Upon returning to the school on Wednesday afternoon I scurried off to teach my two remaining classes of the day. While I was gone Julie was informed that our return trip in search of residency permits would begin around 8 am tomorrow morning. This meant that we would miss our weekly visit to the sister schools (Ryan - Shimenying and the 70 first graders and Julie - Feng ... still learning how to spell this schools name). Given the state of my voice on Wednesday afternoon this was not a bad thing.
Thursday morning we promptly make it to the parking lot just before 8 am to begin our journey. Fifteen minutes later a fellow teacher runs out to tells we should wait in the teacher's office as the driver is running a little late. Come 9 am we are off. It took about an hour to get back to the last building we visited on Wednesday.
The driver lets off at the door and this time we somewhat know the drill. Up to 2nd floor east and wait for Lily to do her thing. The scenery today is just as good or better than yesterday. Most people are in very good and I get a very cheerful form a elderly British gentleman on my way in. In this place we are not nearly the exception that we are most of the time China. At our home when walking around if I say 你好 / ni hao (pronounced: nee how) to a passerby I usually get a weird look then a smile as they decode my poor pronunciation and then a smile. Here that is not he case plenty of foreigners all the time.
Lily promptly finds an officer and waits a while to get to speak with him. Once she gets her turn it takes about half an hour before they come and retrieve Julie and I. We are whisked towards a desk with a very long line. The officer takes us to the front of the line. Doesn't matter where you are it really is all about connections. The clerk looks at our information and does something with her computer for about five minutes. Then she points at me and says something which I am then told to sit in the chair. The clerk keeps looking at our forms and working on her computer and then pushes a receipt looking piece of paper toward me and I am instructed to sign. Julie's turn. We get through this no problem.
Lily leads over to the waiting area where we are told the driver had some errands to run and should be back in about a half hour. Lily proceeds to inform us that we won't need to come back but she will. The officer she had spoken with was kind enough to let us do our part even though the permits would not be able to be issued today. So two days and at least eight hours and we were need to for about five total minutes.
My voice is very thankful that we go the day off and given that we had kindergarten on Friday morning it proved to be crucial. By the end of my second to last class on Friday afternoon my voice was just about gone, but one bottle of pear juice and a much more well behaved students in my final class and I got through it without any issues.
Time for the weekend. On the agenda, we are going to some one's house (we have never met them) to make dumplings on Saturday and FSU/Clemson on Sunday morning. #GoNoles!
No comments:
Post a Comment