Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
College entrance exams took place at the beginning of June and, as this is a huge mega-big deal for every school in the country, it meant three days break for all of us teaching in middle schools. In Jiangxi, we took advantage of the opportunity to have one final reunion for all of the PT volunteers in our province. The focus of the trip was meant to be climbing Lushan together, but as usual it ended with us just slobbing about together not doing much.
Everyone (bar Cat, who was in Singapore) arrived at various points throughout Thursday afternoon and evening. Early in the evening, a group of my Junior 2 students came round to visit us. I strongly suspect they were forced into this by Mrs Liu, who is their class teacher, but never mind... they'd brought Chinese decorations as gifts and miraculously had enough for me, Nicole and all the other volunteers! After chatting for a bit, Matt offered to take them on a tour of the rest of the house, where they caught a glimpse through the half-open door of my messy bedroom AND TOOK PHOTOS ON THEIR PHONES! Yes, the cheeky b******s took photos of my bedroom to show their friends! Pshhh!
The weather forecast for Friday, the proposed Day Of The Climb, was stormy so we decided to post-pone to Saturday and console ourselves by spending Thursday evening drinking. Friday was actually really sunny, but by the time we'd all woken up it was too late to go anyway, so we went for lunch and then for a group haircut instead. Having hair-cuts in Jiujiang (and only in Jiujiang) has somehow become a tradition for Nicole and the boys, so we all traipsed into their salon of choice and upstairs, where we lay down on padded benches to have our hair washed and our heads massaged. Afterwards, I could see two of the stylists bickering over who had to cut my hair, presumably because it's longer and more difficult than the boys'? They were wasting their time anyway as the loser of the argument was having so much trouble combing my hair out that he had to recruit the second stylist just to help him get through it all. We had been planning to cook a big group meal that evening, but when it came round to it none of us could be bothered so we opted to snack on ice-lollies and start drinking instead. Kaitlin, Sam, Mark, Matt, Sazi (another foreign teacher in Jiujiang) and several teachers from No. 3 middle school arrived later, with a birthday cake for Matt which thankfully evaded the fate of the last cake we got hold of. (All of our lounge furniture is wicker which is clearly the work of a sadist, as anyone who has ever tried to cream out of it, i.e me, will know. Plus, the penis Rob had drawn from cream on our bathroom window last time had gone completely unnoticed by Nicole and I and grown mould. Niiice.)
At some point on Friday night/Saturday morning, we all decided we weren't that fussed about climbing Lushan anyway and we'd really rather have a lie-in. As a result, the day didn't really start until we all went out for lunch. I say all, but Rob and Matt actually stayed behind. Whilst we were all out, they decided to spend their time productively by digging out all of mine and Nicole's Christmas decorations and making the house look festive again. By the time we all got back, there were baubles taped to every chair, ropes of tinsel hanging from the doorways, half the big Christmas tree taped to the back of the door and the mini Christmas tree taped upside-down from the ceiling. The boys were also wearing reindeer and snowman headbands, which they refused to take off for the rest of the day, and Nicole alter found the rest of the big Christmas tree waiting for her in her bed. That evening me, Beth, Rob and Matt (but mostly Beth) set about preparing the big meal we'd planned the day before, with Rob and Matt, who were on mashed-potato duty, hanging about mostly to criticise my aubergine-chopping technique and ask if it wouldn't be more efficient to boil the potatoes in the kettle. Nicole and Dan laid the table, we all criticised their table-laying skills, Ned showed up late and we all dutifully praised the boys' mashed potato a bazillion times. After dinner, Kaitlin, Sam and Mark came round again to join us playing drinking games. About half of us were in on the joke of a drinking game where the whole point was that there were no rules and you were just trying to make the others drink as much as possible. Kaitlin and Mark were brilliant because they were happy just to drink when they were told, Rob and Beth were suspicious but going along with it and we eventually had to let Sam in on the secret because he was questioning Ned, the dealer, so closely that he was on track to give the whole game away.
That takes us pretty much to the end of the visit; everyone but Matt, who was travelling on to Lanzhou from Jiujiang, went home the next morning, leaving Nicole and I (to try) to get organised for leaving ourselves the next week.
(Nicole took a hundred billion photos of the weekend and a good percentage of those were just me and and Beth sitting by ourselves/hiding in corners/ignoring everyone else and stuffing our faces with popcorn, so that's what the photo for this blog is!)
- comments
Gran Not long now! We've so enjoyed your blogs which have taken us all along with you on your exciting and interesting China experience. Well done and thanks. Enjoy your remaining travels. We're looking forward to your safe return. Much Luv x