Days 211-212: Happy Ending to a Sad Story and Dinner with a Fulbrighter

Monday I mostly just stayed in and did grading, but I also talked to Taozhen about my situation at Nanjing Normal University. They invited me and dis-invited me to lecture there not once, but twice. I was really quite hurt about the whole situation, especially since I haven't been getting any other guest lecture invitations in China. She told me that she read them the riot act, and she also told me that they'd try to work something out, but she doubted that would happen. "It's the Chinese way of saying no," she said. I'm sure I'll get over it, but I am glad that I let her go to bat for me here. I was really angry and felt like writing them a horrible e-mail. But I didn't even bother to respond to their "dis-invite." AMAZINGLY--There was a happy ending to this story. I found out Monday evening (after we made dinner--pork chops and broccoli!) that the head of the International Affairs Office wrote me a long, apologetic e-mail, asking me to do two lectures on Monday, May 14. Yay!  I finally have an in-China lecture invite!  I hope it works out this time...

Tuesday, Kerry and I went to the Jiang'an Temple late in the day before we had dinner with Kate, a new Fulbrighter, and her two sons, Peter and Isaac. Unfortunately, as usual, we got off to a late start, and, as usual, it took forever to get to where we needed to go. Google Maps confused us a bit. We finally arrived at 4:55 pm when the place closed at 5 pm (we found it only because I saw a white guy on the street who pointed out where it was). In spite of our late arrival, though, they still let us stay for about 20 minutes. It's very beautiful and impressive, especially the Silver Buddha at the temple. It's fun to see a temple in the city area.

Here are some temple pics:

Silver Buddha at Jing'an Temple.

Monks leaving the temple at day's end.

Detail on a statue in the center of the temple.

After the temple, we went to Latina and met Kate and her kids there. We had a very nice dinner; Kate is pleasant to talk to. Peter is the older and more talkative of her two kids. The experience at Latina overall was better this time: the meat was more rare and seemed to be of a higher quality (although we both got an upgrade). I also like the music there: the singer is very good and not too loud. I was very full, but not overly-sick-full like I was last time. 

One cute story from the subway ride home: this little girl, about 4, was staring and staring at us. Eventually, she and her mother walked up to us. "Excuse me," the mother said. "My little girl likes you and wants to talk to you."  I said "Hello" and "What's your name?" to her in Chinese. She told me. I told the mother I thought she was cute; she thanked me and then they went back to their place on the subway. The little girl took a picture of us. When we got off, we waved to her through the window and she even blew kisses at us!!!  How cute!  Why don't kids in America act like this?

Went to bed soon after we got home--got to sleep with the help of a sleeping pill. 5:30 am rise and shine tomorrow!

Latina pics:

Food from the Latina buffet, with some cheesy beef on the left.

All of us at Latina: (left to right): Isaac, Kate, Peter, Kerry, me.