Shekou, China
[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]
The Shekou International School had just finished classes the day of our arrival so we didn’t have a chance to meet any of Sarah’s students. However, we did make a trip to the school to check out her classroom and we ran into some of the teachers there as well. The building that houses the middle/high school students is only a few years old and is very modern. It is a short walk from her new apartment and on a good day (there are very few unpolluted days) you can see Hong Kong from school.
Sarah at her desk
The hallway outside Sarah's classroom (Alex & Mark)
Alex & I outside the school
We had a few days in Shekou to do laundry, catch up on emails, and check out the city before we were heading to Yangshuo for some Chinese language classes. Sarah helped us discover the joys of cheap good food in China and of course took us on the obligatory trip to Walmart. Not your typical Walmart experience, this was Chinese Walmart, complete with fish for your dinner tanks in the back.
Intersection in Shekou
Another fun experience in China is the “wet” market. This is where all the local fresh fish, meat, and vegetables can be found. A unique food that those of us living in the Western world aren’t accustomed to is dog. The Chinese eat dogs. However, it’s not clear why, but dog is a winter meat and is only found during the colder months. So for our visit we had to settle for much more normal things like butchering half a pig and live fish filleted open on the tables.
Alex observing the slicing up of a pig
Various shellfish
Blue crabs
A variety of eggs for sale
From Shekou, we head to Yangshuo where we were all going to take Chinese language classes. Sarah and her friend Lisa, already had some Chinese language so they took a more advanced class and began learning characters, while Alex & I started from ni hao (hello.) Yangshuo is a beautiful area in China known for their karsts which are beautiful, green, steeply peaked mountains that fill the area.
