APRIL - IN WHICH WE ALMOST LEAVE CHINA FOR BANGALORE -1

Somebody please yell "Cut!" I've been waiting for seven months, the longest year of my life being the first six months in Dalian. The tension and dramatic differences remind me of working on sets. It often seems like I could be working on a film, and that everything I pass in the taxi is backdrop, and the empty western hotel restaurants where we eat are just waiting for the extras to come in and flesh out , our little big story to tell.

We got to the Ramada tonight about 5 pm to discover the buffet we'd heard about from another teacher didn't start until 6, an hour later.

Because I'd worked out at the gym earlier,I was starving, but I'd built up T's expectations for the grand buffet with my suggestion to go there and he was reluctant to pick another plan. Fair enough.

He'd bought a bicycle earlier today, so old it must be from Mao's days, and he was thrilled. So was I. But by the time he rode up on his bike to meet me at Lead's Fitness to take a cab downtown, I'd been looking at every bicycle that passed, he was united with every rider until I spotted a boy on a bike that looked barely out of high school, and there he was, my husband and partner, the happiest looking kid in school.

Until the restaurant opened, T. decided to get a street food snack. We walked outside to overhear some women speaking Spanish, and I called after them, "Esculpame!" until they turned around and we talked for about a half an hour.

The women are food quality inspectors for a company exporting to Cuba, their home. Exchanged numbers and all were on their way.

First customers for dinner. We had a window view of the train station. It wasn't the greatest buffet we'd ever been to, but T got his steak and I got my salmon, with lots of salad and chocolate creme brulee dessert. My phone rang, Shr Dong Hong insisted that I had called her.

We made plans for us to meet tomorrow -- she lives in Tiger Beach but I have to meet her at the hospital because I haven't a clue how to get to her house, being illiterate of street signs and buses, still.

The Western powers invaded the planet China, it's not a "multicultural issue" in a classroom in the States or an issue of immigration, it's another side of the planet and they do things differently. I'm not saying it's exotic, it's just so different at times that you can't make comparisons.

But tonight the weather is really fine and with a light jacket you can walk around, in the crowds and neon, it's the trippy place for tourists that it was all jacked up to be.