OYY: The Return

As I've mentioned in previous posts, during our break between Term 2 and Term 3 I traveled to and from China to visit my students from last year at OYY, in Hunan Province. This was a fairly difficult trip logistically, for multiple reasons:

• The break was 10 days long, and getting from Iringa to Xintang takes 3 days (and same for the return trip). So I'd only have 4 days at OYY.
• I had to get a Chinese visa from the Chinese Embassy in Dar, which was a massive pain.
• I would be taking multiple modes of transportation, some less reliable than others, which meant I would probably be making some last-minute decisions between backup plans.

Let me just say, before detailing the several issues I had in transit, that this trip was totally, completely worth it. I got a hero's welcome at OYY for some reason, it was wonderful to see the students and the teachers I had been friends with, I got to eat some good old Hunan food, and I discovered I haven't forgotten as much Chinese as I thought I did (though I have forgotten some, regrettably). But I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. So I'm just going to intersperse pictures of me with some of my old students throughout this post.

Notwithstanding, the trip could have been (much) easier. Here are the various legs of my trip to China, and the complications they each carried:

1. April 2: Iringa to Dar: 9 hours on a bus, the day before the flight. No unusual issues, except we nearly missed the bus because my alarm didn't go off.
2. April 3: Dar Airport, Issue #1: Upon trying to check in at the Nyerere Airport in Dar, the good people of Ethiopian Airlines couldn't print my boarding pass. Apparently my name was on the passenger list, but the computer wouldn't let the attendant print my pass. None of the people working in the area could figure out why, but after an hour of scrutinizing my printed itinerary, quizzing me about how I made the reservation, asking supervisors, and finally checking the "master computer," they ascertained that my boarding pass authentication something-or-other was in China Southern airline's database. CSA was the other airline in my itinerary.
3. April 3: Dar Airport, Issue #2: But I finally got my pass and went into Passport Control, only to learn that my passport had no official Tanzanian Resident stamp on it (even though I most certainly have a residence permit). Apparently after obtaining my residence permit, I was supposed to take it to the Iringa Immigration Office and get a big official stamp in my passport...too bad no one told me this, so I didn't know it until I called the IIS principal at the airport and found out. So I had to convince the Immigration Officer that I really did have a residence permit, it was at my place of work, and he could talk to my boss if he wanted to. He gave me a lecture about how he was supposed to fine me, not let me out of the country, blah blah blah, but finally he let me through. Also, while I was waiting in the line there was a man in front of me who definitely had mental issues. A friend he was traveling with handed him a bag with 2 bottles of water in it, and he wound up and hurled it against a wall.
4. April 3: Dar to Addis Ababa: Flight #1, 3 hours. No issues.
5. April 3-4: Addis Ababa to Bangkok: Flight #2, 8 hours. Delayed takeoff but no other issues.
6. April 4: Bangkok to Guangzhou: Flight #3, 5 hours. Again, delayed takeoff but no big problems.
7. April 4: arrived in Guangzhou in the evening, too late to catch the last train to Hunan. Stayed in a hotel from midnight to 6 AM. Turned out to be fortuitous, because I used the internet to check the train schedules and discovered that in the last few months a bullet train line was built that goes from Guangzhou, through Hunan, to Wuhan!
8. April 5: took the bullet train to Hunan, arrived around 10 AM in Xintang. Booked a room in Xintang Hotel, completing the first half of my journey.

Once I got to Xintang, it was all good. I went to the nearest China Mobile outpost (of which there were many), got myself a new SIM card, and called Jenny, the now Senior 3 OYY student whose English is simply excellent. April 5 was Tomb-Sweeping Day, so the kids were on holiday and she was able to come meet me. We hung around town, ate lunch together, and she even got hold of Nancy and Jessie, 2 former students who are now in college in Changsha, and they came for a few hours as well. I gave them some souvenirs I brought from Tanzania, which they thought were pretty cool. Harry, another Senior 3, also met us a little later on, and his English is also really good and I was glad to see him.

In the afternoon, we headed back to OYY and I met this year's foreign teachers: Mark, Brett, and Sarah. It was interesting to hear about how their experience has been different from mine, Yoko's, and Jenna's last year. They were really nice hosts, and I really enjoyed getting to know them.

I got to see some other students as they came back from their holiday, and in the evening I went to see the teachers who we hung out with last year - Winnie, Ruth, Nick, etc. Sophie, my tutor, was on leave in Hengshan so I didn't get to see her. Bummer.

The kids are hams, same as last year. A picture of Class 83 before they saw me in the doorway:

And after:

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I was really busy! I visited the Spoken English classes, and taught sections of the Junior 2 classes. I just told them about Africa, showed them some trinkets, played hangman, you know, fun stuff. I met some of the Junior 1s as well, who are pretty cute as usual. I couldn't believe how much the Junior 2s had grown from last year! I played ping pong with some of them:

We had lunch with students and dinner with teachers both days - it was just packed with seeing people and catching up on things. I also went to English Corner on Wednesday, which was a mob scene, and I did Talking Show one day as well. I really don't think I could have crammed more into the time I had.

I had to leave on Thursday around 1 to catch the bullet train (it bought me a few extra hours) to Guangzhou, as I flew out Thursday night. It was kind of tough to leave, just as I felt like I was really hitting a (frenetic) stride at OYY again. I wish I could have stayed longer!

The return trip wasn't so bad as the outbound one: I had a really long layover in Bangkok, and my flight from Addis to Dar was delayed and so I had to stay an extra night in Dar, and I had to convince Passport Control in Dar again that I was a resident (this time I was armed with a copy of my residence permit, though, emailed to me by the principal), but I still made it back to Iringa on Sunday the 11th. Term 3 started on the 12th, so I made it back with hours to spare :-)