travelling day six - where we discover the power of recuperative icecream

Today I realised what it meant when the guidebook says 'Wuhan is the furnace of the south'.  And it is only autumn.  We were invited unexpectedly to an orphanage on the other side of town for the orphanage open day.  This was very exciting as the orphanage has not had many visitors from different places before.  We travelled all across town and were let through the guarded gate into the grounds of the orphanage, which were strangely devoid of children.  After about a 45 minute wait we were instructed to stand in lines on the parade ground to view the performances from some of the children.  Very cute - but the introductory speech promoted that there were 700 children at the orphanage, and in the performance there were only about 30.  After the performances we were toured around the ground floor of the building, and then ushered out of the gate.  We didn't meet any children today.  Maybe next time!

I took some photos inside the orphanage, but was requested not to use them.  So here is a photo of a lady and a baby watching us enjoy icecreams outside the gate of the orphanage.  We needed icecreams because we had all melted standing in the lines outside in what was a very humid 34 degrees.

NB babies very cute here but don't whistle when you hold them - they are without nappies and the wee/pooh cue is a whistle

In other news today I was able to visit twin Chinese girls and talk with their family about ideas for their learning.  They had some apoxia at birth, and now presented with learning difficulties/attention difficulties and also had epilepsy.  This is tricky here as the teaching system is not so flexible for students such as this.  I had a lovely afternoon playing with them and doing some informal language assessment through a translator.  I hopefully gave the family a few ideas and resources (thanks Bridget!).  It was super interesting to participate in bilingual therapy, and the girls really enjoyed it.  They also mocked my poor attempts at Chinese.

terrible ipad photo of the twins - I forgot the camera

Tomorrow we are going shopping again in what is locally known as the CRAZY markets.  I am expecting much much randomness.

Chris’ cultural tip: The traffic is odd in China

Over the last couple of days we have been driven around different parts of Wuhan.  This has given us a good opportunity to see first-hand some of the oddities with the traffic in China.  Here is but a few:

• ·        No helmets on bikes, motorbikes, scooters, trikes, etc.
• ·        Passengers on scooters with umbrellas (to protect from the sun)
• ·        Passengers on scooters eating noodles on the freeway
• ·        U-turn lanes (a bit like hook turns in Melbourne)
• ·        Countdown  timers on the traffic lights
• ·        Indicators are optional
• ·        Seat belts are optional

These are all odd to my Western eyes, but this is one of the oddest.  Today we went to the same area of Wuhan as yesterday, but had to go a completely different way.  The reason – it was an even day.  You see with all the traffic in Wuhan one way they have decided to limit it is by only allowing vehicles with number plates ending in odd numbers to cross a certain bridge one day, and vehicles with number plates ending in even numbers another way.  So only half the cars in Wuhan are allowed to cross any given bridge on any given day.  There is always another bridge and another way around but you may have to go quite out of the way to get there.  To combat this the rich even go as far as to buy two different cars and make sure the number plates are odd & even!

So tomorrow if we take a car we will be allowed across the bridge we went over yesterday.  The reason – it is an odd day.  Which all just goes to show the traffic is odd in China.