Anna leaves.....

Tomorrow, Anna, the Russian girl and my fellow 'foreign expert, is leaving.  It was not her plan to go and she has done an excellent job in the school and the kids there really like her.  I'm not quite sure why she is going, and I don’t think that she is either!  However, there were some difficulties surrounding her work permit and the fact that she is not a 'native English speaker'.  We don’t really know much more than that.  She has found work elsewhere.  That might sound a bit strange, but China is a big, very big country and rules and regulations vary from place to place and guanxi or 'who you know' can play a big part in getting things done here.  Maybe the guanxi was not right here.
Tonight we had made loose plans to go out together and have a final 'western-style' meal.  The plans were going quite well until in teh usual CHinese style we got a WeChat text.   Something on the  lines of "We are taking you out tonight for Xiaoye (kind of a late night snack)"  We will pick you up at 7.30.  It was five pm.  In England you might plan it the day before and ask if it would be ok and if people were free.  In China, or at least in Jiangkou  you don’t seem to do that.  You usually get a WeChat text saying "I'm taking you out to dinner.  I’m outside your house, come out now."   So, although 5pm may seem like little notice, it was in fact quite a lot of notice for here!
At 7.20 we both got WeChat texts.  "I'm outside in my car now".  I went outside, knocked on Annas door and we went down.  Jenny our boss and FAO (Foreign Affairs Officer) was there.  She drove us to her brother's restaurant.  As we parked up, she reached across and fiddled with a little plastic device that had a series of numbers on it.  I'd been wondering what it was for, so I asked.  She said her husband had made it.  It was her telephone number.  Apparently, it is a common custom to display your telephone number when parking, because parking here, Jiangkou, is so limited, you nearly always block someone else in, so they just ring your number and you come out and move your car.  All nice and civilised.  I think in Liverpool they tend just to smash your side window and move it themselves.  Ah well, horses for courses.
The restaurant was a small place off the main road with kind of cubicles containing 'steam-punk style benches.  It specialised in barbeque, and, as most things here, barbeque isn't quite the same as back home.  Although barbeques vary from restaurant to restaurant the biggest difference is the size of what is barbecued.  It is usually tiny, smaller even than table-top fondue size!  Maybe half the size of your little finger maybe even a quarter size.  Do you get lots of whatever is barbequed!  Ten or twenty pieces of each of the things that are barbequed.  Tonight we had numerous things.  Of those that I could recognise there was pork, beef, octopus tentacles, wild garlic, and some sort of sweet salami thing wrapped around mushrooms.  The other things I did not recognise, but of course I ate them!  Some tasted better than others. There wer a few side plates too.  The most popular was this pink stuff.  It looked like sliced pink potato.  It wasn’t.  It tasted more like sweet pickled radish and sort of almost fizzed in you mouth.  Not one of my favourites.  By the end of the meal, I had amassed a huge collection of barbeque sticks.  Goodbyes were said, pictures were taken, and I wandered off with Anna to one of our favourite ‘haunts’.  The local park.  Sadly, it was very quiet.  There was group storytelling in the corner where the ‘ballroom’ dancers usually dance, and the ‘ballroom’ dancers had moved to the main area of the park as the ‘dancing ladies’ were not there tonight!  It was kind of sad that the park was quiet….it would have been nice for it to have been alive and busy, but it was late, and it was Wednesday.   Anyhow we talked and walked home.  We made arrangements to meet early tomorrow morning as Anna was leaving then.

Jenny (left) our Foreign Affairs Officer and Anna

As above, just at a less convenient moment

Anti clockwiswe from the right: Anna, Jenny, Charles (English Teacher), Mr Dong (Vice Principal), Me Dong's son.

Left to right, Mr Dong, Jenny, Anna, me, Charles.

Anna and Mr Dong's son

Jenny, Anna and me.

 In the morning we met and she gave me the jointly owned iron!  I carried her bags down and the school car was waiting to take her to the station and the via there to Shenyang, way up North near Korea!  Should at least be a change in weather!  I think she will be teaching Russian at a University.  It’s a shame to see her go.  We got on well…most of the time.  However, we were in some ways very similar and clashed often too!  All of part of life’s rich tapestry! Bye Bye Anna!

Anna by the schol car.  I am in teh background with the school driver.

 ...and finally a video I made for Anna because she dropped her phone in the sink (toilet?) and lost most of her photos!