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Hullo all. Well, WHAT A DAY!
I should probably start first with yesterday. After getting up very early ready for Chinese at 8, you can imagine my shock (and delight) when I found both Josh and TamPan fast asleep and Flower nowhere to be seen. After waking the boys up (momentary panic on their behalf- fits of giggles on mine), having a lovely cold shower and going for a morning walk, I returned to find, well, no-one. I did some self-study, painted my nails, and then finally the boys rocked up. Turns out they had (unsuccessfully) gone to find clothes washing powder. You see, in Pingjiang there are no washing machines, only an array of buckets in differing sizes. At first I was confused, using my 3 for: a bin, a shoes bin and somewhere to put my dirty clothes. After asking TamPan where I could get my clothes washed (for I had collected quite a stack) he just laughed. He then dragged me into my room to find my bins which, which when he noticed their current uses, basically wet himself. By the time he had finally calmed down (which took a good 7 minutes) Joshua had come to find out what the laughing was about. Neither of us could understand what the bins were for and it took a good 10 minutes to translate TamPan's giggles into Chinese, but once we had we still couldn't understand! After pouring though J's dictionary, we finally realised they were for hand washing. But then we faced the problem of buying washing powder, in China, in a tiny supermarket, in Chinese, with no labels. -_- It's safe to say we quickly gave up and retreated to our favourite drinks shop for an Ice Lemon/Orange (confirmed as J's new staple drink). The bliss of freezing water gushing down your oesophagus when it is 35*c outside, is beyond words. Anyway, back to yesterday. You can imagine my dismay then when they came back from powder shopping unsuccessful. I had almost given up hope, and was contemplating just buying new clothes everyday while collecting a disgusting smelling clothes pile when I remember two semi-awake guys had gone shopping at 8am. Perhaps there was hope after all. And indeed I was right, for it took me around 40 seconds in the local shop to locate, translate and buy the powder. THE JOYS OF CLEAN CLOTHES WHERE TO GRACE ME ONCE AGAIN! This had all occurred by around 9am, and there was still no sign of Flower, so I decided to do some lesson plans and then take the morning off to battle my dirty clothes bin. I swear some of those clothes had grown their own legs, and I was quite willing to let them and their odour swagger off, but then I remembered that it may not be the best plan to teach naked. I had a very enjoyable 2 hours hand washing all my clothes (+ the bathroom and most of myself unintentionally) before J turned up to steal the powder and to remind me lunch was at 12. I hung out my clothes on the hangers (which hang at unbelievable heights from the ceiling, meters above reachable distance and provide very entertaining game trying to fish them with a stick) and on another genius device provided by my grandparents- the traveling washing line. Not only is it fantastic (as it hangs anywhere), I will never forget the look on J's face when I showed it to him. Like a child on Christmas being given a full-size jet. Much amusement all round…..
Lunch was certainly a lot less posh than before, mainly due to abandonment by Flower and us crashing the kitchens in search of food. Of course, you have to remember people here DO NOT use fridges or freezers for food. Everything is fresh, which is delicious, but not great when you haven't eaten in 17 hours. Fortunately the tiny kitchen chef took pity on us and had an incredible meal sat before us in 2 minutes flat. What a woman…
We decided by this point that Flower was probably really busy, so we would spend the afternoon amusing ourselves. This meant an hour of Chinese, lesson planning and sleeping before we gave up and went for a 'walk'
. I say 'walk', as a simple walk for us turns into a free freak-show for anyone else. Since being here I have seen not one single foreigner, and so it's safe to say most people have never seen an actual white person before. Their reactions to us (taking photos, staring, giggling and general gob-smackedness) support this theory. Fortunately, neither of us mind this anymore, and now we just milk it to the max. This included free drinks, free badminton and a necklace on J's behalf.
There is a main square in the city just next to the warplane which is an incredible place. Every night people flock from all around just to socialise. The things that make us giggle most are the line-dancers, the sand (rice) pits, the badminton players and the very unusual automotive fluffy things on wheels that speed along carrying children blaring music and strobe lighting. You put a 1yuan in and can take full control for 10 minutes which causes ecstatic looks on children's faces (as well as Joshua's). J was also fixated on all the people playing badminton in-between everyone else and after noticing him staring for ages, he decided to join in. Straight up to two girls, de-batted one, then played a great match with the other. Entertaining, yes, but lord knows how it did it as it was about 30*c and was wearing long black top + trousers. After popping back into the Ice lemon shop, we were going to go home but noticed strange noises emitting from a temple. We asked TamPan what it was, and he dragged us inside. After being momentarily scared for my life, we emerged into a little square where a whole mass of tiny old men were sat around a puppet show. Now, don't be fooled dear friend, I do not mean a boring old Punch-and-Judy show, but a man sat behind the most beautiful, intricate tiny coloured silhouettes over a canvas I have ever seen. Using tiny sticks he could move their arms and behind the canvas he was using an array of percussion to tell the story. I must admit, I have never been so close to tears as I was by this beautiful spectacle. Truly incredible. I will put pictures and hopefully a video on here of it when I get enough signal. And so, that concluded the 1st of July.
I awoke early today with great foreboding and so immediately got up and checked that nothing was missing. After a long time checking, I concluded that everything was safe, but the nagging would not go away. During a cold shower, I realised I hadn't seen my camera. Don't worry Dad, I have it and it's safe, but I did spend 3 hours panicking big time turning my room over trying to find it. Of course, eventually I found it hanging on the back of my door under a pile of scarfs (god knows how it got there), but not before I had consumed half a pot if jelly-beans. Lunch, once again cooked by our tiny chef friend, was freaking incredible and I'm tempted to steal her home in August with me. The pork was magical and the aubergine will forever be ingrained in my memory as heavenly. This is true school food, not the rubbish St M's canteen serves. Everyone at home, think of me when you have your greasy chips devouring my heaven in a bowel. :D
After lunch we finally found Flower, who introduced us to some children that would be at the 'meeting tonight'. A momentary lapse in memory almost had terminal effects, but then we remembered that we has agreed to give a lecture to some parents on English, and to teach their children 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes'. We spent the rest of the afternoon drawing diagrams of the body parts and labelling them ready, but fate was to have her cruel way. When we arrived at the communist building hall we sunk into the soft seats ready for the lecture at 7, but honesty we didn't really want to do it, but sleep. So you can imagine our delight when she started the lecture without calling us for the children, and even more delight when she carried on through to the end. Thinking we had gotten out of doing anything, we were just dozing off when we were called up to the stage. This we hadn't expected and so when we arrived looking down on all the expectant faces and were asked to explain our lesson plans, we panicked. My mind was completely blank and so we stood there like fish, mouths open wide, wishing for rescue. This came in the form of J suggesting we sang 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes', so I jumped on the bandwagon. Regretting it almost instantly, we both had to stand in-front of a hall full of people, sing and do the actions. I am proud to say we got a great cheer, but I think by that point they would have cheered for anything the white people did. We took advantage of this when Flower then asked us to give a speech, knowing in full confidence no-one could understand us. We blabbled for 5 minutes, then Flower gave a 'translation'. At this point you have to remember Flower only speaks broken English, and there was no way she could understand us at the pace we were going. We were very impressed then about the fact she managed 'translate' what we had said to the audience. We assume she just talked about the camp, but we shall never know. Finally we were allowed off stage, so we sat at the back and giggled for the rest (about 4 minutes) of the lecture. But, even after all that horrible fiasco apparently 8 children signed up, so WELL DONE Joshua for suggesting singing!!
So, that's my last two days in a nutshell. All I have to add is that as I'm sat here writing I can see Mozzies flying about, so I feel a great mozzie genocide about to commence. Apart from that, I hope you're all doing really well and I'll see you before you know it! Night. X
P.S. Mozzie Update; I now have lots of very satisfying splats on my walls. Got all but 1. Will hopefully catch the little blighter soon.
- comments
Mum x Enjoying and savouring every blog and hoping everything is turning out well. It's a real adventure in every way. Trying not think about heaven in your bowel, and hope that your washday blues are rinsed away! Loving the photos too. Keep up with the posts. Love you v v much Miss Honey xxxx
Millie I think you mean bowl mum, bowl.... :p xxxx