It was time for a City Team Fun Day. As the Leader of the Spanish team (and whole entire Spanish program too, I guess, at least for this semester as no one else is teaching Spanish) I got to go with the City Leadership Team here in QHD to find something Fun to do.
Our city team has 10 children ages 1 to 7 plus 20 adults ages 23 to 50-something. How do all thirty of these people have fun together? Clearly the answer was bowling.
So Jonathan (City Team Leader), Jenn (CTF team leader) and I (Spanish team) set off the day before to investigate the bowling options. You can't show up to an unknown place with 20 adults and 10 kids and just expect things to go smoothly--you have to scope out the scene before hand.
It was good we did. We found the bowling after asking and wandering for about half an hour, but after another half hour of exploring the building and asking people we found out it was closed. The permanent closed.
Hmm. How to have fun then? So we started to wander around downtown. We found lots of interesting things, including and not limited to:
A three story professionally equipped gym
A store that sells quality clothing from brands like NorthFace, Patagonia, Timberwolf, etc.
A whole street of foot massage places
A walking path by the river very green and pretty
A Three Self Church having a meeting (God loves you! they told us in Chinese)
Two restaurants decorated like the inside of a castle, one with a buffet and one with ipad menus charging ridiculous amounts of money for pretentious yet not delicious-looking Western food
While all of these things were interesting, none of them looked like they could work for Fun for our group (within our budget).
We had placed a call to a Chinese friend, and stopped to refill on some cheesecake while we waited.
Our friend called us back, and despite having had a wisdom tooth out that morning, took us to another bowling place in a different part of town he'd heard about. After about an hour of intense bargaining and schmoozing with the manager, we'd managed to acquire a reservation for the following day!
So the following day we loaded up a big rental bus and went bowling, to the only bowling place available now in all of Haigang district! I am proud to say I bowled above an 80, by some strange chance of luck. We had lunch at a nice restaurant nearby and came home, having had Fun.
Moral of the story: with perseverance and Chinese friends and contacts, bowling is possible here if you have about 6 hours of lead time to get everything investigated properly!!
Our city team has 10 children ages 1 to 7 plus 20 adults ages 23 to 50-something. How do all thirty of these people have fun together? Clearly the answer was bowling.
So Jonathan (City Team Leader), Jenn (CTF team leader) and I (Spanish team) set off the day before to investigate the bowling options. You can't show up to an unknown place with 20 adults and 10 kids and just expect things to go smoothly--you have to scope out the scene before hand.
It was good we did. We found the bowling after asking and wandering for about half an hour, but after another half hour of exploring the building and asking people we found out it was closed. The permanent closed.
Hmm. How to have fun then? So we started to wander around downtown. We found lots of interesting things, including and not limited to:
A three story professionally equipped gym
A store that sells quality clothing from brands like NorthFace, Patagonia, Timberwolf, etc.
A whole street of foot massage places
A walking path by the river very green and pretty
A Three Self Church having a meeting (God loves you! they told us in Chinese)
Two restaurants decorated like the inside of a castle, one with a buffet and one with ipad menus charging ridiculous amounts of money for pretentious yet not delicious-looking Western food
While all of these things were interesting, none of them looked like they could work for Fun for our group (within our budget).
We had placed a call to a Chinese friend, and stopped to refill on some cheesecake while we waited.
Our friend called us back, and despite having had a wisdom tooth out that morning, took us to another bowling place in a different part of town he'd heard about. After about an hour of intense bargaining and schmoozing with the manager, we'd managed to acquire a reservation for the following day!
So the following day we loaded up a big rental bus and went bowling, to the only bowling place available now in all of Haigang district! I am proud to say I bowled above an 80, by some strange chance of luck. We had lunch at a nice restaurant nearby and came home, having had Fun.
Moral of the story: with perseverance and Chinese friends and contacts, bowling is possible here if you have about 6 hours of lead time to get everything investigated properly!!
