The cold weather has even affected the regularity with which I update my blog. Yes, it is pretty cold here and the whole of last week it stayed in the single figures with high humidity as well and rain the whole weekend. Not the most motivating weather which has put a hold to outdoor adventures but i do still have some stories for you.
At the start of my weekend last week I could feel a cold coming on, you know the tell tale scratchy throat and blocked sinus. So i didn’t go out on tuesday night and instead straight to bed. Wednesday my worst fears were confirmed with a nasty cough so i spent the day indoors (not difficult given the weather) trying to stay warm. Thursday was the same apart from mounting a solo mission to Tesco to stock up on cereal and milk as well as watching an entire series of friends which did make me nostalgic for all my mates back home.
My good behaviour seemed to pay off as friday my chest was feeling better but i was still a bit nasal which didn’t help with pronunciation in my Chinese lesson. We did classroom language which i put to good use with some of the kids looking shocked when i produced the chinese for “please stand up” and definitely got there attention if only for 30 seconds.
Saturday and sunday as usual were full days of teaching which are always tough. Although this week was a little different as I was scheduled to do a demo class at the city library part of the marketing activities we are contractually obliged to do. While it was great that i only had to plan for 40 mins, it is unpredictable what age and skill level the kids are going to be not to mention the added pressure of all the parents and every Tong, Ding and Hally watching. As the EF staff rounded up the kids i kept the first ones occupied with some colouring sheets. Once we had 14 it was time to start. I had chosen animals and was just going to play lots of games with them. They knew some and not others so it seemed a good choice. Some were really quiet and shy while others were great. The catch me if you can game scared a few of the girls, and then there were 10, but on the whole it went pretty well.
Eventually Sunday night came and with only one class on Monday the pressure was off slightly so it was back to the apartment for a few beers with the other teachers and it wasn’t long before 88 Bar was being suggested and off we went despite the continuing rain. After a short discussion it was agreed to buy a bottle of vodka between us rather than individual drinks. So a bottle of Absolut stress relief duly arrived for 350 yuan between 5 of us and the party started. As usual it wasn’t long before we had locals coming up and wanting to cheers with us, dance with us and one particularly friendly local who promptly bought us another bottle of vodka which i’m pretty sure was the cause of my absolut hangover the next day. The most amazing event of the night was me catching a taxi home on my own. Amazing because i haven’t actually caught a taxi on my own since being here because i.ve been to scared of not pronouncing my street right and ending up the wrong side of town without a phrase book. Evidently armed with dutch courage I felt I could manage this and promptly hailed a taxi, jumped in and said Pan Shui (said Pan Schwey). Either my chinese had improved or the alcohol helped but he understood with no questions and I was off paying close attention to the roads it must be said to check if he was heading in the right direction. 5 mins later and only 10 yuan I was back on my street and feeling rather proud of myself.
Suffice to say Monday was a long day with class only ending at 8 pm and then we have started having movie nights on a Monday on the big interactive computer screen in the Lifeclub room. This week we had said we would watch a Chinese film for the local staff but they didn’t want to so we watched Boondock Saints as a recap before watching the newly released sequel. And with the change at short notice we just streamed the movie from Youku, a chinese equivalent of Youtube that isn’t blocked.
Tuesday 17th, last day of the working week with 2 classes of 4 year olds back to back in the evening. While they are cute and all, it is quite tiring going for 3 hours straight with 3 x 10 min breaks along the way, and this week they were full of energy and tough to control but at 8pm i was finished and It’s the weekend…
Took a taxi back to our road because it was 2 degrees and we didn’t feel like walking. Chris and I then went for dinner at the Muslim noodle place on our road where Jess met up with us. We all agree it is our favorite restaurant. It appears to be family run and they are all very friendly. The portions are massive and cheap, what more do you need. Below is a pic of my favorite dish there, shaved noodles, with beef and veges (7 yuan) and 500ml Minute Maid (3 yuan) you can’t go wrong. I included the glove to try and give you a sense of perspective on the size of the dish.
What are you doing scaring little girls, Snowball???
Must admit that the picture is not exactly inspiring any hunger on my side. Would take a lot to get me used to the food over there but you can’t beat the value it would seem!
[...] me from having to push my way onto buses. The little family run grocery store across that road. The Muslim restaurant where I was a regular and they would guess which meal I wanted out of the ones I usually ordered. [...]