Scheduling

Scheduling anything in China can be a mess. Yesterday I was getting ready to go teach class and my supervisor walks up and tells me that I (and all the other foreign fellows) need to catch a bus in the next hour to go to Dali (which is about 2.5, 3 hrs away) where we'll be spending the night and take care of visa stuff in the morning. It was kinda a surprise but it ended up being a nice trip because we got to swing by the Dali walmart to buy all those wonderful things that walmart has (3 jars of peanut butter and a folding camping chair).

In general, schedules in China are subject to change at the last minute, and aren't really general knowledge. Last year, at my school, fellows were told on a Friday that there wouldn't be any classes for the next week because there was going to be a vacation. This was the first time the teachers had heard of this week long vacation. In general, you hear about vacations about two days before they actually happen, which makes scheduling trips, and having people visit....interesting.