This blog entry should start with Friday afternoon. I was supposed to go set up for the International Day at the school. Julie and I had been grocery shopping, and I was dropping her off at her house. If you've seen the driving in Nanjing, you will not be surprised to hear that as we were turning into the driveway of the apartment complex, Jiang (our driver) brushed the coat of a pedestrian. Julie had seen it happen, and said that the walker wasn't watching where he was going and walked into the car. Well...The man chased us into the apartment complex and the 2 or 3 blocks to Julie's building. He started yelling at Jiang, and I waited. He was really angry and kept showing Jiang his jacket. Next thing I knew, Jiang was pulling his hair and pushing him. I grabbed the keys that were inside the car and went inside Julie's 1st floor apartment where we watched stunned as they had a huge fight! There was kicking, hitting, chasing, and at one point Jiang was thrown over a hedge. There was a broom handle involved, and I found out later, that Jiang was bitten on the finger by this fellow, and it broke skin. The pedestrian had called the police, and Jiang had to wait for the police. I was late getting to the school, so I took a taxi. I wasn't very happy about what was happening. Later, I found out that they stayed for over an hour. Several police showed up and took lots of notes. Here is the punchline of the story....The man only wanted 10rmb to clean his coat(about 1.20 Us or the cost of a Chinese dinner)! The policemen told Jiang to pay him and then they left. Now Jiang has to have a shot every day for 5 days because of his human bite. Can you believe it???? It was the craziest thing. Jiang is getting a talking to tomorrow at work.
Saturday was International Day at the school. It snowed lots on Friday night, so there was a much lower turn-out than normal. It took our driver 2 hours longer than normal to get to our house. But we made it. Expats from different countries put together a room about their country and hand out food samples. People go all out, and the food is always amazing! The Americans did a Grease theme this year. We all dressed up in 50's style and there was a juke-box, and a little diner in one corner where we gave out mini-hamburgers and chips with sodas. They had hula-hoop contests, and the art department made us a "Grease Lightening" car. It was really cute. There is a program at the end of international day, and the Americans did a medley of "grease" songs and we danced and did lip-sinc. All of the kids and I were in it, with Nicole playing Frenchy with pink hair, and Caitlin playing the part of Sandy. Eli danced with his school teacher who is American (he just loves her) and had a ball. Here are some photos from International Day.
Here, some of the "T"Birds are getting "Grease Lightening" ready. Pretty cool Jay.
Eli and Miss Karen are dancing pretty good.
Rachel and Jay help with the hand Jive.
Here's our Beauty-school Drop-out!
Caitlin and Devon made a pretty good Sandy and Danny! She was a bit nervous about how short he was compared to her.
Mike and I thought we'd go on a quick date while we were there...
