Here is a quick round-up of some of the funnier moments in the lessons I've taught over the last few months:ApplesI was really scraping the barrel (pun intended) for ideas this week, so under the guise of revising foods and teaching my students about English eating customs, I spent a good amount of time playing 'the apple game' with my students. This was like the children's party game where you must roll a six, then dress yourself in a hat, scarf and gloves befor...

We arrived back in Chengdu on Monday afternoon, and spent the rest of the day relaxing in the hostel and chatting to the other travellers there. We debated whether or not a young guy at the other side of the room was the same guy we'd met at the top of the mountain that morning, and decided that it couldn't be, because "the other guy was chubbier, and he had a beard". Not only were we wrong, but Travis (the guy) overheard the whole conversation. Dan also managed ...

Nicole, Dan and I arrived in Chengdu at 5am on Sunday morning and collapsed, asleep, on the sofas of the Lazybones hostel bar. We were woken two hours later by Beth and Cat, who'd stayed there the night before; another two hours later, we were all on a stuffy bus on our way to Leshan county. From here, we would take another bus to Emei Shan, a famous Taoist mountain we were hoping to climb. We were planning to follow the example of several other PT volunteers who...

In terms of escaping Jiujiang (escaping might be a slightly dramatic word for it, but we get very bored in Jiujiang), April was quite a busy month for Nicole and I. After our weekend in Wuyuan at the beginning of the month, we responded to an SOS we're-dying-of-boredom text from Beth and Cat and went to Chongren for the weekend, and we spent the days off we had for mid-term exams visiting Ned and Matt in Zixi. Having now visited 3 out of the 4 PT projects in Jian...

The beginning of April was Qing Ming Jie (or, Tomb-sweeping Festival), a big national holiday for honouring your ancestors or, as we prefer to think of it, an excuse for some days off. Nicole and I used said days off to visit Wuyuan county, said to be home to some of China's most beautiful countryside, with our friends Mark and Sam, who are also English teachers in Jiujiang. For simplicity's sake, we organised the trip through a local travel agency: 570Y for two ...