I work with several people, but there are three of us that live at the two apartments where we work and keep the turtles. Frederick, my boss, Fong and myself. Frederick is busy most all of the time but we hang out when he needs a break from work. Fong also works a lot but he has more time off and so he and I often go to eat together or run errands in our free time. He has a few restaurants picked out nearby that are his favorites and frequent them because they are delicious and cheap. After a while Fong noticed that after going to all of these restaurants there was not a single thing that i did not like. Now we have a cook and cleaner from the company who cooks two meals a day and for while I liked everything that she cooked as well. Fong thought this was really strange partially because he is a bit picky and partially because I eat almost everything. The result of this was Fong taking note of everything that I do not like and yesterday at the lunch table he gave me what he had found. This is what he said, "You do not like chicken head, chicken feet, chicken kidney, and chicken ass. Now I know what you do not like." After he resighted this list I laughed really hard and then realized that I am proud to not eat any of the above.
Since my last post I have been up to a lot. A lot of that has been work and I have also changed the work that I do. I decided a week or two ago that I was not enjoying the work that I am doing here. Not because of any reason except that I spend a minimum of 8 hours working on the computer everyday and I enjoy the real world too much to do that. So I have sat down with Frederick about it twice now to talk about changing my responsibilities. He has been very open about it and all around helpful in finding ways that I can help the organization that I also enjoy. Some of my new duties will be: teaching an english class about sea turtles once a week, working with local resorts to place our turtles in the community while they are still in need of care, and other things that will get me off of the computer. I am glad that Frederick is so open to change because he likes having me around.
In other news, I visited a place called "the floating village" where we keep a few of our turtles because they can stay in natural salt water. This was a place that I had heard about, but it was much more than i had imagined. So to get there we left Sanya and drove for about an hour until we pulled into a town filled with two and three story buildings and the streets were packed with barbeque places cooking all different kinds of fish. we pulled up next to the curb as we go closer to the water and we got out and headed towards the 'dock'. This was really just a continuation of the side walk but the road and the shoulder fell away leaving me stanging on a piece of concrete about 3 feet wide and feet above some muddy water.
From here we boarded a boat that rammed itself against the dock while all of the passengers boarded. Then we started off through the maze of the floating village. Picture a rural village with small one story houses, crops on all sides and narrow streets. This is what the floating village is like except that it is floating. It is in a well protected bay and it has been there for while. Every house is surrounded by square networks of planks that are connected to drop nets that hold fish. There were boats with single cylinder engines lining just about every passageway and larger boats mixed in every so often. Also, the place was huge we traveled by the baot taxi for about 15 minutes and I did not even see an edge. It was really stunning to see and I hope to get out there again soon.
That is not all though. A few nights ago, Frederick got a call from one of his friends who works as a professional diver. We met up with him and had dinner and he invited us to go crabbing with him the next dat. We of course said yes. It rained the next day and he cancelled because he said it would not be clear enough to see anything. Then he called again the next day and told us to pick him up at 8. We met him at 8 near his house and he came out with a net/cage, three snorkles and masks, and an underwater flashlight. Then we went down to one of the beaches and were in the water before we knew it.
Walking out the a point were we could swim was a pain because he had not mentioned that we should bring shoes to wear in the water and because he had the flashlight and he did not wait up for us. As soon as it got deep enough it was amazing. We spent about an hour and a half scouring along rocks and dead coral looking for crabs and shell fish. I held the net and out friend the diver did most of the catching. We ended up with five crabs (about 5-6 inches in diameter), a dozen or so snails, a few conches, and a lot of small crabs. He also said the next time we go he will bring his spear gun so we can get some fish. Afterwards we went to a restaurant to have it all cooked up. It delicious to say the least and I think I will be buying a snorkel soon.
One last thing. I work with several chinese and one of them, Fong, asks me to help him correct english or explain english sometimes. A few days ago he was chatting with one of his friends online and asked for my help. I told him that I needed to know the context of the english to make it correct and so he showed me what he was talking about. It was then that I discovered chin-glish. Check out what it was.
say yinggelishi ok???
ok san kiu !!!
3Q
THe first one is, "say english, ok?" which just means, "is it okay to speak english" or maybe "can you speak english?". The spelling (yinggelishi) is using chinese words that sound like the english sounds to spell out the word. I have been told that this happens often with beginning students here. The second one is "ok, thank you!" and the third one is the same but using an abreviated form of the second one. He told me he knows lots of these and I will post them when we have time to sit down and write them out.
I leave for Hong Kong tommorow and wil come back by the weekend. I just need to leave the country for my visa. Also, I am going to try to visit a state funded sea turtle reserve in Guandong while I am nearby. I cannot wait to have indian food in hong kong though.
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