We have returned

Sorry this is late.

Everyone came together yesterday to discuss their site visits. For the most part things went smoothly. People arrived at their destinations; they were met by the appropritate persons at more or less the expected times; they were shown their apartments, which were more or less fine; they were given their teaching schedules, which were more or less what was expected; and they returned back on time and without incident. But of course, there were exceptions.

Most traumatic: One woman's bus broke down about halfway into her trip. People got off the bus, stood around for a while and then started to wander off. Alone in the middle of nowhere unable to find anyone who spoke English, and slowly being abandoned by her fellow travellers, she undestandably got nervous. Thankfully she still had her cell phone from America and it was functioning (though I imagine it had to be some roaming charge). She called the program supervisor, grabbed one of the passengers and handed him the phone. Two more busses, a car ride and another phone call later and she finally made it to her site--about six hours late.

One volunteer was greeted with the site of a bat in his room. Not a baseball bat, but the kind that flies. Not knowing what to do, he knocked on the door of his next door neighbor, an old Chinese man, who promptly took care of business and left the bat corpse in the toilet. Remarkably, it flushed down.

Another volunteer described an epic battle with a spider, which he at first wounded by taking off several of its legs with a rock. But four days later a noticeably angry three legged spider returned--only to meet its own untimely end.

There were apartment surprises. Some nice, some not so nice. One couple reported that they have a combination kitchen and bathroom which is located outside on a patio. This should make for some interesting meals in the winter, not to mention some memorable showers.

Upon his return to Chengdu, the cab driver of one volunteer insisted that the university at which we are staying did not exist, and so he took him to the American embassy.

All in all, though, I thought things were remarkably uneventful and certainly could have been a lot worse. Most importantly, twenty of us left and twenty of us made it back.