan who said that water purification (which Andrew and I are working on) was not a big problem there but asked whether we could help him with information about low-cost solar-powered water pumps for use in the long periods of dry weather. Any ideas welcome!
After a spring-like February, the weather turned cool and wet for a short while but now we are back to warm sunshine (25 degrees by day). Peter is not sure whether the open air pool is warm enough for him yet and is still using the really warm (31 degrees) indoor pool. It has to be admitted, however, that some tough Chinese men have been using the outdoor pool every day throughout the winter!
A fascinating feature of Kunming clothes shops is the dummies they use to show off the clothes. Strangely, none of them looks Chinese. And they all have rather odd expressions or are wearing totally unsuitable wigs. We especially liked the "Army Cadet" outside what was apparently an army surplus shop.
