The glorious age of the ... horse?!?!

Afternoon campers.

Well, yesterday afternoon I decided that I was in need of exercise, so I once more risked life and limb (and probably my lungs!) on the roads of Kunming. I went in search of an alternative route to Wicker Basket. I managed to find one, having ended up at a dead end once, then following lots of other people along the side of a small river, which proved to be an interesting short cut. In a second I went from high-rise modern apartment buildings to old country-side type houses built on a hill-side. It was like going from one decade to the next. What completed the picture was that alonside the cars, bicycles, scooters and buses were lots and lots of horse-drawn carts. Now I've seen a lot of these on the roads here already and the horses all seem to be tiny scrawny things. Usually the carts have all sorts of things on them - one time we saw one piled high with grass (the stuff that your lawn's made of). This time the carts they were pulling were actually for people to ride in - up to 6 at a time plus driver. Those horses must be stronger than they look! One man shouted something at me and two other men then turned round and grinned, but fortunately ignorance is bliss and I haven't got a clue what he was saying!

I completed my circuit - almost an hour which is enough with that much adrenaline going round your system. Tee hee. Then Jared and I road-tested his bottom of the range badminton racquets. We were wondering before we started why exactly they were so cheap as they seemed ok. However, the tape round the handle quickly slid down to one end and the plastic end of my racquet came off. Several times. I abandoned it completely in the end. But our game gave the Chinese students some entertainment. A lot of people walking by were curious to see whether or not the foreigners could play tennis, while a few just blatantly laughed (neither of us had played for a while, it was windy and the sun was in my eyes, ok?) Maybe 5pm is not the best time to play (almost everyone on campus goes to eat at 5pm and it's even more like Piccadilly Circus than normal).

My writing class as usual got progressively better as the week went on. It's also because the class size reduces as the week progresses (I have 3 classes - 59, 47 and then 39 students). Luckily, my visitor chose the Wednesday class to visit. Some random Chinese man just came and sat down in my class and made some notes. Turns out he was a leader or someone and was checking my teaching! Glad I didn't know at the time... Fortunately, the class went well with good contributions from the students and his report was favourable.

Russ has returned from his trip to Shangri-la (Zhongdian) with lots of good tales. I think I will take a trip there with Lois and possibly also Russ in the October holiday. So, of course, we went out last night. We found a new bar called 'Le Cafe de Camel'. We weren't overly impressed - it was a bit dead. Even a power cut didn't really liven things up. But it was Wednesday night after all. Plus they did some mean cocktails and they have live music at the weekend. We bumped into a Belgian guy who has being living in Kunming for 3 years but doesn't work!!! What does he do all day? I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions...

Thanks to last night, today has been something of a write-off. Tonight we have the meal for all the foreign teachers, organised by the Foreign Affairs Office. Should be good. Tomorrow I'll mostly be painting flags and lesson planning.

'If at first you don't succeed, failure might be your style.' Quentin Crisp (haha!)