Arrival in Xiamen

I left Kunming on Sunday morning after Shuting treated Chianna and me to lunch. Several of us had arranged to leave for the airport together, which we did indeed do in two groups a little after twelve. As luck would have it, this was the first time that my ride to (and for that matter from) the airport did not take me down Yi Er Yi road. Instead, we headed up towards the Cuihu area, passing by a church that I had visited on my very first weekend in Kunming. That day, I spotted the church across Cuihu Lake and, feeling all sentimental about the time I had spent singing in churches these past few years, found my way to the entrance and sat in the pews for a good few minutes with misty eyes.

Shuting, Chianna, and I at the restaurant

I exchanged farewells with the last few people on my program, among them Fafa (previously on “Cheer up, Captain, buy a flower off a poor girl” and “A Frenzied Farewell to Kunming”) and Elizabeth (“A Note on Guitars” and “A Frenzied Farewell to Kunming”).

As the plane neared its destination, I could see the sea. Ships, skyscrapers, a bustling city: This was Xiamen. I was stopping by for a few days to see Kelly, one of my oldest friends at Yale. She and her mum very kindly drove all the way to the island from the mainland suburbs to pick me up – I was assured that public transport was either non-existent or a nightmare. That evening, I was introduced to Kelly’s paternal grandparents, who live with her parents in a very elegant apartment in a relatively new part of town.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Southern Delhi and Other Bits and Pieces

Image
On my last day in Delhi, I managed to cross off the last few items on my sightseeing list. I began by packing my luggage, all the while congratulating myself on having remembered to ask the hotel to do my laundry in advance. That finished, I ordered an Uber to Akshardham, a massive Hindu temple east of the Yamuna River. The opening hours of the temple are not well advertised, and when I arrived by the front gate, I learned it was still closed. For a few minutes, I took pictures of the temple from afar, when suddenly an autorickshaw driver approached me. He reasoned with me that since the temple would not open until ten, I had better come with him and see other sights. I had to admit the soundness of his reasoning and gave him my next address.
Read more

India: Day 9 – Independence Day

Image
Tuesday the 15 th was Independence Day. I woke up in the morning to find a scorpion in the bathroom, whom I clobbered to death with a flip-flop. I figured that leaving it alone to go seek help might give it a chance to hide somewhere and threaten us later. I paid off my karmic debt in a few minutes by letting a trapped cicada out of the house. Having lodged itself between a shoe and the door, the insect zoomed off into the garden when I threw open the door and pushed the shoe out.
Read more

India: Days 5-8 – On a tea estate in Darjeeling

Image
I woke up a few minutes after four this morning as Sparsh began to rouse the house for our journey to the train station. Frantically but methodically, we washed ourselves and packed the last of our belongings before loading them into three cars and piling the fourteen-headed group inside them. The ride was smooth. Although I had been woken up a few times that night by the loudest thunder I had ever heard, the roads did not seem dangerously wet, and indeed, it was early enough in the morning that the lack of traffic added considerably to my feelings of safety.
Read more