Joey and I began our fifth day in Shenzhen by taking a walk in a beautiful park that is neatly tucked behind the wondrous modern architecture of Shezhen. Even though it is only a five minute walk from our hotel, one would never know that it existed without being told how to get there by the teachers at the Sino-Canadian International School. Such is the daily tale of Shenzhen. Pleasant and unexpected surprises pop out at you from the least expected places!
We started our day by taking a walk frontwards through the park. I stress "frontwards" because many people from China actually were walking backwards on the 1.5 kilometre track that circumvents the trees, flowers, and sculptures that contribute to the park's beauty. While we strolled along among hundreds - no make that thousands - of people we saw many interesting things taking place: basketball games, Tai Chi, kites blowing in the wind, and ladies sweeping paths with straw brooms. Many days you will see our 66 year old Canadian colleagues who teaches at the international school, Jim Harpel, training for his next long distance run. He begins running at 4:30 in the morning and continues to circumvent the track until 6:30. One of his most recent races was the Great Wall of China Marathon where he ran along the Great Wall, sometimes having to line up in single file to transverse narrow paths that were bordered by 200 metre drops on one side!
During the day we introduced students and teachers to the SMART Senteo Responders. After school we did separate staff inservices for the International School and the Chinese High School on the Responders and SMART Notebook 10. Then we headed to Shekou, the international district, for dinner. Wow! What a change that was from the morning walk in the park. Joey described it best when he said, "I feel like we are in the midst of a video game!" Our taxi driver was amazing. He swerved in and out of traffic in a manner which I have never experienced before. He played chicken with two cars that he met in spots that only allowed one vehicle to enter at a time. He was going to be that vehicle regardless of what anyone one else, in any other vehicle thought! Then he swerved in and out among other vehicles, large and small, in a manner that made us wonder whether we were either with one of the most skilled drivers in Shenzhen or one of the craziest. Luckily for us, the former proved to be true, only being finally validated by the close call we had at the very end of our journey with a bus and a car! We congratulated our driver, thanked him, and then blessed ourselves for having survived a drive like none we would ever experience in Canada. Then we settled in for a very relaxing (richly deserved after our drive) meal with our friends and colleagues from both New Brunswick and Shenzhen.
It's hard to believe that this will be our last night in Shenzhen. Tomorrow we fly to Beijing. That will certainly be another adventure full of architecture, history and wonder - the Great Wall, the Egg, the Bird's Nest, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Water Cube. As much as we look forward to what awaits us in China's capital city, we will look back with great fondness upon our week in Shenzhen. The city is beautiful, the people wonderful, and, most importantly, our colleagues from the Sino-Canadian School most welcoming and friendly. They have provided us with a week that we will never forget, memories that will remain with us for years to come. We now look forward to working with them collaboratively by means of the technology that we have available today - technology that has made our global village a place where we can learn a lot from each other!
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