Xiamen Symphony

On Friday night we decided to go out and get ourselves some culture, so off we went to see the local Xiamen symphony orchestra. Tina had heard about this way back when when we first got here, and although we've always wanted to go we just never got around to it.

So Friday Tina went off with Edlin to purchase some tickets, and that evening off we went to meet up with Edlin and Jose at the symphony. The fun was that apparently this is one of the few places in town that the taxi's do not know how to get to - even when we handed him a card with the address. Our driver had us going in circles, and finally when Edlin called wondering where we were, she had one of the girls that worked there explain to the driver where they were located.

Our driver handed the phone back to Tina, drove around the block again, and then kind of shrugged his shoulders in that universal "I've got no idea" way and we got out of the taxi. Tina asked the first guy on the street that passed us and he pointed us in the right direction. Needless to say, with this delay we arrived after they started so we had to wait for outside for the first set before we could go in...

They were really good, and the show that we saw was a sampling of music that had been played at the Olympics in the past. A nice, happy, fun evening of good music.

After the show we decided to head over to a local western restaurant for dinner, but for some reason everyone agreed to follow me down an alley for what we thought was a shortcut - ten minutes later we wandered out of the alleys onto a main road far from where we needed to be. Also at this time we looked at our watches and realized with it being 21:30 that most restaurants would be closed or closing, so we just headed back to the the hotel that Jose and Edlin are living in and ate a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant.