Thursday, August 04, 2005

Toe the Line: The Tale of the Ultimate Crossing Guard

So, I am in Nanjing and it is currently cooler here than it normally is because they have been getting rain. I began my survival Chinese class today and I hope that it will be really good. I will need to really work hard at my language because people might expect me to speak more than Matt because of my slanty eyes (I can say that because I'm slanty eyed).

We did go to the Shanghai Museum in the staggering heat and thick humidity (the pollution traps the heat). It was a neato place, I thought that it would be bigger, but you can tell that they must have a really impressive collection. They still allow flash photography (tisk, tisk), but a lot of the other museum biggies were really well done.

So, we were trying to cross the street, which in China is no small undertaking (a girl in our group was hit by a motorbike our first night in China), and they have these crossing guards err... "Traffic Assistants" to help you across the street. This one guy was a total hard ass and whenever anyone put a toe over his line he would blow his whistle and pull you back behind the line. A couple of kids went to run across the street and he ran after them and pulled them back. It was hilarious!

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