It's rude to refuse but this is my fifth glass of brandy!

well it started off as rather hot this morning, but the spell has been broken as did the storm. A lovely, tropical storm. So it's a little wet round these parts. I went to one of my classes on friday but the entire class seemed to have gone AWOL, not a soul to be seen. So I went back to my office and no-one has said a thing. How odd. We did the tutoring again on Friday evening followed by a quick trip to the shopping centre to buy some hamster food. I want a bunny rabbit! Or a ferret, they were quite cute too. I was up early on Saturday teaching, squeezed in my shopping before doing some more teaching at the middle school. That was nice. The lessons were on weekend activities and adverbs of time, so at the end of the second lesson I nicely combined this with their multitude of questions they always want to ask. I would answer as long as they correctly used an adverb of time and took a point away if the question did not contain one. Genius.
We were invited out for a meal by the family of a student, Peter from P6B and Michael from K3B. There was a large group of the teachers went too. Michael had his friend with him and the two of them (being my kindergarteners) recited everything we had learnt this week at me and wanted to play games at the dinner table. The men of the family were more interested in making us ganbei (lit. empty glass) this included several glasses of brandy and several beers. It is rude to refuse and they were the hosts so we begged them no more but to no avail. Also as hosts, they order everybodys food, which lead to a nice plate of steak a plate of french goose liver being placed in front of me. Eventually, we explained that I didn't eat meat so in it's place they gave me a fish steak. Not too much but anything was better than nothing. Following the meal, through which Peter was being made to translate and he became increasingly more embarrassed of his rather drunken uncle and his father, we went to KTV. It was somebody's bithday (the restaurant seemed to think it was mine oddly enough) so there was a big cake. We sang happy birthday and some immature person decided that instead of eating the cake like normal people, the cake should be smeared on everybody's faces. Yes, a cake fight followed. I woke up with so much cake in my ear it was unbelievable. Contrary to popular belief, this wasn't started by me, or Isobel for that matter, but it did include the Head of English and the school vice principal. I had to confirm with Izzie the night's events in the morning it seemed so bizarre! I spent yesterday cleaning up and reorganising my wardrobe. I have over 20 tops that are unsuitable for everyday wear. How stupid is that!
Aviva came round, so we cooked spaghetti and watched 10,000 BC. every now and again it switched briefly to chinese so it was possibly a good thing that Aviva was there as she was able to translate for us. It was a nice meal.
Today, I'm trying to print off P6's test but the printer is being all fuzzy and it's illegible. Well, I can read it but I knew what it said in the first place. Stupid printer

I always like dealing with foreign police...

I got a little grumpy yesterday, I had such a migraine and just when I was looking forward to lying down in the dark they decided to have our Mandarin lesson. It's fair to say that I was not at my most cooperative! We learnt names of flowers and jobs, always helpful!
There hasn't been a lot of interest for me though whilst out at Huang Qi this morning the police visited our school. It has recently come to light after a few interns have been fired over this, that in Gunagdong, to be a teacher, one requires a university degree. The police apparently questioned Izzie about her educational background, reasons for coming to China and her passport details. Great. The school won't say anything other than "troublesome". Perhaps our future hangs in the balance. They have also put in a request that we only wear T-shirts from now on. We knew they had a restriction on shoulders being on view. I wondered what sparked this new restriction, but then I just had 4 P6 boys come to chat glancing rather frequently at my chest in the meantime. Maybe that is why...

Might as well have gone swimming

After finally getting onto my blog on Saturday, I did some shopping and watched TV, exciting I know. We headed to the market noodle place for dinner and on the way back stopped by a DVD store (yes, yet more DVD's!) and walmart so Izzie could do her shopping.  I didn't sleep very well that night, not sure why not. Yesterday we went to a theme park in Guangzhou. It was fun. We met up with Basti, a spectacular 1 hour late (we only set off 15 minutes after intended so that was due to some serious miscalculation) but we had a very enjoyable day. Chinese log flumes get you much wetter than the ones at home do which solved the mystery of why the chinese were all buying plastic ponchos, but did leave us drenched and dripping for the remainder of the day. I had a dry patch the size of a coin. Collectively, the 3 of us were too heavy for one of the rides so they split us up. Charming! They were probably think "fat westerners." Good day though =)
We began a rather tiring journey home. Unfortunately, Izzie was met with some bad news from her family which I shall not detail. It would be nice for people to keep Isobel and her family in yor prayers though as she was rather upset worried and distressed. Since she didn't sleep at all last night she has taken today off work. A wise move I feel. I spent the first part of this morning running around after her teachers for the day to explain that she wouldn't be teaching.  Our buddy wasn't in today as P6 are celebrating finishing their exams, so it was left to me!
K3 wouldn't let me leave my class today! They insisted on tickling me, hugging me, poking me and sitting on me, anything but letting me leave! I have had a rather dull day. So far I've had 2 lessons (1 hour in total) and as P6 aren't around I only have one more class of 40 minutes. Perhaps I shall hijack a computer all afternoon and get on with my planning!

water buffalo polo

I've been a little lazy this week with the blog. In fact I've been a little lazy with everything, doing very little other than teaching (it's a requirement, if I could have got away with not doing I wouldn't have done!) and watching lots of DVDs. Both Gilmore Girls and Sex and the City have been well used and I broke in most of the Disney movies too, they are always good for a sing-along. I like to do that, especially with Disney movies. They are very happy movies =) actually I havn't been that lazy, I've done a lot of planning for my travels, writing down tains/planes/ferries, dates, times and destinations. It all has to be done, and of course the cost. As soon as I get my guidebook, this could be a while now. Phht.

I was most surprised in my kindergarten class earlier this week, I was almost left speechless. A child I had thought was wearing a plain t-shirt was in fact not and when he turned around his top read "Blessed are those who trust in him." It struck me as a rather odd thing to have on the back on a t-shirt in china but most apt.

I was most rudely disturbed from my sleep on Tuesday. People should have thought first about the time difference! I realise that there may have been cause for concern considering there was an earthquake of large proportions and not everybody has good Chinese geography to know that I am out of harms way. However, this lead to a frantic phone call from my sister and a number of texts in the wee hours of the morning. It was the first I'd heard of the earthquake.

It's quite shocking really, but the teachers find it funny that people have been ringing us up to check we are ok. We're doing some fundraising here at the school.

I had a dream the other night that I had come home. I was shorter than my mum, we took a minibus to church and I wasn't allowed to eat anything. How cruel! It was an odd dream.

I helped with the interview for a new English teacher Yesterday. Not that I was really given the choice, I was sat down with her and asked to talk so as to evaluate her spoken English. The poor girl was nervous too! I wonder if she gets the job.

 

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I believe you have a parcel for me?

The end of last week was unbelievably hot and humid. I finally gave in and begged them to put the air con on in the office. The best thing is... it's yet to get 10 degrees hotter. Oh the joys. Luckily it has cooled down and shock, horror, was under 20 degrees yesterday! =0
We learnt mandarin poetry. I can recite 2 lines to you and they're not adjacent they are however from the same poem! Once again we had a student, just the one this time, helping in our teaching. I think he quite enjoys it. They love the fact that we are trying to learn chinese. I emphasise trying. It resulted in more stickers to say the least.
I spent Saturday morning teaching the story 'Goldilocks and the 3 Bears'. Goldilocks doesn't have a name, to the children she is just 'girl'. "who ate the porridge?" "GIRL!" well, it's not wrong!
I spoke to Dad this week who gave me the details of the place from where my parcel was to be collected. A bar. An Irish bar. An Irish bar 1.5 hours away! So on Saturday afternoon, Izzie and I set off for Shenzhen (after I mentioned an Irish bar there was no keeping her away) We succeeded on the second attempt as we got to Guangzhou and turned around to come back and collect our passports. We should have known that Yangshuo and our flawless travels was a one off! We arrived at the train station and had a little trouble working out where to go. I got rather irritated with Izzie. It happens, after all we don't spend any time apart and spending everyday with the same person can be frustrating sometimes, but it's all part of the experience of living with somebody that isn't your family! I'd better get used to it!
Back to my weekend, we finally made it to our hotel and checked in. Thanks to Dad pre-booking i,t we got a discount and I was Mr. Seona for the night. We headed straight over to the Irish bar, naturally just opposite the hotel, and wandered in wondering who to ask about a lone holdall waiting to be picked up. After a little loitering we decided to eat there and sat down at a table. We hadn't realised someone was already sat there but we got chatting. He was drinking by himself so maybe he was glad of the company. Albeit expensive, we had a lovely meal and we're thoroughly enjoying ourselves. In fact, we stayed put until around 3AM. By that point a band had been playing, much to our entertainment.I'd spoken to Dad around 8pm who told me to introduce myself to the gang, which I did, in my own particluar way. I looked around to see if anyone looked like a regular,went over and asked "Do you know my dad?" As it turned out he did and also introduced Izzie to some Irish people she had been wanting to meet so dearly. We wasted yesterday really, we wandered around Shekou but did nothing much before going home. We bumped into one of the teachers on the bus too.
We did some shopping and that sums it up. I did have a lovely chat with my sister though. She was procrastinating from exam revision, I very much enjoyed talking to her as I munched my way through the packet of starburst supplied by my mum. Next I'll make a start on the 18 sachets of hot chocolate she put in there. Such a shame my dad forgot to put my travel guide in, the silly billy.

EV-71

Yesterday morning we were bemused by the school nurses waiting on the school steps as we routinely opend car doors and said good morning and every so often checking children's hands and mouths. There was no explanation given for this and this mornign was repeated only every child had to line up and be checked before allowed to enter the schol building. As we have recently discovered this is due to an outbreak of the highly infectious EV-71, a hand, foot and mouth disease that affects mostly children. There is an epidemic of some sorts in Guangdong and another province about 1000 miles away. The chinese news says it is nothing serious, although 2 children in Foshan have already died. Izzie panicked a little about this until  pointed out that a) we are not children and therfore unlikely to contract the disease, b) the school is checking the students and c) should there be any real danger, the school would be closed down. I am not worried.
I've had a very quite 3 days. Monday is easy lessons, yesterday taught for a grand total of 70minutes (they cancelled my last lesson) and today I only have 3 lessons also, it's a quite life! I've been taking the time to work on my chinese. I impressed myself by being able to hold a bvrief conversation even if it was with a 5 year old, a very smart 5 year old but a 5 year old nonetheless.
I just had to nip to the braodcast room and read the daily story. My reading was appalling! I mixed a few sentences up. Oopsy! Hardly teaching these kids good english!
 

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Holidays - let's have an adventure!

So now it's May and the May holidays have been and gone. We actually made it our destination with no fuss! We had an early mandarin lesson on wednesday which differed from he usual. There were lots of students waiting to be collected and our teacher was rushing around so some P6 students taught us instead. Izzie had 5 sensible girls teaching her making sure she understood what she was saying I got 4 boys, who although very particular about the intonation, rarely explained and also tried to teach me how to swear before Joy, our teacher, hit them round the back of the head. It was actually rather fun. They would give us stickers when we were doing well, and they liked the fact we were trying to learn things. All in all it was a rather fun affair.
I spent thursday packing and tidying and cleaning, bits and bobs of that description before we set off to get our train. We did not run late nor did we have any sort of problems. Before we knew it we were settling ourselves in on the train. We had the middle bunks. This was possibly not the best lace to be. I kicked the man below in the head as I was climbing down, Izzie dropped a book, clothes and other miscellaneous items on him. There may have been another incident but  either way, he got a fair beating from us!
I ended up in an unexpected conversation with 3 chinese men. One had been very interested in what we were reading. He asked if he could have a look at the book I was reading at the time which happened to be my bible. We entered this whole conversational about being a christian, how often I read my bible,what a nice book it was, and then one pipes up asking what the difference between a  Catholic and a Christian is. Perhaps there are many misconceptions about Christianity in China. The 3 men seemed to think it was great that I was a Christian!
I didn't sleep very much on the train. It was quite noisy due to some people staying up late to drink rice wine. I think I eventually drifted off around 5ish maybe later which didn't do me much good as the train pulled in to the station at 6.45. I was cranky. We got ourselves some tickets to the river cruise from Guilin down to Yangshuo and waited. We were picked up by Asta LaVista! man. He cheered me right up! The cruise was lovely, spectacular scenery. We spoke to a retired couple from Blackpool. lovely people. They told us all about their travels. I love being on boats. I blame Daddy.
After a nice lunch we docked and got off and this started the hunt for our hostel. Eventually we found it and ran into 2 guys who had also been on the cruise with us. It turned out we were sharing a dorm with them also so it was only natural that we introduced ourselves.
We left our stuff behind and hired some mountain bikes to do a bit of exploring of the area. It's the best way I think. We put ourselves on a main road and would occasionally just disappear down some dirt track used only by farmers. One got to the point where the bikes became an impossibility so we left them and went by foot. Not too far though. It was stunning.
We returned tired, hot and sweaty. However we hit the main street to see what was for sale. I got some postcards as always. They don't do the scenery (shan shui 山水) justice.
We had made plans to meet up with Zoe and Koen that evening but who did we run into on the way back to the hostel? Zoe and Koen! They were staying in the same hostel as us too. We headed back for a quick shower and went out for some food. Western of course as it was reasonably cheap! I got falafel pitta breads, never thought that would be something I'd get in China!
Zoe and Koen were getting the last bus back that night so we headed back to the hostel and waited in the lobby, where Tomas and Julian (the cruise guys) also appeared, looking a little sunburnt. We agreed to meet them for a drink a little later. It was nice chatting to them actually but felt a little strange all returning to the same room at the hostel.
Izzie and I got up early on Saturday (yet again deprived of a decent night's sleep!) as we had booked to go rock climbing. There was an american guy there too , Joe, who was very friendly and helpful. It was fun but tiring. I reached a mental block on the climbs. It involved an overhang and I was all set to pull myself over but decided I didn't want to. The instructor kept telling me it was too easy for me, and I knew phsyically I could finish the climbs but I couldn't make myself. Oh well. There was a chinese climber, also out who was amazing. He stopped halfway up one climb and stoof on a little ledge and started to sing. He had quite a set of lungs on him actually. He entertained us all. It was all in the name of fun. A good morning.
After we returned Joe showed us some good places to eat. As we were walking down a street we suddenly heard "Seona! Izzie!" Sat in a cafe were some people we know from Foshan (Mike, Sean, Phoebe , Helen) Small world. We said hello and chatted a little, laughed at the fact they were having breakfast and we were off for lunch.
Joe left us in a cafe of our own and we sat down to order some food (I had some unusual hash browns) when we heard "well look who it is" I looked up to see Mike T and Elliot (some people we trained with in Beijing) walking past with their suitcases. We hadn't seen them since as they are in Shanghai so we had a bit of a catch up. It was really nice to bump into so many people we know.
After lunch we went and booked ourselves onto a cave tour. We had seen photos form our friends who went a while back and decided it looked fun. It took a while to actually get there but we made it. Our guide was a happy little chap, kept saying "come on laoshi" and occasionally would tell us things in chinese. Halfway through the tour we reached the mud baths. Being the adventurous girls that we are we dived straight in. After we had stripped down to our swimwear I mean. We went down the mud slides and had mud fights, got mud in our eyes and got very, very muddy! Fun though. We finished the rest of the tour by climbing a set of rocks and swimming in some very cold water. I didn't so much swim as wade waist deep and complain about the temperature. It was a good tour though.
We made our way back and set off for cormorant fishing. I hadn't been too excited about this but it was something Izzie particularly wanted to do and it wasn't too bad. I did get bitten by a bird though, and someone mistook me for his friend, a French man. How charming.
We had to make dinner a quick affair, fitting in the famous Guilin noodles nicely, before heading back to our hostel to be collected for our bus journey home. It was a sleeper bus with beds that didn't quite fit someone like me. I was too tall to lie down straight and it wasn't wide enough to curl up so it was rather uncomfortable and I slept fitfully. After making it back to Guangzhou we went to Starbucks for breakfast and Lucy's for lunch. You may remember Lucy's from our last attempted trip to Guilin!
I then spent yesterday lazing around in bed and waited until evening to wash the remainder of the mud out of my hair.
It was an exhausting weekend, and although my muscles may not be thanking me for it, it was definitely worth it!