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Hello everyone,
Sorry it's taken so long to write another blog. This one is going to be quite long I think.
Ok, so the day after the TESOL test was our tourism day. The organisation we work for kindly paid for us to go on a day trip to see the famous Yuela mountain and the provincial museum. The Yuela mountain is one of five famous mountains in China and it is just outside Changsha. A holy mountain in three world religions - Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, it is covered in temples and graves of famous people, including ex-generals of the cultural revolution. We arrived at the mountain about 11ish and had to walk up it, which wasnt fun in the heat. It must have been around 35 degrees. The mountain itself was amazing though. Apart from the tourists, it was very peaceful and quiet and covered in trees. There were also a few buildings made in traditional chinese architecture which looked really good. It took us about an hour to get to the top of the Mountain and in that time we also went into a Buddhist temple and a Taoist one. Both were very elaborately decorated. The view from the top of the Mountain was breathtaking. We could see over the whole of Changsha and I think it was worth the hours trek up to the top.
After the mountain we went to a posh hotel for lunch, which was again paid for. We had some new things to try - for instance there was a green bean soup which tasted sweet, a bit of bread which also tasted quite nice and some sweet potato. Along with other foods which I had tasted before. Then it was off to the Hunan Provincial Museum which contained a famous 2000 year old Chinese mummy. We had a tour guide in the Museum but she only took us round a small section of it, including the mummy bit. I was a bit disappointed about this. The Mummy was very interesting although she looked horrible lol. We almost lost one of our crew when they went to the loo, but eventually found them again.
The following day it was time to go to our new accomadation and the schools where we would be teaching in for the next 10 months. Me and Jonny were going to a place called Hunan International Economics University, which was the other side of the city of Changsha. It is far out from the city which is nice because it's quiet, but not very good for getting into town or buying anything because it takes 2 buses or half hour in a taxi to get anywhere. The campus itself is very nice and has lots of trees and lakes and grass areas, the architecture is very strange - it looks like a cross between roman and arab architecture, but its very pleasant and interesting to look at. When we got to the Accomadation, we found that we were on the sixth floor of the building, the top floor in other words, which is nice because it means we get great views and we get the whole floor to ourselves (including an outside balcony which will be nice for BBQ's in the summer). The only down side is the stairs as they don't know what a lift is in this country. There are four rooms on the top floor so they gave us two rooms each, which is nice. I got the better deal at first I think because Jonny's room had so much not working that he was quite annoyed about it. That said, in my room, the computer and microwave didnt work and the TV had no cable to it (not that that matters as I cant understand Chinese TV anyway.) In my room I have a bed, desk, air conditioning, fridge freezer, telephone, microwave, water machine, TV & DVD player and cupboards. All our rooms came with a lovely looking en-suite bathroom with western toilet. My second apartment contained the washing machine (which leaks over the floor when it washes anything) and gas camping stove (cooker). We decided to turn this into our joint Kitchen, which I think has proved a good idea. When we got to the accomadation we had no pots and pans and cutlery so we asked our three chinese student volunteers to take us to a local supermarket on campus so we could buy some, as well as some basic food. The three Chinese volunteers are english students here with very good levels of english. They are very helpful and as we didnt know anyone the first few days it helped to have someone to sort out our problems. We went to the supermarket and bought some food although we couldnt get most things that we need (even in chinese walmart which we went to the next day). Luckily we got chance to go to the Metro the following week and got hold of some western imported basic things like curry paste and oregano.
The next day we went to Walmart to gfet more food and spent over 400 Yuan. I think we shocked the students with us. Jonny cooked an italian meal that night for the three students and ourselves, which was nice. Later that evening we met Admin. He is a bosnian english teacher here and is a very cool guy. We chatted to him about teaching and what we should expect. On the day before we had also met another teacher named Chris from Australia, who is also a very helpful and nice guy. It was good to meet other teachers and get some ideas on what to expect of the classes.
On the Sunday I also got internet access. It was such a relief to finally get online and be able to communicate with people again, as well as keep up with what had been happening in the outside world. A couple of days later I got skype working and finally called home. I was very glad about that.
The next day Admin took us out to a local pool club and we played pool for the evening, the others showed me some tips and buy the end of the evening I felt I had improved a lot. Will I remember next time? I have no idea.
Later in the week, we finally got fed up with having everyone do things for us and decided it was time to go out on our own. We caught two buses into town and started wandering around to get some sort of idea of the layout of the town so we knew where to go for what. Luckily the buses here only cost 1 Yuan each so it was a cheap journey. We wandered round for a couple of hours and then went to have some food.
We found out that we were not teaching for two weeks so we had plenty of time to get used to everything. We were only going to be teaching first years and they had two weeks military training so we could relax. Yes, it felt a lot like a military camp for two weeks. lol. It was nice to have the time off, but also a bit boring, especially by the second week.
On the weekend at the end of week one, we went to see a friend of Admin's called Duncan and played some pool with him. He is a good guy and because he was interested in politics and religion we managed to have some good discussions. It was nice to be able to talk about these things because we are not allowed to talk about them to chinese people. In the evening we went to a street named bar street with lots of pubs and bars on it and met up with lots more Westerners including some Americans and Brazilians. That was fun.
The following night, the Student volunteers offered to cook us a meal. This was really nice - we had pumpkin, melon as a vegetable and some spicy meat dishes. My favourite dish was a basic one - just tomatoes sliced up and covered with sugar. It was very sweet and nice and I will make that again.
On campus there is a street called dirty street which has lots of restaurants/ cafes and shops for the students to go to. Admin took us to one shop which sells dumplings and fried rice. These are not western style dumplings but are like little ravioli's filled with meat or vegetables and steamed. You dip them in a chilli sauce and eat them and they are very nice. Still my favourite food here has got to be the egg fried rice which im finally getting used to eating with chopsticks now lol.
Also on campus they have a swimming pool. We decided to check it out and were not impressed. The changing room was a state with windows wide open onto the street. The swimming pool itself had no chlorine in (luckily we didnt catch anything) and there were people in there sat smoking on the side. I wasnt very impressed and wont be going back there.
During week two we had to go set up a bank account. Chinese banks are surprisingly efficient with a "take a ticket and wait" system. It took a whiloe to be seen but when we were it all seemed to go well. However, there was a problem - we were told to put in either 4 or 6 digits for our new pin codes, so we chose 4. That was a mistake. When we went to test out the cards, they kept saying incorrect pin. We now have to go back another time to sort it out. Still it was an interesting experience and we learnt a lot.
Later that day, the Australian teacher Chris and his wife cooked us a nice meal of rice, a vegetable and potato curry and aubergines. It was very nice and we had a good chat with them.
The following day we were invited in to see Admin and Chris' lessons. This was a very helpful exercise which helped me to see exactly what to expect from classes. Admin was very funny in his class and I liked Chris' style of teaching, getting them talking a lot. Both are excellant teachers and I hope I can be as good as them someday. I learnt a lot from seeing their lessons.
On the weekend of week two, we had the rest of the teachers come back from their cities to Changsha to meet up again. Some stayed in a hotel and some stayed here with us. The weekend didn't really go as well as we might have hoped as everyone wanted to do different things, but it was still nice to see everyone again and to go karaoke on the saturday night. We also met up with some teachers we hadnt seen on the TESOL course which was cool.
Monday was Hong Kong day. Jonny, a teacher called Michael, and I were going down to Hong Kong to change our visa's as we only had a tourist visa and needed to get a working one. Jonny and Michael's visa ran out on the tuesday so we had to go then. We were supposed to be teaching on the tuesday morning but we had to get the visa's so we couldnt. The first leg of our journey was an eleven hour journey by train to Shezhen on the Hong Kong border. We had unfortunately booked too late so all that was left was a hard seat. Hard seat is the cheapest and worst form of train travel in China (although it wasnt much worse than the UK trains which says a lot). It was a night train so we had to try and sleep sitting up. It was very cramped and uncomfortable so we couldnt sleep very well and only managed to doze off a little. We were very glad when we finally got to Shezhen. When we got there we immediately went to the ticket office and booked a hard sleeper back. This meant a bed for the night, although not in luxury, it was good enough. The chinese have cabins with 3 bunk beds on either side of it (so six sleep in each room) and no doors, so it isnt very safe. My bunk was to be the top one of the way back, which was a bit of a nightmare to get up to. Still it was worth it to avoid the hard seat again. After we booked the return tickets we went through the border into Hong Kong. It was fairly smooth sailing and we were soon on the next train down the Hong Kong peninsula to the ferry. We got on the ferry (which was ultra cheap at 2 HK dollars) and took some pictures of the Hong Kong Island and a Junk boat. When we got across the sea which took about 10 minutes, we followed a map from Jonny's lonely planet guide and got to the Chinese embassy very easily and quickly. Unfortunately it was closed for lunch break so we went and had some food and then came back. We got back 15 minutes before it reopened but already there was a massive queue there so we had to wait in that for about 45 minutes. Once we had got inside and gone through the security checks, we headed upstairs and waited for our number to be called to hand in our forms for the visa's. This took another hour. We sorted out the visa's and found that we only had to pay 700 HK dollars not 1300 which was nice. Then we left and went back across the sea to the mainland to find a place to stay for the night before we went back to collect the visa on day two. Everywhere we went in the tourist district there were people trying to ge tus to buy things from them or follow them somewhere, I got very annoyed and almost had a go at them at one point. We eventaully found somewhere to stay and booked two double rooms for 500 hk dollars for one night (about 30 quid). It was expensive I thought. The room was very small and you literally had to shower over the toilet lol. Still it was an experience and we were only there one night. That evening we went out shopping and I managed to buy a new camera for 140 quid (1850 HK dollars). My other camera didnt have a flash or anything so couldnt take daytime pictures. This new one looks much better and more professional. Jonny was looking for a Laptop which he found the follwing morning in another shop. I don't think Hong Kong is particularly cheap for electrical goods, despite its reputation as such. The next day we went back to the embassy and got in and out within an hour. we picked up the visa and then headed home - across the ferry, along the first train and then to the final train and a bed (YAY!) back to Changsha.
We arrived back at Changsha railway station at 7am on the thursday morning (18th September). We got back to the university by 8am and were told we had to start teaching at 9am. There was no time to prepare which I was not too happy about, however it was only introductory lessons anyway so we were ok. I went into the first class which had officially started at 8am and the students were quietly reading. I was very impressed with this. They all clapped when I got in and I introduced myself. Then I got them to introduce themselves too which took up the rest of the lesson. The lesson went ok and the students were really nice. The way the chinese university system works is that each class is split into two period of 45 minutes, with a 10 minute break in between. I only managed to get to the second half of this particular class. Then at 10am I had my second class - this was the full 90 minute one. I again introduced myself and then got them to introduce themselves which took up the first 45 minute period. After the 10 minute break I hadnt got anything planned so was a bit stuck on what to do. We played hangman and 20 questions for a bit and then did some singing. But it didnt go brilliantly. I think the students found the games a bit boring. In the end I just let them ask me questions for the remainder of the lesson. I think I will need to plan my next introductory lessons a lot more carefully. Thankfully, that was my last lesson of the week so by thursday lunchtime I was free until the following monday.
It is now friday and I've finally got round to writing my blog and updating you all on what has been happening here in the last few weeks. I will try to update it more regularly from now on. Hope it wasnt too long for you. See you soon.
Matt.
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