William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 2006.

China Round 2

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Today is going to be an interesting day for a parent teacher meeting. However, that got shot down when I found out that only parent was allowed to attend the meeting. What the hell? Apparently, only one of the guardians must attend, the other is left to sit outside the gates. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad until you find out that they gotta sit out there for three hours.

What in the heck do they talk about for three hours. Well, it actually is more like a sales pitch, than it is a progress report. They talk about what the heck they did the money you paid them. Talk of plans of this and that, upgrades to this and that, new programs and courses, a new language program, and stuff like that. Reason they do all this crap, is after they finish, they have a form for all the parents to sign to have them keep their child in their school (ie. don't transfer them out) and to re-register them up for the next term (and fees.) Kinda interesting that it only requires one parent's consent to do that, thus only one parent has the say of how their money is spent.

Well, now this sucks. Obviously, my plan to do this changed. Ami agreed to take some pictures for me which are below.

Please click on the thumbnails to enlargen the larger pictures.

Alexander's classroom. Some of the early parents sitting waiting.

Note the student in red & white sports uniform.

The hallway. Just like right out of an anime. I don't quite know what the student is doing in the next room.
The courtyard and the entrance gate.

Track and playing field.
Fountain by a stage at the front gate.

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The main front gate.
The rainbow after the freak shower.

On the flip side of the coin, this gave me my first opporunity to wander the streets of Shenyang. I walked all the way downtown and to Happy Family by going down Bei3Jing Jie and across Zhongshan Lu. I got slightly showered on by a freak rain storm. It passed in about 20 minutes. I had to go into the arcade to dry off and keep warm which isn't too difficult with a room full of people, and a game like Ez Do Dance 2.

I used a 132 bus to get back home. I remembered it passed by the house, and thus like most cities buses loop around their routes.

When I got back home, Ami is back with Alexanderia; about the right time for dinner.

The Experimental Chinese Food Of The Day is:
Gui Sheng Nut Square

The closest thing we have to this idea is the small packs of Sesame Snaps. Those are wafer thin bars of sesame seeds glued together with sticky like hard syrup. They make a tasty and sweet bar. Well this thing is like that. However, it is cube shaped, it is one unit not many layers, and it has other nuts like peanuts, sunflower seeds, and others. It is really hard to bite into. So hard, I can only get maybe a corner off at a time.

Otherwise, it has the same basic taste as a Sesame Snap but with a more nuttier taste which is coming from the other peanuts. Of all the little packaged candy that we bought in Shanghai, this one was my favourite.