One of my weekends here was especially pleasant thanks to my lovely colleague Claire and her parents who invited me to spend some time with them on their boat in England. I was delighted by the invitation – I always wanted to live on the boat!
Claire's parents are very interesting and pleasant people. Well, just their way of living makes them special for me, but I must say that they are the people who could write motivational books. For example, her mum gave up her job in the bank and went back to school, so that she could become the nurse, which was always her dream job.
Claire's dad is hypnotherapist. “Why is that Buddha without the head?” I asked him, when I saw that the little statue on the table has the head separately next to it. He just shrugged his shoulders: “It is a good reminder that nothing in this world is permanent.” Well it is something that would Yoda or your other favourite movie wise-man would say, isn't? (I know, Yoda would probably use some weird sentence structure instead...)
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| Nala, the dog. She didn't like me. |
He added that he will probably attach the string to it, so that the statue looks like the toy dogs that nod with their heads. And facing the resentful look of his daughter, he just laughed: “What? I think that Buddha would approve!”
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| Our boat trip. Tea included! |
On Saturday, we attended the birthday party of a one-year kid, who was related to Claire. The party was at the school and it was quite a big event, I guess that British people have slightly different approach to kids parties than us. Balloons, garlands, a lot of food, a lot of kids and their parents, family members and weird unrelated visitors (just like me).
In the evening we played Mahjong (a game that is very popular in China and I never managed to learn it, though I spent six weeks there, but this game is probably my fate anyway, because I finally played it on the canalboat in England, such a random place to learn a Chinese game), drank some tea and ate biscuits. And probably for the first time here in Britain, I felt hot, because inside the boat there was a little stove. The cosy boat was really different from those cold big houses so common in Britain.
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| Playing Mahjong in the evening. |
Sunday: a boat trip. About two miles there and back again… and it took us half a day, because we went through eight locks. It was fun and a little bit challenging physically, I didn't regret that I missed my weekend class at gym at all.
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| Dog is always helping us steer the boat. |
The boat is about 25 metres long, but in the evening there were 10 people and one dog in there (Claire, her brother and his new girlfriend; her sister with two kids and their father, both Claire’s parents and of course me. And the dog.). Well, you know what they say: the more the merrier. And without any doubt, I declare this weekend my best weekend here in Wales!
(Fun fact: it was in England…)
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| Me, opening the lock. |
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| Claire's dad. |
