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So, a relaxed two days here in Pingjiang. We've walked most of the city but we still induce staring, gasps and "他们是白色的!" from children. At first I thought it a tad rude but now it's just plain hilarious!
I and Joshua spent quite a few hours yesterday walking trying to find a supermarket, which was great as we failed miserably, but got to see many different areas of town- some very interesting, some completely undesired.
Yesterday we spent most of the day just chilling and marketing the school, but today was our first full day. Up early for breakfast (which I shouldn't have eaten due to massive quantity) then a Chinese lesson (as Joshua's very enthusiastic to learn Mandarin, so I thought 'why not?'), then a couple of hours to set out our lesson plans; fortunately Danny (our boss) sent us a basic plan which is great, but unfortunately some of the afternoon activities, such as bamboo craft making on the river, are impossible as the river here is so polluted we can't let the children anywhere near it. Boo…. :( But on the bright side my plan is to buy a ukulele and teach them some music instead. English songs of course, perhaps some 60's, or some songs I can put pictures to such as Lenka's Everything at once. Even considering making a stop motion with them; any ideas Latham? My pupils arrive on the 7th, so I'll finish on the 3rd. I'm meant to be flying home on the 6th, but now it looks quite likely that I'll stay a little longer. Sorry mum…
I and Josh are perfect together; he's going to take the older students while I take the younger ones. I was so glad when he said I could have the children as I don't think I could have stood teaching pupils older than me! And I think he's glad as he doesn't have to deal with the little 'monsters', but compared to the year 9's I think it will be a peasy.
We had another show-off dinner tonight; this time with the people from the language department of the government. Very fun and more free food. But the Chinese definitely do not drink enough water. I have not once seen anyone drinking any with a meal- only alcohol or chai tea (which still hasn't grown on me). I've had to buy a 5L bottle of water to keep in my room just for me to drink. Joshua also drinks water, but will only drink very cold water, which is a bit of a luxury in this temperature, so he's currently looking for a new staple drink. We think we found a lemon thing today, but we have yet to conclude if this is it.
We also had our first encounter of really scary driving from Flower today. To start off, Flower refuses to go faster than 20mph as apparently it's safer even though everyone else is at least double the speed. We crawled through a giant junction (terrifying in itself as vehicles come at you from every direction) then Flower took the wrong road, leading us in the correct direction, but along the wrong SIDE of the road. While casually wetting myself in the front seat at all the oncoming traffic about to kill me, no-one else had seemed to notice we were on the wrong side of the dual-carriageway. Including Flower….
For the 1st time today I spoke to Danny personally. His voice is very different to what I imagined it to be, but he seemed to be really lovely and had a lot of questions about how we were coping. Very reassuring. We were worried about the fact it wasn't planned for us to undertake TEFL here, but after talking to Danny we're going to try and get it sorted from Yangshuo on the 6th/7th. I really hope we can do it but our pupils arrive on the 7th. Personal qualification or introduction to pupils- a hard choice!
My favourite quote this week either had to be from Joshua; 'I have never heard so many beeps in the space of 5 minutes' or from a little girl walking by the river 'Mummy look, they're WHITE! Are they ill?'. It's very apparent that a lot of the people living in this city have never seen a foreigner before, much to our amusement.
The temperature here has absolutely rocketed today- let's just say my air-con is on 29*c and it's like walking into a fridge compared to outside. I also have some very exciting news; the rave of weird country line dancing that we saw in Sablet has reached China! Any free space at around 8pm(including next to the river, the badminton ground, next to the town's war plane, and the car-park of the communist government building opposite) is suddenly swarmed with ladies who start dancing. I will try and put a video up on here tomorrow as it's worth a gawp.
Unfortunately sleep calls now as our Chinese lessons start at 8am sharp tomorrow. So, 晚安.
- comments
Dad Hi Milly. Could you do the TEFL course in Yangshou after the month of teaching ? Maybe it's the wrong way round, but as long as you come out with the qualification, does it really matter ?
Grandma and Grandad Hi Milly - great to hear of your adventures. Nasty niffsin the loo still a problem? Recommend you ask the next Oxford student to bring some neutrodol block not aerosil which might upset the airway) which will neutrlize not cover one smell with another. G & G.