China: Day Nine - The Longest Day

Day Four of English Camp seemed to go on forever...

It was obvious that everyone was getting tired. It seemed like everyone was running late. Well, the kids seemed to still have plenty of energy... :)

I think the lack of water and the heat in the afternoon didn't help matters any. It started out cool but was much hotter by lunchtime. Even lunch was running later and slower than usual...

I was very thankful for my new umbrella!

This giant cicada was also too hot and tired to move when I came to take his picture...

Lunch break seemed the perfect time to take Chrissy back to my favorite place in town - the supermarket. :)

All of these lovely drinks were in reusable glass bottles (like the ones below)

look at all of those teas!

I had to buy some of these for our bus ride back to Xichang 

I love how colorful everything seemed. But then many of the shops were so pretty and colorful...

the children's shops we walked by every day on the way to school

Although we had several pictures taken with the employees, no one would let us take pictures of them...

Jessica brought her wedding dress to class and let Chrissy model it for us. 

Weddings are elaborate celebrations with lots of food. Many people are invited (sometimes hundreds). Because of dowries and the highly decorated wedding costumes, they are also very expensive. On the day of the wedding, a bride is “kidnapped” by one of her male relatives (usually an uncle) and carried on his back to her groom.  

Sue got to try some on, too

Jessica was one of my favorite people we met while in China. She has such a tender and generous heart and has had a really tough life. Her heart hurts for the Yi people. She works with a teachers' organization from Beijing that helps provide services and needs for Yi women and their children with HIV/AIDS. 

Rather than eating dinner at our usual spot, we had a traditional Yi dinner at a restaurant by the square with a representative of the governor. As is traditional in Yi cuisine there were lots of giant pieces of boiled meat.

Rather than going back to the square to watch dancing with the rest of the group (which we had already done the day before), Sue and I snuck off down to a street through town we had never been on and wanted to explore. It was where the more "modern" shops and young people in town were. Not so many stares...

We also walked by the middle school where many of our teachers work and made a quick run to the supermarket again to look for drinking vinegar. It seemed like a good excuse... :)

Upon arrival at the lobby we had to give our passports to the clerks again. This was surprising since the day before the police had come to the hotel for our passports. It seemed that the hotel staff had not registered us like they were supposed to, so the police came to do it themselves. Apparently, that was not  motivating enough because it still wasn't done. They had so much trouble with all the foreign passports, that Joel and Liz had to stay and help them enter the information into their computer.

After a long long day, I heated up some water in my electric tea kettle and took a "hot shower."

Oh, and I was also thankful for a toilet tank full of water to be able to flush and a new roll of toilet paper...

Obviously they don't but their toilet paper at Costco LOL