Rumors
Flashback: Friday, September 29th, 2006My exilic ruminations didn't last all that long. On Friday afternoon, we checked our e-mail to hear the latest word from our town. There was no new news, only confirmation of what they had discovered earlier--a limited infection that was quickly cleaned up. We consulted with our co-workers in Kunming and got a clearer picture of what had happened to bring us to the city. Our agency does development work, English teaching being only part of the package. A week ago, they had hosted a group of high school kids who had ventured to our neck of the province on a service project in a village. The group returned last Tuesday and then on Wednesday our agency was told about the diseased birds. They made some calls and that's where they heard about the closed airport. That's when they decided to pull us out. Anyway, subsequent inquiries had gotten somewhat conflicting information, though everything seemed to point to the situation as being under control and not at all dangerous. Still, the prudent course seemed to be to wait out the weekend, especially since the coming week was the October holiday with no classes being held.
We spent the bulk of the afternoon rather lazily. The girls read and I spent an hour or so exploring the neighborhood. We also talked with the Hong Kong office. They were very solicitous for our welfare, even offering to relocate us if we were uncomfortable with returning to our rural city! We assured them that such a thing was furthest from our mind and that we were quite eager to return. But of course, that wouldn't be for a couple of days and we had a whole weekend ahead of us.
posted by John @ 6:37 PM
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