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I've gotten a little behind with my blogs lately and, although I'm nearly up to date now, there are still a few significant bits and pieces I haven't written about. Some of these are very recent, some date back to when we first got back from travelling, but hopefully I'll be able to get them all out of the way in this one blog!
New timetables and Chinese lessons: The Chinese school year is split into two terms, with Spring Festival marking the half-way point. Largely because this is when Senior 1 students make a decision as to whether to focus on arts or science subjects, the second term has a completely new timetable to the first. This term, Nicole and I teach the same number of lessons, but the proportions of classes we teach in each grade has shifted. I now teach 11 of the 17 Senior classes, half of the Junior 2 classes, 3 of the 10 Junior 1 classes and, for the first time, a Junior 3 class. So far, I either like or really like all of my new classes - not that it stops me moaning about the several favourite classes (and students) that I've lost to Nicole! I had trouble with one of my inherited Junior 1 classes at first - just generally loud, rude and lazy - but since I made them sit in silence for 5 minutes after the school bell a couple of weeks ago, they've got much better. Probably the biggest change of the new timetable is that Nicole and I have become students again ourselves: we now have four hours of Chinese lessons a week. Our teacher, Jenny, works in the school library, but as she's been on sick-leave with a twisted ankle all term, we go to her apartment across the lake for our lessons, where we have lunch together. I never remember more than a third of what we learn each lesson, but even so I've probably learnt as much or more in the last few weeks as I had in the rest of the year put together. Jenny also took me at my word when I said I wanted to learn some Chinese insults, so she's been gradually imparting her knowledge of nasty Chinese swear words.
Calligraphy class: Way back before Christmas our friend Mark, an American teacher at the local economics college, asked if Nicole and I would be interested in calligraphy lessons. We said yes, but it's only in the last month or so that he's actually been able to arrange them. These lessons are very, very casual: we're the only students, and the first class I attended was cancelled in favour of a mini field trip to a local tea house, where we spent several hours taking part in traditional tea ceremonies, watching a tea auction and various demonstrations by famous calligraphers. At the end, we were presented with a porcelain tea-set each, and then we went back to Lei Laoshi's (our teacher) studio for two hour's lesson and dinner together. We've been back for more lessons several times since, collecting key-rings and bracelets to add to the list of gifts we've been given by Lei Laoshi, but I'm actually planning to quit calligraphy as soon as I can. Each lesson consists of several hours spent practicing the same simple horizontal and vertical strokes, whilst Lei Laoshi darts about the studio fiddling with things, and then outside for his eighteenth cigarette of the afternoon, and then back in to announce an impromptu tea ceremony amongst ourselves. Mark and Nicole enjoy the lessons and find them really relaxing, but I'm afraid I just find them quite boring. I lose interest in my strokes very quickly; Lei Laoshi gets frustrated with me for doing badly and really I think we'd all benefit if I just stayed home and had a nap instead.
A night out in Nanchang: Our second attempt to find something resembling a nightlife in Nanchang took place near the end of March, this time with a Nanchang university student Beth had befriended over Instagram to show us around. 'Us' was me, Nicole, our friend Kaitlin from Jiujiang, and Beth, and we were meeting another friend from Jiujiang, Sam, and his girlfriend Mally in the evening. After dinner at an Indian resaurant (!!!), the uni student (yes, I have forgotten her name) and her friend drove us to Le Nest, allegedly Nanchang's best club. None of us were desperately impressed by Le Nest - expensive drinks, no dancing - so she and the friend drove us to the local ex-pat bar, Vortex, bought us a round of drinks and left us to it. It was a little bit awkward, but as I doubt we'll ever see each other again I don't think it matters much. Vortex wasn't the night out we'd anticipated, but we had fun drinking free shots, dancing, playing darts and Jenga and berating Kaitlin for her minimal knowledge of English club music.
Beth's birthday: All of the Jiangxi volunteers congregated in Jiujiang on the last weekend of March to celebrate Beth's birthday. We all went for a big banquet-style meal together, with several of mine and Nicole's Jiujiang friends in attendance as well. Beth and Cat had collected a basket full of flower blossoms from the trees our house earlier, so we decorated our hair with those and forced paper party hats and masquerade masks on everyone else. Back at the house, Rob and Matt compensated for the lack of candles by sticking a slightly-smouldering chopstick into the middle of Beth's gigantic birthday cake and we all sang 'Happy Birthday'. Two minutes later, someone - I'm not sure who, but probably Beth - had started a cake fight. I think only Ned came out of the cake fight unscathed, but I feel pretty confident saying that I cam out the worst: my whole face was covered, there were huge chunks of cream all through my hair, and at one point Matt and Dan picked me up and carried me across the room whilst someone else smeared cake all up my back. The house didn't come out too well either actually - I thought I'd got all the mess up with my big mopping session the next day, but I was finding small globs of cream on the walls and door frames for weeks afterwards.
That's all the significant stuff, I think! Next, our week's holiday to Chengdu xx
- comments
Jim Great stuff. The calligraphy sounds dreadful.