Days 3 and 4 in Xiamen - casing the neighborhood

Christine has been lovely about getting up early and making us each a little bowl of fresh fruit salad for breakfast. Love having a special time of eating breakfast together and praying for our day. When your days have as many unknowns as ours do, you don't forget that you're totally trusting in God's tender loving care! 

Tuesday was Christine's first day of work, so she was off to her office, which is about a 20 minute walk from home. Kynza had appointments both Tuesday and Wednesday to get enrolled in Xiamen International Academy and get placed in her classes. We got pretty good at taking taxis to and from the school, but we always have to have a Chinese speaker (someone from Christine's work or someone from the school) call the taxi for us, and we have to give the taxi driver the address written in Chinese. I have a copy of my Chinese address in my purse, my back pack, my wallet, my pocket -- just in case! It is very, very rare to meet anyone who speaks even few words of English, and highly unlikely for a taxi driver. 

On her last free afternoon before starting school, Kynza and I took our cameras out to do some exploring of the neighborhood. Here's what we found...

A view from out our kitchen window shows shops across the street. I'm still not sure exactly what they sell. Notice the circles of barbed wire along the top of the fence! We live in a gated residence, and there is always someone at the gate to let cars through. Jumping that fence could be pretty nasty!

Yale Nursery School is the view out of our living room window. It is part of our gated residence. I don't know a lot about the school yet, except that it seems to be open 7 days a week, and long days. 

The electronic billboard on the front of the building runs Chinese messages that I don't understand, but it also has this in English: Yale students today, international leaders tomorrow. Some day soon I'll go down and see if I can talk to someone there!

 When Kynza and I got outside of our gate, we hooked up with these three darling school girls who were having so much fun laughing and giggling at us. I don't think they have many chances to walk down this street with non-Asians, so just looking at us evokes all kinds of laughter. So hard not to be able to talk to them! They did say hello and bye bye, which is better than my Chinese.

 Seems like every other shop is a tea shop -- so fun! As you walk by there is someone sitting at the tea table, and  they invite you in to sample (or at least I think that's what was happening!). I nervously urged Kynza into this first one, and we sampled but didn't buy, because I didn't really know what or how to buy! They went through a very ornate pouring ceremony -- just for us. Oh my!

 By the second shop Kynza was all smiles as we tasted this woman's tea. Another ornate pouring ceremony. Absolutely no English. Not a word. I was having trouble saying I would like to buy some tea, but I didn't want a big fancy gift box and I just wanted a few dollars worth of tea. Finally another guy came in - maybe a family member --and sold me 50 RMB worth of tea -- about $8. It's delicious! I will be back there.


The shop owners all live in back of or over their shops, so all of the normal things people do in their homes take place in front of the shops... Like drying laundry right out on the main street. 

 Or cooking fish on a table in front of an art shop like this. It's sometimes a bit of a trick figuring out if people are okay with having their picture taken... Never quite sure if the sign language means yes or no. There are SO MANY incredible pictures to be taken, and of course I miss most of them because I'm not very quick. But so far so fun.