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This last week, Jiujiang played host to yet more PT volunteers as Mary, Tessa and Jony came to stay. They'd travelled down from Xinjiang, which is an enormous province in the west of China (it's roughly the size of Tibet, and about a seventh the size of the whole of China). One of the defining features of their visit was complaining about the weather in Xinjiang so, just to set the tone for this blog, here are some of their more dramatic stories/fun facts about winter in Xinjiang, where it's often as cold as -40 and it's been snowing non-stop since early November:
• If you leave the house within several hours of washing your hair, there will still be enough moisture in it for it to freeze solid before you make it to a taxi/another building.
• Sometimes, your eyelashes start to freeze together in the corners of your eyes.
• One time Jony went for a run and his water bottle froze after about 10 minutes.
Okay, that's actually all I can remember off the top of my head, but you get the idea! Even they agreed that our house was bloody cold though, so we spent most of our time camped out in my room. Nicole and I were still teaching (and counting down the lessons until we could stop teaching), so we had less time to show the others around Jiujiang. Instead, I took complete advantage of them by dragging them into about half of my lessons to teach my students to ceilidh dance.
We tried this with two Junior 2 classes and two Senior 1 classes and I think it's fair to say that it wasn't wildly successful. Class #1 had been told my friends would be visiting in advance and had decorated the blackboard with a welcome message for us; we made it to the playing field, into a circle formation and into partners reasonably easily. Half of the circle was girls and the other half boys, and Nicole had to take the boys by the hand and drag them over to stand by the girls so that the circle would be complete, but it wasn't too bad. It was when we asked the pairs to stand boy-girl (so, two boys, then two girls etc.) that everything began to fall to pieces. As soon as they realised what we were asking, the girls screamed and retreated into huddles. The boys just ran away. THEY LITERALLY RAN. Nicole strode toward where they were crowded in fear about a set of goal-posts and they ran again, this time scattering to improve their odds of an escape. Nicole had got an umbrella from somewhere, and now she was running about after them with this umbrella, trying to herd them back towards where the rest of us were standing. I'm afraid I was busy laughing at this point and was absolutely no help, but we (mostly Nicole) did eventually manage to drag everyone to where they were meant to be. After that, it all went much better: we never managed to explain how the dance was meant to just keep going, repetitively, but aside from that most of the class had got it by the end. We had similar experiences with every class. The first senior class was actually two, as I'd promised another class they could join us if they wanted. I hadn't expected them all to come though, and 110 students was probably a few too many to teach to ceilidh at once... again, the boys and girls were appalled by the idea of standing next to each other and the boys just bunched together, laughing awkwardly. I recruited an unfortunate class monitor to help us bully them all into pairs, and then a nice circle formation, but it still didn't work very well. The second junior class were a little better; this time we taught a group, rather than a partner, dance. The three boys pulled up to join Mary, Tessa and Jony in the demonstration dance were very embarrassed (possibly because the rest of the class were wetting themselves) and refused to skip as directed, but the girls did really well once they were divided up into little groups. The last senior class were by far the best, although it was still a battle to get everyone organised at the beginning. There were multiple cameras present, so I will upload photos and videos when I can!
Other exciting things that happened were Jony cooking fajitas for us all one night, making a basket of very elaborate fruit friends, eating an ungodly amount of McDonalds and visiting Jiujiang's abandoned fairground which, it turns out, is not actually abandoned. The rides just never run because no-one wants to go on them. Jony and I were the only two people (possibly ever) on the little roller-coaster, which was scary less because of big drops etc. and more because it looked like it might collapse at any minute. We also went into the Haunted House, which is located in the old underground bomb-shelters and is genuinely scary... kind of... not really... not at all... the walls are painted with hilarious pictures of snakes, demons and murders. Then, at intervals down the corridors are little caged rooms with motion-triggered animatronics: a man being tortured, another being sawed in half, a demon jumping out of a coffin... they all shriek and scream at you as well, and I'm ashamed to say they did make me scream/jump/occassionally run away. This is even more embarrassing because the animatronics were so, so bad. They were very jerky, and there was a lot of papier mache involved. All I can say in my defense is that I've always been very jumpy, and that it was the sudden screaming more than the broom wearing a skeleton mask that scared me. The third part of this particular day trip involved Jiujiang zoo. We actually went there first, but it was so horrible and depressing that I wasn't sure if I wanted to mention it. The zoo is next to the fairground, but I'd never really known it existed; I'd seen the signs and pictures advertising it, but the direction these signs pointed in was a wasteland of concrete, with some rusty gates at the end, so I'd thought maybe it had closed down. Well, it hadn't. Not only had it not closed, but it had loads of animals: a bear, ostriches, a camel, black chickens labelled as golden pheasant, goats labelled as sheep, various geese, a wild boar labelled as a hippo AND TWO TIGERS. I won't go into detail because it's just too depressing, but imagine how bad a zoo could be, add a couple of rotting foam dinosaur statues (no, I don't know why either) and you might be close. Moving on...
On Saturday we all went to Nanchang to meet Beth, Cat and Hannah, who was arriving from Xi'an that day. We dumped our stuff at the hostel and went for another magical day at the shopping centre. I learnt that I shouldn't be allowed to shop unsupervised, and then that it doesn't really matter because I'll ignore everyone and buy anything anyway. We had dinner at Papa John's again, then got all dressed up in our new clothes in hopes of a night out. It was a long taxi ride to the street Cat's guidebook claimed was the hub of the local nightlife and even then we had to walk for a long way down a dark road before we found anywhere (other than a furniture workshop, naturally) that was open, but we did find a friendly little bar where we tried lots of cocktails (all but one were pretty foul) and were given a big bowl of complementary popcorn. We made it to one more bar, a fancier-looking one, where a couple of the drunk patrons came over to talk to us and spill their drinks across Beth and Jony, but, not wanting to spend any more money on alcohol, we didn't stay long before heading back to our hostel. Beth and Cat left at lunchtime the next day but the rest of us headed back to the shopping centre for Round 2. I like to justify it all by converting prices back into pounds, reminding myself that I've not been paid for January yet and describing all my purchases as 'essentials'.
Now I'm five hours into the first long-distance train of my Spring Festival travelling, having the time of my life. No, I'm not being sarcastic. This train is beautiful*. It's sooo tifyy and clean, and it's really empty. I have a bottom bunk and the only people nearby are a really cute little toddler who keeps popping her head round my bunk to grin at me and a nice quiet uni student who's just been watching films on his laptop (with headphones! which is rare) and listening to his mp3 player. All the train staff are having a lovely time too; when I walked down the train earlier, they were all either sat about together smoking and chatting or having little naps on spare beds. Now I'm going to watch Forrest Gump on my laptop, maybe Love Actually before I go to sleep. Best train ever!
Ella xxx
*I've just remembered how beautiful the train on the way to Nanchang was. There was loads of leg-room, reclining seats, a little shelf by the window, a little screen displaying the speed and temperature of the train IN ENGLISH (198mph and 14.5º outside, if you were interested) and staff you could order drinks from. The train on the way back wasn't quite so nice, and me and Tessa were sat opposite a couple eating chunks of curried beef from the bone for a mid-afternoon snack. Mmm. There was a woman giving very enthusiastic demonstrations with some magic cleaning cloth in the middle of the aisle though. These involved her throwing water and sauce all over the carriage, then cleaning it up, and later demonstrating how the same cloth could be turned into a turban for drying your hair.
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