Tuesday morning I didn't feel much better so I spent the morning resting. In the afternoon one of the translators was giving Daniel grief with the extension of his VISA. Basically how it works is that the academy tells the local department of home affairs how long the student is staying and how long the issued VISA or Residence permit should be. The translator told Dan he had only paid for 3 months and not 6 so they can only give him 3 months. This is a load of BS because even if they give him a 6 month permit and he leaves before it is up they can just cancel it. And also Dan only paid for 3 months because I told him not to pay for everything up front because there was no Sanda shifu and if you haven't paid they will make an effort to get you one but if they have your money there is no leverage or pressure that can be applied. Anyway they said they will sort it out on thursday so lets see what happens. In the evening I helped Thomas reinstall Windows on his terribly functioning laptop.
On wednesday we were told that we were going on a field trip with the bus, the headmistress told us this so we knew there was some kind of ulterior motive. We drove about 60km which took almost 2 hours and we finally arrived at a high school outside of Siping. We (8 confused foreigners) were asked to step outside the bus. After walking around for 5 minutes and creating some attention we were told to get back into the bus. The school then had a break and many students rushed outside to catch a glimpse of us foreigners. At this point the headmistress gave us each a stack of academy marketing material to distribute to the students. Shortly after this we headed straight back to the academy, the trip had been pointless and we had just been marketing tools (pun intended). Luckily the bus needed to make a refueling pitstop in Siping so four of us told the headmistress that four of us would like to go shopping in Siping. She said it was ok so we just left and went straight to the JinLiHao and relaxed in the Sauna and hot tubs before going upstairs and lying in the recliners. We ended up getting back to the academy at just before midnight.
Friday we went to Siping to watch some of the world cup games. Quite annoying with the time differences, most games were at either 22:00 or 02:00am. Chris and Umit also got back from Siping and Chris got me a South Africa jersey, quite funny that it had a Totalsports tag on it even though it came from the Silk market and cost 120RMB.
Some tanks on the way to Siping
 The Zhongxing, knockoff central  Only 40RMB for 3 people  Looks real but all nike products are fake in that store  Want a pet or future stewing meat, the sales woman actually tells people which ones taste good  Standard Siping Hazards |
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