Orange picking

I went orange picking this morning with my Business English students as well as Laura and Bleisha. I've heard there are quite a few orange farms in the Xinyu area and oranges do seem to be the most common fruit eaten here in Xinyu. The farm we went to was about 15 minutes away by cab and Bleisha, Laura, and I met the students there at around 9 in the morning. It's, I think, about 7 to 10 yuan (1 or 2 US dollars) per person and you can pick up to 1 or 2 kilograms worth of oranges. I don't know exactly how much it costs because the students paid for us.

The orange picking mostly consisted of walking around the farm, picking some oranges, eating a couple, and maybe taking a few pictures with someone's cell phone.


I got a few of my own. Here's one with we and some of my students.


Michael taking a picture of Laura (in the top middle) and some students.


Bill climbing a tree to get oranges from the top.


Bill in the top of another tree, this time a taller one.


We walked around picking oranges for about an hour and then started to head back towards the entrance. Before we left, we took a few class photos. Here's one.


The characters on the flag "外国语系" mean "Foreign Languages Department". They took the flag off its staff for our class pictures.

And here are a few more of my students.


The flag was soon returned to its rightful position on the staff, and Bleisha led the way with it as we marched out of the farm, purses, backpacks and old grocery bags filled with oranges. Here's Bleisha with Bill to the right and Henry, who got lost during the trip and found us again at the end with some very unripe-looking oranges, on the left.


Because we were such a big group, the owner of the farm let us take up to 75 kilograms of oranges. But the students hadn't taken nearly that much, so Bill, Bruce, Tiger, and I went back with a couple big sacks to fill them up. We filled both sacks and came back to the rest of the students, all of whom had been waiting outside the entrance. We set the two sacks down and a mad scramble for oranges ensued. After that we walked a little ways to the bus stop where the students would catch a bus back to school. Bleisha, Laura, and I sad goodbye and took a cab back to the old campus.