Hiking, Cathy

There are two rivers that run through the east and south sides of Xinyu and a small mountain range borders the city on the north. It's only about a 15 minute walk to the foot of the mountains from my apartment so today, after I ate some lunch, I walked to the hiking trail. After hiking for about 15 minutes I came to a large monument. I don't know the history behind the monument but I do know that it translates as "martyrs' monument", similar to the park I walked around in Guangzhou.


The trail continued on past the monument and I hiked up it for a while. It was quite cloudy today so I didn't get any great views of the city but the air was cool and good for hiking.



I went back home and at three this afternoon I met Cathy. Cathy is a junior at the No.4 high school (where Bobby also goes). Her mother teaches English at Xinyu College and her father teaches Chinese poetry. Her family also lives in the apartment complex so I met her at the gate where we get on the bus in the morning to go to school. She took me to a park near a big sports complex in the north-east part of the city and we walked around there for a while.

Among other things, we talked about her school. The No. 4 middle and high school is one of the two best schools in Xinyu and the students there work very long hours. They have class in the morning from eight to eleven or twelve. Then lunch. Then class again from two to five. Then more class after dinner for another couple hours, as well as class on Saturday mornings and afternoons and on Sunday nights (and possibly Sunday afternoons). She and Bobby have both told me that they and other students have always been under a lot of pressure to study hard, get into a good high school and then get into a good college.

But school wasn't the only thing we talked about. Cathy also informed me that she really likes sweets and comic books. So we stopped at a cafe in the park to get some ice cream. Afterwords we took a cab back towards the old campus and got some dumplings for dinner. And on the way back from dinner to the old campus she showed me a good comic book store.

I went with her to her home and met her mother, father, and grandmother and she showed me various things in her room including her foreign currency collection, some photographs, and her sketchbook containing all her comic-style sketches. Her drawings really were very good. It seems I will be meeting with her this year on weekends since that's the only time when she's free.