The train journey

Now safely on the train the four of us, Anya, Rosie, Jacob and myself settled into our beds ready for our 19 hour journey to begin. As the train lurched into motion we began to talk amongst ourselves about our projects, how many lessons and the age groups we would be teaching. As it turned out we were in pretty similar situations the girls were teaching roughly the same number of classes a week as Jacob and myself. Shortly after having set off a ticket woman came around to take our tickets and replace them with plastic cards, according to Mike this is the system that they have in place so they can send someone around before each station to wake up the passengers who need to get off.

After a couple of hours of sitting around and talking we decided it would be best for us all to get some sleep as we knew that we would have a big day the following morning as we would be arriving at our projects and would no doubt be shown the school and taken to a banquet by the school. So turning in for the night I snuggled up to my rucksack (which was taking up half the bed) and fell asleep. After what felt like 5 minutes I was woken by a Chinese woman stood in the middle of our sleeping section looking very confused. She proceeded to wake all of us up one by one and started to show us all her ticket, which said that she was supposed to be sleeping in the section with us. The only problem? We couldn't read Chinese so had no idea which bed was hers, after 10 minutes of careful study of her ticket and our own we deduced that she was sleeping on the left hand side on the bottom, unfortunately this meant that Anya had to move to a higher bed (there were three beds on each side). Having solved the problem we all fell asleep again, or at least attempted to.

After a wonderfully disruptive night of loud Chinese talking (which appears to be the normal way of talking around here, seriously sometimes I have no idea if they are arguing or just talking about the weather) we were woken by the ticket woman who gave us back our tickets. Upon arriving at Nanchang train station we joined the mass of people exiting the station and were pushed up close to all the people around us who barely seemed to notice they were that intent on getting to the front of the queue. Eventually we made it to the front of the queue and presented our tickets to two men in plain clothing stood on top of the barriers who for all we knew could have been people who had rushed to the front of the queue and where now looking out for the rest of their group. However they didn't say anything so we proceeded through the barriers and looked out for the signs from our schools that would be greeting us. After 10 minutes of unsuccessful searching I left my luggage with the others and went up to the top of the train station to see if they were waiting outside for us, and after a further 10 minutes of searching had to return to the rest of the group unsuccessful. Following this we decided to call Mike and find out what had gone wrong, he told us to hang tight and that he would call the schools and find out. As it turned out the schools had the dates wrong so had not sent anyone to collect us, this meant that we would have to wait in the train station for another 2 and a half hours before the schools would be able to collect us. Having found out this news the girls went off to a nearby McDonalds I had seen earlier and brought back an English breakfast burger, which we were all very grateful to receive.

40 minutes later a woman approached us with our names and project trust details on a piece of paper, she said that she was from the CEAIE and that Mike had called her. Following a quick phone call to Mike to confirm that he had called her she took us to a restaurant for lunch before the schools arrived. We waited in the restaurant for around an hour before the schools arrived, and when they did we were introduced and presented with gifts (a lovely pen and memory stick). The lunch turned into a full on banquet as plate after plate of food was brought out until it was physically impossible to put any more food on it without stacking plates on top of each other. Having barely made a dent in the food but still feeling absolutely stuffed we were led to the cars waiting outside where we said our goodbyes and split into our partnerships to begin the car journey to our projects.

After a further 2 and half hours of travelling we pulled up to the school gates where we could see a tunnel of students and teachers ready to greet us, and at the end of the tunnel stood a man with a video camera ready to film us as we were greeted. As we nervously exited the car we were presented with a bouquet of flowers and taken on a very surreal tour of the school where all the schools students lined the corridors and looked out over the edge to get a glimpse of us, this wasn't helped by the fact that the cameraman was constantly running around us to try and get the best shot he could. After having seen the school we returned to the car and were taken to our apartment to drop our bags off and have a look around. Throughout the entire time the welcome party stayed with us and watched our every move not giving us the opportunity to sit down and relax which was all that we really wanted to do. 30 minutes later we were taken to the supermarket to buy whatever we needed, unfortunately we had not been told that we would be doing this so hadn't looked around the apartment for things that we would need, so instead we bought the basic washing-up liquid, soap etc. Again we returned to the apartment where our welcoming party waited by the door for us to put everything away, upon finishing this we were again whisked away to a banquette with all of the senior members of staff.

The banquette was delicious and again had far too much food for us to finish, the highlight was definitely the drinking. Our headmaster has a nickname: 'The prince of beer' so he challenged us to see how much we could drink neither Jacob nor myself were in a particularly good state to begin with what with us being so tired from all the travelling but we followed his example, after all he is our boss! Throughout the course of the meal various members of staff wanted to toast us so we had to respectfully drink with them and then toast them back. This naturally led to a few beers being drunk. By the end of the meal the 'prince of beer' and his staff seemed very pleased with us and were eager for us to begin working with them. We also did a count of the beers drunk; the 'prince' had drunk around seven bottles, Jacob around 6 and myself? well I drunk 13, 7 short of the princes target of 20, he seemed impressed with my total and wished us both a goodnight. Finally after being dropped off back at our apartment we were left alone and soon fell into a deep sleep.

Two days later we were taken back to Nanchang to have a health check where they checked our hearts, lungs and took blood samples. And again were taken to another banquette for lunch where we were told we would be teaching in the afternoon. Jacob and I had both been told we would be teaching the next day and so did not have a lesson plan ready, when we told them they told us not to worry and that we could start later if we would like. We both considerably relaxed upon hearing this and finished off our lunch. When we were taken back to the apartment we immediately began to plan our lessons for the next day; I decided that I would teach them a little bit about England so that I could see where they stood in terms of knowledge and speaking ability. And Jacob decided that he wanted to talk about opinions and basic stuff about himself and England. Once we were both happy with our lesson plans we turned in for bed both still feeling full from lunch.

Teaching

The first lessons were very nerve-racking but after about 2 days the nerves went away and I became very comfortable talking in front of the classes. In the lessons I showed them pictures of the union jack, Big Ben, the London eye and the Queen to see if they knew any of them. Surprisingly the only one that they recognised was Big Ben, none of them knew the Queen or the name of the union jack despite them recognising the fact that it is affiliated with England. I also showed them some English money and got them to draw and label a map of the British Isles. As you can guess they all loved seeing the money! During the lessons I had so many pictures taken of me it almost got annoying, I also had to pose with some of the students at the end of class! I think that one of the highlights of teaching so far is one of the students, everyone else brings bottles of water to class but then there's this one guy who literally just brings a globe to each class and puts it on the corner of his desk, no idea why, but it makes me laugh each time I see him. I have so far taught them General facts about England, types of Weather, Jobs and English TV.