things i miss about china:
- the super friendly people that populate the country.
- how cheap everything is!
- adorable chinese babies and their mothers who let me coo over them.
- having right of way when crossing the road.
- using my (limited) chinese.
- cheap internet bars on almost every street.
- rice & tofu.
- my school/students/link teahcers.
- tailors.
- red bean paste!
- chinglish!
things i dont miss about china:
- msg.
- being too big for clothes and shoes.
- humidity.
- people not understanding vegetarian.
- the olympics.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
china travels: the reacqusistion of my english abilities.
me again! what a surprise!
last time i left you was a month and a half ago, when i was leaving hengxian middle school to explore the world! starting with china. carina and i left our school on a sunny monday, and after a mad dash to the train station in nanning, that involved us narrowly missing a calf that was running down the middle of the road and a mild panic attack when we realised the train left in 20 minutes and we were stuck in traffic, we made it to the train station for our 4:20pm train to kunming! we said farewell to our link teacher lily, who accompanied us, and i tried not cry.
and then we were off! we faced a 13 hour overnight train journey on hard seats (remember the 28 hours i did from shanghai?), and the prospect of glorious adventures!*
(im going to structure this blog by place...)
*the most i spent in any one place for most of this time was 3 days, so if it sounds like i didn't see very much of each town, its probably because i didn't. and i haven't got much time in which to write this.
YUNNAN PROVINCE:
kunming:
our train deposited us in the capital of the southern chinese province of yunnan, kunming, at the lovely time of 5:45 am =D
i was terribly excited by the prospect of meeting up with other gappers, who i hadn't seen for months. you see, i had developed a problem... i had lost the ability to fluently speak english =[ months of having only one other fluent english speaker to practice my native language with had led to serious decline in grasp of the aforementioned language. my vocabulary had regressed at least 5 years, and my grammar approximately 3 years. so i was counting on my gap friends to help me reacquire some of the basic skills of the english language before i met my sister and before i returned to the english speaking world. they're also lovely people, who's company i find highly enjoyable! i was traveling with caitlin, chris, adam, tom, callum and ali. all were australian except for adam, a brit.
so we arrived in kunming and had fun catching up with everyone. kunming isn't a particularly remarkable city - we saw a beautiful park, and a cheap but awesome temple. it had monks and nuns praying, and a small lake/large pond full of turtles and fish =D some of the turtles had had their shells painted with chinese characters and images!! we also visited a restaurant at the temple that was completely vegetarian - a nice change! we had sweet and sour "pork" and "beef stakes". all entirely made of tofu! tofu truly is the worlds best food product!! after a few days in kunming we caught a sleeper bus (shudders) to....
dali:
dali is an interesting little town in yunnan famous for its population of bai people, one of chinas smallest ethnic minorities. it was a quaint little chinese town, but very touristy - the whole town has been redone to reflect an old fashioned chinese town, however it all looks very modern and contrived. it was fun shopping in the side streets for copies of mao's little red book, and bai jewellery, and the town gates gave a spectacular view of the nearby lake and cloud covered mountains.
the best part of dali was the day trip we did to the nearby bai town of xizhou. it was a cute little place, and far more authentic then dali. we went for a horse and cart ride to a small fishing village, which was pure awesome. we rode through fields of rice paddies and had a wonderful view of the mountains. old men and grandmothers with babies loitered out the front of traditional courtyard homes, and small children ran along side us. defiantly an amazing day.
after dali we toddled off to...
lijiang:
another old fashioned chinese village. this one was far nicer, and a lot bigger. still full of tourists and tourists shops, but it was far more charming then dali. lijiang is the capital of the ancient naxi kingdom of yunnan, so much of the food, architecture and souvenirs were naxi. it was all very nice. stayed at a hostel full of cats that looked like they had the plague, but otherwise nice.we hired bikes for a day and rode out to the naxi village of baisha. it was a beautiful little town at the base of a snow capped mountain, which looked rather out of place seeing as how it was ninety million degrees and i was getting horrific sunburn. but pretty all the same.
after our 3 days in lijiang we caught minibus to....
tiger leaping gorge:
TLG is narrow gorge =D apparently it is so narrow in places that tigers would leap over it to catch prey. apparently. i didn't witness this, so i cant tell you if its true or not. that will probably be getting dammed soon, so we decided it was now or never. you hike along it and get spectacular views. we caught a bus to a guest house along the gorge and planned on hiking back to the town at the bottom of the gorge the next day. we left caitlin at the hostel in lijiang as she had a horrible case of food poisoning and was delirious and had to go to hospital and get four drips (going to hospital is like going to the doctors in aus, and drips is virtually the only way chinese doctors administer antibiotics, so this was all very normal)
i was also sick for TLG =D i do believe it was a kidney infection. whatever it was my whole body ached and i was excessively tired, despite sleeping for most of the day. still, i attempted to hike the gorge. i say attempted, because as 10 meters up the first hill my body gave up and i retreated to the safety of a near by hostel and made plans for catching a minibus back to the town to wait for everyone. the kind ladies at the hostel gave me medicine when i told them what was wrong, and as i waited for the bus chris showed up. she started having trouble breathing, which is because she has asthma, as she recently found out, and the altitude and the cold had made it worse. so we traipsed back to town together! there was a man made rock slide on the road town, so we got to scramble across that.
we also got some nice views of the gorge. it wasn't as narrow as expected, and i didn't see any sections a tiger could leap across, but then i didn't see it all. it was quite a deep gorge, and the river below looked pretty vicious, with giant rocks sticking up and whirlpools and what not. it was still pretty damn impressive.
chris and i spent the day loitering in a hostel. i slept and she read. when the others came back from the hike, we said goodbye to chris and ali who were leaving to off on adventures in other countries, and headed on to...
zhongdian:
ie: xiang ge li la, ie: shangri-la. named after the place that guy invented in the book "lost horizons". the chinese government told the world that this town, very similar to tibet and in fact situated on the fringe of the tibetan plateau,was the secret hidden valley from the book. not true but this tiny town suddenly got its named changed and was flooded with tourists. and as we weren't able to make it to tibet (courtesy of the olympics and the chinese government), we decided to go here.
so now we are down to me, caitlin (who we met up with again in shangri-la), carina, tom, adam and callum.
shangri-la was good. first night i went to the hospital, which was all shiny and new. doctor did some tests and apparently there was nothing wrong with me. but he still gave 3 different kinds of tablets... they didn't make me better, but the ones that turned out to be really strong pain killers were awesome =D so i spent a lot of time in shangri-la lolling around the hostel and being generally ill. i did drag myself out one day to go to an amazingly huge buddhist monastery that was home to over 600 monks. it was set on a hill and thus looked very impressive. here are some photos adam took: href="">http://saundersag.
the temples in side of the main temples all had huge buddha statues and photos of the panchen lama. the walls were brightly painted with buddhist images, and the rooves of important buildings were gold =D not real gold. we saw some monks praying and we're accosted by small children in traditional tibet clothing telling us we could take photos with them for 1 yuan.
after two days here we went back to lijing to catch a sleeper bus to...
SICHUAN PROVINCE: (yes, the one that had the earthquake)
chengdu:
capital of the sichuan province and home to the panda breeding center! sleeper bus here was 22 hours of being shoved up against the window and the roof of the bus, attempting to sleep as the bus wound its away and along hilly roads and then horribly bumpy roads. not so much fun.
friends of ours had recently visited chengdu and said that it had not been affected by the earthquake, and as we were all keen to see pandas and adam wanted to try sichuan hot pot, we decided to swing by for a few days.
chengdu is a really nice city, very relaxed. we spent our time going to temples and vegetarian restaurants, and seeing pandas! they really were as cute as everyone says. the older ones really do just sit around eating. the younger ones were far more energetic and playful. the were doing battle, and pushing each other down stairs and falling down hills, and climbing tress. i wonder if the realise they're endangered?
unfortunately we didn't get to see the baby ones =[ no one told us why.
but did you know that the chinese name for the great panda, da xiongmao, means big bear-cat? how awesome!
whilst in chengdu we did a day trip to leshan to see the giant buddha carved into a cliff. it's the biggest carved sitting buddha in the world. we took a public bus to get some of the way there, and a group of chinese children, who appeared to be part of some dancing troupe, and their mothers, started talking to us in chinese and english. the kids were very excited to show off what english they knew, and laughed at our chinese. all in all a very amusing/educational bus ride!
the buddha was very impressive. and rather huge. i think the only way to understand is if you saw it yourself, so im not going to try and explain!
HUNAN PROVINCE:
fenghuang:
we caught an overnight train from chengdu to huihua, then a bus out to fenghuang. a note on trains: if you ever travel on chinese trains, go hard sleeper! quite cheap, and so comfortable! i can't believe i ever did hard seats!!!!!!!
fenghuang is a pretty little riverside village. it was fun meandering through the alley ways and getting horrifically lost and confused because we couldn't understand peoples directions. we spent one day walking about and shopping, and then the next day we climbed a hill to see a pagoda. it was REALLY humid, and we were all puddles of sweat by the end, but the views were cool. went on a boat ride on the river. it was very nice, especially going down the "waterfalls". (the river had concrete bridges with breaks at each end for boats to go through, and it felt like you were going down a small waterfall =D). we had to help the guy paddle back up stream, and get out going back up the waterfalls to help drag the boat. when we had almost made it back, some chiense tourists in another boat came up and declared war upon by splashing us. not so much fun when my dress when see-through...
carina and caitlin both left from fenghuang to see some other parts of china, and then carina went on to finland and england and caitlin went back to australia. i was now an honorary man!
from fenghuang we caught a bus to...
zhangjiajie:
first national park in china. it was full of these huge narrow rock formations. we bought a two day ticket and stayed the night in the park, which is HUGE. like epically huge. we spent two days walking around and only saw about one tenth of it. when you enter, they scan your ticket, then take your thumb print so you cant try and give your ticket to someone else =D
it was all very green and pretty, and the stream running through it had the clearest water i have ever seen. we climbed up a giant hill that almost killed me, and then nearly died trying to cross collapsed wooden bridges =D we also got caught in the rain, which wasn't so bad because it temporarily killed the humidity. the vies from the top were amazing; everything was so green, and they sky was blue, and the valleys were full of mist. and now this sounds like a fairy story...
stayed the night in an overpriced and slightly dodgy hostel. next day we went took an elevator to the top of one of the peaks, which was pretty cool. then we climbed down and wandered through more of the park. we saw monkeys, which were pretty cool. the baby ones were the most adorable, of course. they're fairly used to humans, so they came quite close.
we left that afternoon and caught a train to the capital of the province...
changsha:
home town of the great communist himself, mao! well, not quite, he was born in a town about 125km away, which we didn't have time to see, but we did stay in a hotel in his university! changsha turned out to be not so interesting. we attempted to go see a few things, but they all seemed to have disappeared... we did see a statue of mao though. and then on our second day in changsha we started talking to one of the university students, who offered to take us around for the day. unfortunately everything we wanted to see had been closed down or, in the case of the museum, full. so our new friend, who goes by the english name of eleven, took us to an art exhibition, which was pretty cool, and then took us out for lunch. after that we went to a wangba (internet bar for the uninitiated)for a while until our train left. we decided to take a taxi, because they were ridiculously cheap and there always seemed to be one waiting for us. however, just because we had to be somewhere at a certain time, it took ages (ie:15 minutes) to find a taxi. so adam told him we wanted to go to the hou che zhan (pronounced hor cher jan). so off we go, thinking we would make it in time. and then he pulls up in front of a restraunt named hao chi shang (pronounced how chir shung) and points. turns out we he thought thsi is where we wanted to go... so we start saying no, hou che zhan! and show him our train tickets, so he laughs at his mistake and drives off toward the train station. we spent the rest of the journey alternating between extreme laughter and extreme panic. turns out panic was well founded as we missed our train. by like 15 minutes. so we paid extra to catch the next train. so for 10 hours, overnight, we got stand. on a horribly crowded train. callum and tom were squeezed onto the end of some seats, and a nice guard gave me a tiny plastic seat so i could sit in the aisle, and adam got stuck with the floor. howevre with callum as a head rest, the journey turned out to be not so bad, despite the fact that i didn't sleep at all =D so after this 10 hours cramped fun, we arrived at...
GUANGXI PROVINCE: (my province =D but you already knew that...)
guilin:
guilin:
the boys all wanted to go visit guilin and yangshou, and despite having already been there once, i enjoyed it so much i willing tagged along. i basically just wandered around guilin while the boys went and saw the stuff i had already seen.
next day we went to...
next day we went to...
yangshou:
we went on a cruise up the li river, which was really nice. saw some cormorant fishing birds doing nothing. fishermen tie string around their necks, so when they catch fish in the bills they can't swallow them and the fishermen can take them. they were actually rather ugly birds...
boys went and did stuff i had already done, so i just tagged along, or did boring things like washing =D we headed back to guilin to catch a train to our next destination, and decided it would be a brilliant idea to spend the night in an internet bar. it was cheaper then paying for accommodation, and so much more fun! it was thoroughly amusing, and i would never ever do it again.
HAINAN PROVINCE:
sanya:
hainan island, at the bottom of this great big country, is china's version of haiwaii. we all wanted to go somewhere to relax for a bit and do nothing, and callum wanted to go to the beach, so this was the perfect option! we spent 5 whole days here doing nothing expect sleeping in and going to the beach and eating mangos!
this was also where we all started to split up. tom went back to his school in qingdao to take up a job working at a private english school school, callum was heading back to australia, and adam anad i were going on to hong kong for visas.
so! i left my beloved china with the knowledge i may not be able to return if china didn't give me a new visa i would not be returning hanging over my head....
HONG KONG:
hong kong was fairly crazy - i suffered reverse culture shock. i couldn't handle waiting at the lights to cross the road, and not having to take toilet paper with me everywhere, and always using western toilets! and then there was the food... so much dairy and crazy western foods like pizza!!!
i didn't do much in hong kong, despite spending nine days there... all you really need to know is that i got all my visas =D except for my mongolian one because their consulate in mongolia shut down a few weeks ago. but i got my russian and chinese ones! the typhoon was nothing, just some drizzle and a strong wind =[ i was disappointed, and annoyed because the chiense consulate and heaps of shops shut down for the day =[.
adam and i split up after hong kong - he was going back to his school in qingdao to hang around and do nothing, and i was going on to....
BEIJING:
spent a few days wandering round getting my mongolian visa =D which i now have! then on saturday the 16th of august i went to the airport and picked up a Lauren ^_^ i cried when i saw her, but shhhhhh...
we then spent a few days doing touristy stuff in beijing - forbidden city and summer palace were 10 times better because it was summer, and i had more time to wander around. i now realise just how colossal the forbidden city is.
then it was on to tianjin for 5 days to relax! went back to the great wall which was fun, and just cruise around the city! now we're heading back to beijing to start our trans-mongolian train trip!!
well. that's about it. i hope you managed to read all that with out falling asleep. i'm going to eat breakfast now!
claire xo.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
wow... im alive! [warning, epic post]
HI ladies and gentlemen! I'm sorry i haven't been updating htis thing, I'm horribly lazy!! considering the amount of time I've spent in wang ba's (internet bars) over the last month, you think i could have at least said hello! but i didn't. and then today, i found out i could access my blog all by my lonesome! chinese internet has been blocking it the entire time i've been in china, and suddenly, in a little wangba next to the japanese restaurant in sanya, i can use this thing!!! probably because they government is opening up the internet for the olympics. thats probably the only good thing to have come out of this whole fiasco.
now, from lets rewind a bit (or a lot rather) to where i last left you. then i was in my poky little town in southern china, teaching my students many glorious things about the english language and the elusive yet highly popular Western world...
lets start from holidays:
whilst the senior 3's were doing their huge examinations, all the senior 1and 2 students went home so that the senior 3's had the whole school to themselves. carina and i used this opportunity to see some of our province. we went to guilin and yangshou for two days each, as everyone keeps telling us how beautiful they are.
we arrived in guilin about midday on thursday, and during our 5 minute walk from the bus station to our hostel, witnessed a street fight between two chinese women =D they were screaming at each other and there was this huge crowd of people around them, and they were blocking the road, it was crazy!!
both guilin and yangshou are famous for they karst landscape, which is basically huge limestone peaks, and cool underground caves. that afternoon we visited solitary beauty peak, apparently the most beautiful one in guilin. we paid Y50 to get in, which is hell expensive, only to fond out we could have climbed the peak for just Y15... the extra Y35 got us access to a few buildings which had no english information, so we didn't even know what they were. they were some pretty cool old buildings though. climber to the top, which nearly killed us because it was so hot! but defiantly worth it. slightly smoggy day, but the view was still awesome! the whole city is flayed out before you with all these peaks rising up in between office building and homes and what not, its crazy.
next day we got up early and waited 2 and a half hours to see the.... olympic torch =D not exactly worth the wait, but still a bit of fun. very patriotic - carina and i bought olympic t-shirts to fit in =P not that i could ever fit in, i look a tad different to your average chinese person... that day we also climbed elephant trunk hill - so named because it looks like an elephant dipping its trunk into the Li river. gorgeous views from the top, as expected, and it truly did looking like a elephant.
next day we took a bus out to yangshou, which is described by lonely planet as "less of a town and more of an international backpackers colony". this was soooooo true. it seemed everything there was simply for the convenience of lao wai (foreigners). there was a whole street of pretty much all western food and clubs, and every second shop was either a hostel/hotel or a souvenir shop. twas madness! yangshou is a beautiful area though. the day we arrived we went for a boat cruise along the li river. the lady who poach us offered us a "bamboo boat ride" - turns out bamboo in china is code for PVC piping... still lovely all the same. we got gorgeous views of the peaks in the area. spent the rest of the day cruising around the town and walking through the lovely parks. next day we hired bikes and rode out to the fields around yangshou - it was the most amazingly beautiful thing i have ever seen. beautiful limestones peaks rise up between emerald green rice fields, and this stretches on as far as you can see. it was a nice warm day and we road out to moon hill, which is a peak with a moon shape hole in the top, that goes all the way though. as we were riding though, it started to rain - it currently being wet season in china. we were soaked through in a matter of minutes, it was lovely after the hot sunny morning we had had. so we climbed the hill in the pouring rain, it was wonderful! its a quite an easy climb, as its all stones steps, but its a fair was up. still, this really old chinese lady followed us up the entire way, trying to sell us drinks, it was crazy! by the end of it i was more puffed out then she was! the views from the top were beautiful. the rain had cleared a lot the smog, so we could see for quite a distance, and all it was was beautiful country side, all lovely and green.
By the time we reached the top our old lady was getting angry that we kept refusing to buy her grossly over priced drinks, so to avoid her carina and i ducked up a dirt path that we found out led to the top of the hill. it was narrow and over grown, and as it had been raining, horribly muddy and slippery. fortunately it was quite rocky, so we made it up fairly easily. the views from the top were the most breath taking thing i have seen so far in my life.
the next day we returned to our sleepy little village and our teaching jobs, but i must say, it was defiantly one of the best holidays i have ever had!*
[* gap year not classified as holiday, classified as monumental life changing experience.]
footy:
not somehting you would expect to hear about in a blog written by claire and set in china, but its true, aussie rules football is a valid topic! carinas parents sent her a football, and after about 2 months we finally got it pumped up and taught the kiddes how to play! they were so mystified by the oddly shaped yellow ball and immediatly tried to use it like a soccer ball, or a volleyball... however once we explained to them how to use it they were quite good at it, and very enthusiastic. i taught all my classes how to play. or at least how to handball and kick. they all loved, and suprisingly so did i!!
rain:
as you may have heard there was flooding in parts of southern china, including my province =D but, as with the earthquake, this didnt really effect us and we didnt even really know about it =P however we did get 2 weeks of soild rain. everyday. all day. it would flood the oval and basketball courts. and by flood i mean there was lots of water. not a real flood. but yeah. i loved it! walking in the rain is one of my favourite things about china.
jasmine:
as i may or may not have mentioned, my little town in the jasmine capital of china =D but people still dont know where it is =P
so in our last week lily took us to some jasmine fields, as it was harvest time! it was rezally hot, and the sun was blazing, yet the workers in the fields were completely covered, even their faces, which as you may guess was to protect them selves from the sun. but not out of fear of skin cancer, but because they want to be white. its kind of sad, but everyone here has the same attitude. they all buy whitening cream, and carry umbrellas in summer, all to keep their skin as light as possible. i told many of students that in australia and other westerns countries, people want to have darker skin, and they were shocked.
but back to the jasmine. you pick the flowers a just as they open. its quite hard work because the jasmine bushes are quite low, so your constanly bending over, and the weather is terribly hot. but it smells nice! once the jasmine is picked its taken to the markets and sold. lily took us there and everywhere were huge piles of white jasmine flowers. the smell was intoxicating, and even managed to overpower the stench from the meat market next door. there were people everywhere, hauling sacks of jasmine, weighing it, raking it into piles, bagging it, and then hauling it away to be made into tea. lily said we should buy some jasmine to put in our house, so it would smell pretty. for some reason though no one would sell it too us, until some old lady argreed. we got one jin (500grm), and while she was measuring it out and whatnot, this huge group of people crowded round to watch us. it was really weird... even security came to observe the lao wei buying jasmine. that night we put it on top of our mosquito nets and all through the house. jasmine will forever remind me of hengxian and the my little home there.
last classes:
so! my placement, and thus my life as a teacher, is almost over =[ my last classes with all my students was fun and laid back. i just told them all about where i was going next, which made them all horribly jealous. then we took photos, or played games, or made paper stars and cranes =D all in all lots of fun. i also got LOTS of presents from students... i got four chinese knots, which are for goodluck, two olympic t-shirts, one signed by all the students of that class, a wooden dragon, a chinese scroll, a 3d puzzle of the great wall, some bracelets, paper for and instructions on how to make paper stars and cranes, hair pins, and much more! it made me fell so loved and appreciated! my last classes always made me sad, but it was nice to reflect on how far my students had come and how much fun we had had together.
a gift of tea:
lily told us that the school wanted to buy us a present, but wasnt sure what we would like. so she asked us if we would like a tea set. carina and i both insisted we didnt want anything, so poor lily was left to think of something herself. however a few days later when i asked if she would help me buy a tea pot to go with my two tea cups i had bought ealier, she insisted on buying us both tea sets from the school.
so off we went to the tea shop part of town. its huge. especially considering the population of our town (something between 10,000 and 16,000). there was hundreds of them! i dont undertand how they made any money, there never seemed to be anyone in them. however it was lots of fun. lily decided we needed tea to go with our tea sets, so we spent ages drinking loads of chinese teas. we had green teas, red teas, jasmines teas, and tea from the yunnan province! it wsa lots of fun, and the teas are so tasty ^_^ in the end we got one green tea and one jasmine tea, and then the store gave us some health tea for free =D then we spent a while looking at tea sets and eventually got pretty white ones with blue fish. we got all the things one needs to properly serve chiense tea. now i just have to remember how...
party!:
our school decided to throw us a party with all our students. all 300 of them... lily asked us to organise some english games fir everyone to play, but told us nothing beyond that. we were a little nervouse about organsing games for that many students, and so we left planning it till the last minute =D first lily gave a lovely speech and thanked carina and ion behlaf of the school. then she gave a gift from the principal... Y1000!!!!!!! we were shocked but certianly happy! then we said a thank you to the students, and the school and lily, and then gave lily a present! and one for the school - an australian flag. apparently they loved it. then we played games! first we played simon says, renamed carina says =D problem was it took ages because they were so damned good at it!! but they loved it. then we put them in groups and gave them riddles. they turned out to be harder then we expected, but they still had fun. then we spent ages taking photos and talking and then said goodbye to everyone =[
packing/goodbye/leaving:
so yes. this is the end =[ it all terribly sad. carina and i spent our last weekend with the apartment in completely disarray as we sorted and packed everything and got out parcels ready to send home. i sent home 15kg of stuff... i never thought it was possible! most of it was presents from people and for people, and souvenirs. and photos. so many photos... and so much tea! the school gave us 7 packets each! SEVEN! its crazy!!!
of course while all this crazy sorting and packing was going on we had SO MANY VISITORS! students kept coming to say goodbye and give us presents and just hang out. carina and i have never been so popular though! it was really nice.
on sunday, our last night, our link teachers took us out for a banquet, which the principal, who we have never actually met, was going to attend, but ended being hideously late because he went to a poetry reading to celebrate the Party's' day. our link teachers were very proud, as apparently not everyone gets to go. but he eventually arrived, and i didn't even realise it was him until he left and carina told me... he was very nice though!
the next day was our last day =[ we were leaving on a train to kunming at 4:20pm, and were leaving the school at 2pm. we spent the morning hurriedly tiding our house, which was still a mess, but apparently cleaner then when the other foreign teachers left, and sending our parcels. then we had one last meal with lily and betty, and we were off. the school had offered to drive us to the train station in nanning, and lily came with us, which was lovely. when we said goodbye to her at the station i nearly started crying. she has been wonderful to carina and i and i will always thing of her as my chinese mother!
so its over. i have left! gone! my glorious days as a teacher of english at hengxian middle school are over! its so sad, and i miss it like crazy. i have been keeping in touch with many students, and lily and betty though, so its not too bad. its just sad to think i will never see most of those people again.
the second part of my grand adventure:
so! now i am no longer a teacher! i am simply a traveler. first stop: kunming, yunnan province, china! here is my itinerary for the next 6 months:
- yunnan, sichuan, hunan, guangxi and hainan provinces of china!
- hong kong
- shandong province of china
- 16th of august: i meet laurenin beijing! then we go to tianjin, then back to beijing for the start of the transmongolian! this epic train journey will take us to mongolia (ulaan baatar and a ger camp) and russia (irkuts and lake baikal, moscow then st petersburg, where the trian ends).
- tallin; estonia.
- helsinki; finland.
- stockholm and maybe ystad; sweden.
- south of france; france. here i meet my parents, grand mother, aunty, uncle and cousins.
- poland.
- malta.
- various places; england.
- UNSURE.
- new york; america. for the first week of december with my folks ^_^
- grand prarie, vancouver; canada. here for christmas, again with my folks.
- HOME! sometime maybe early january. depending on various factors.
so. THERE YOU HAVE IT! my life up until the 30th of june. next i shall tell you about my china travels!
so, until next time (which will be soon)!
claire xo.
now, from lets rewind a bit (or a lot rather) to where i last left you. then i was in my poky little town in southern china, teaching my students many glorious things about the english language and the elusive yet highly popular Western world...
lets start from holidays:
whilst the senior 3's were doing their huge examinations, all the senior 1and 2 students went home so that the senior 3's had the whole school to themselves. carina and i used this opportunity to see some of our province. we went to guilin and yangshou for two days each, as everyone keeps telling us how beautiful they are.
we arrived in guilin about midday on thursday, and during our 5 minute walk from the bus station to our hostel, witnessed a street fight between two chinese women =D they were screaming at each other and there was this huge crowd of people around them, and they were blocking the road, it was crazy!!
both guilin and yangshou are famous for they karst landscape, which is basically huge limestone peaks, and cool underground caves. that afternoon we visited solitary beauty peak, apparently the most beautiful one in guilin. we paid Y50 to get in, which is hell expensive, only to fond out we could have climbed the peak for just Y15... the extra Y35 got us access to a few buildings which had no english information, so we didn't even know what they were. they were some pretty cool old buildings though. climber to the top, which nearly killed us because it was so hot! but defiantly worth it. slightly smoggy day, but the view was still awesome! the whole city is flayed out before you with all these peaks rising up in between office building and homes and what not, its crazy.
next day we got up early and waited 2 and a half hours to see the.... olympic torch =D not exactly worth the wait, but still a bit of fun. very patriotic - carina and i bought olympic t-shirts to fit in =P not that i could ever fit in, i look a tad different to your average chinese person... that day we also climbed elephant trunk hill - so named because it looks like an elephant dipping its trunk into the Li river. gorgeous views from the top, as expected, and it truly did looking like a elephant.
next day we took a bus out to yangshou, which is described by lonely planet as "less of a town and more of an international backpackers colony". this was soooooo true. it seemed everything there was simply for the convenience of lao wai (foreigners). there was a whole street of pretty much all western food and clubs, and every second shop was either a hostel/hotel or a souvenir shop. twas madness! yangshou is a beautiful area though. the day we arrived we went for a boat cruise along the li river. the lady who poach us offered us a "bamboo boat ride" - turns out bamboo in china is code for PVC piping... still lovely all the same. we got gorgeous views of the peaks in the area. spent the rest of the day cruising around the town and walking through the lovely parks. next day we hired bikes and rode out to the fields around yangshou - it was the most amazingly beautiful thing i have ever seen. beautiful limestones peaks rise up between emerald green rice fields, and this stretches on as far as you can see. it was a nice warm day and we road out to moon hill, which is a peak with a moon shape hole in the top, that goes all the way though. as we were riding though, it started to rain - it currently being wet season in china. we were soaked through in a matter of minutes, it was lovely after the hot sunny morning we had had. so we climbed the hill in the pouring rain, it was wonderful! its a quite an easy climb, as its all stones steps, but its a fair was up. still, this really old chinese lady followed us up the entire way, trying to sell us drinks, it was crazy! by the end of it i was more puffed out then she was! the views from the top were beautiful. the rain had cleared a lot the smog, so we could see for quite a distance, and all it was was beautiful country side, all lovely and green.
By the time we reached the top our old lady was getting angry that we kept refusing to buy her grossly over priced drinks, so to avoid her carina and i ducked up a dirt path that we found out led to the top of the hill. it was narrow and over grown, and as it had been raining, horribly muddy and slippery. fortunately it was quite rocky, so we made it up fairly easily. the views from the top were the most breath taking thing i have seen so far in my life.
the next day we returned to our sleepy little village and our teaching jobs, but i must say, it was defiantly one of the best holidays i have ever had!*
[* gap year not classified as holiday, classified as monumental life changing experience.]
footy:
not somehting you would expect to hear about in a blog written by claire and set in china, but its true, aussie rules football is a valid topic! carinas parents sent her a football, and after about 2 months we finally got it pumped up and taught the kiddes how to play! they were so mystified by the oddly shaped yellow ball and immediatly tried to use it like a soccer ball, or a volleyball... however once we explained to them how to use it they were quite good at it, and very enthusiastic. i taught all my classes how to play. or at least how to handball and kick. they all loved, and suprisingly so did i!!
rain:
as you may have heard there was flooding in parts of southern china, including my province =D but, as with the earthquake, this didnt really effect us and we didnt even really know about it =P however we did get 2 weeks of soild rain. everyday. all day. it would flood the oval and basketball courts. and by flood i mean there was lots of water. not a real flood. but yeah. i loved it! walking in the rain is one of my favourite things about china.
jasmine:
as i may or may not have mentioned, my little town in the jasmine capital of china =D but people still dont know where it is =P
so in our last week lily took us to some jasmine fields, as it was harvest time! it was rezally hot, and the sun was blazing, yet the workers in the fields were completely covered, even their faces, which as you may guess was to protect them selves from the sun. but not out of fear of skin cancer, but because they want to be white. its kind of sad, but everyone here has the same attitude. they all buy whitening cream, and carry umbrellas in summer, all to keep their skin as light as possible. i told many of students that in australia and other westerns countries, people want to have darker skin, and they were shocked.
but back to the jasmine. you pick the flowers a just as they open. its quite hard work because the jasmine bushes are quite low, so your constanly bending over, and the weather is terribly hot. but it smells nice! once the jasmine is picked its taken to the markets and sold. lily took us there and everywhere were huge piles of white jasmine flowers. the smell was intoxicating, and even managed to overpower the stench from the meat market next door. there were people everywhere, hauling sacks of jasmine, weighing it, raking it into piles, bagging it, and then hauling it away to be made into tea. lily said we should buy some jasmine to put in our house, so it would smell pretty. for some reason though no one would sell it too us, until some old lady argreed. we got one jin (500grm), and while she was measuring it out and whatnot, this huge group of people crowded round to watch us. it was really weird... even security came to observe the lao wei buying jasmine. that night we put it on top of our mosquito nets and all through the house. jasmine will forever remind me of hengxian and the my little home there.
last classes:
so! my placement, and thus my life as a teacher, is almost over =[ my last classes with all my students was fun and laid back. i just told them all about where i was going next, which made them all horribly jealous. then we took photos, or played games, or made paper stars and cranes =D all in all lots of fun. i also got LOTS of presents from students... i got four chinese knots, which are for goodluck, two olympic t-shirts, one signed by all the students of that class, a wooden dragon, a chinese scroll, a 3d puzzle of the great wall, some bracelets, paper for and instructions on how to make paper stars and cranes, hair pins, and much more! it made me fell so loved and appreciated! my last classes always made me sad, but it was nice to reflect on how far my students had come and how much fun we had had together.
a gift of tea:
lily told us that the school wanted to buy us a present, but wasnt sure what we would like. so she asked us if we would like a tea set. carina and i both insisted we didnt want anything, so poor lily was left to think of something herself. however a few days later when i asked if she would help me buy a tea pot to go with my two tea cups i had bought ealier, she insisted on buying us both tea sets from the school.
so off we went to the tea shop part of town. its huge. especially considering the population of our town (something between 10,000 and 16,000). there was hundreds of them! i dont undertand how they made any money, there never seemed to be anyone in them. however it was lots of fun. lily decided we needed tea to go with our tea sets, so we spent ages drinking loads of chinese teas. we had green teas, red teas, jasmines teas, and tea from the yunnan province! it wsa lots of fun, and the teas are so tasty ^_^ in the end we got one green tea and one jasmine tea, and then the store gave us some health tea for free =D then we spent a while looking at tea sets and eventually got pretty white ones with blue fish. we got all the things one needs to properly serve chiense tea. now i just have to remember how...
party!:
our school decided to throw us a party with all our students. all 300 of them... lily asked us to organise some english games fir everyone to play, but told us nothing beyond that. we were a little nervouse about organsing games for that many students, and so we left planning it till the last minute =D first lily gave a lovely speech and thanked carina and ion behlaf of the school. then she gave a gift from the principal... Y1000!!!!!!! we were shocked but certianly happy! then we said a thank you to the students, and the school and lily, and then gave lily a present! and one for the school - an australian flag. apparently they loved it. then we played games! first we played simon says, renamed carina says =D problem was it took ages because they were so damned good at it!! but they loved it. then we put them in groups and gave them riddles. they turned out to be harder then we expected, but they still had fun. then we spent ages taking photos and talking and then said goodbye to everyone =[
packing/goodbye/leaving:
so yes. this is the end =[ it all terribly sad. carina and i spent our last weekend with the apartment in completely disarray as we sorted and packed everything and got out parcels ready to send home. i sent home 15kg of stuff... i never thought it was possible! most of it was presents from people and for people, and souvenirs. and photos. so many photos... and so much tea! the school gave us 7 packets each! SEVEN! its crazy!!!
of course while all this crazy sorting and packing was going on we had SO MANY VISITORS! students kept coming to say goodbye and give us presents and just hang out. carina and i have never been so popular though! it was really nice.
on sunday, our last night, our link teachers took us out for a banquet, which the principal, who we have never actually met, was going to attend, but ended being hideously late because he went to a poetry reading to celebrate the Party's' day. our link teachers were very proud, as apparently not everyone gets to go. but he eventually arrived, and i didn't even realise it was him until he left and carina told me... he was very nice though!
the next day was our last day =[ we were leaving on a train to kunming at 4:20pm, and were leaving the school at 2pm. we spent the morning hurriedly tiding our house, which was still a mess, but apparently cleaner then when the other foreign teachers left, and sending our parcels. then we had one last meal with lily and betty, and we were off. the school had offered to drive us to the train station in nanning, and lily came with us, which was lovely. when we said goodbye to her at the station i nearly started crying. she has been wonderful to carina and i and i will always thing of her as my chinese mother!
so its over. i have left! gone! my glorious days as a teacher of english at hengxian middle school are over! its so sad, and i miss it like crazy. i have been keeping in touch with many students, and lily and betty though, so its not too bad. its just sad to think i will never see most of those people again.
the second part of my grand adventure:
so! now i am no longer a teacher! i am simply a traveler. first stop: kunming, yunnan province, china! here is my itinerary for the next 6 months:
- yunnan, sichuan, hunan, guangxi and hainan provinces of china!
- hong kong
- shandong province of china
- 16th of august: i meet laurenin beijing! then we go to tianjin, then back to beijing for the start of the transmongolian! this epic train journey will take us to mongolia (ulaan baatar and a ger camp) and russia (irkuts and lake baikal, moscow then st petersburg, where the trian ends).
- tallin; estonia.
- helsinki; finland.
- stockholm and maybe ystad; sweden.
- south of france; france. here i meet my parents, grand mother, aunty, uncle and cousins.
- poland.
- malta.
- various places; england.
- UNSURE.
- new york; america. for the first week of december with my folks ^_^
- grand prarie, vancouver; canada. here for christmas, again with my folks.
- HOME! sometime maybe early january. depending on various factors.
so. THERE YOU HAVE IT! my life up until the 30th of june. next i shall tell you about my china travels!
so, until next time (which will be soon)!
claire xo.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
BLOG:
hi all! sorry about my silence in the last few weeks, i got horribly complacent =D first amusing thing to happen to me after my last blog - i accidentally emailed my last blog to a whole heap of gap people. horribly awkward. fortunately i hadn't said anything bad about anyone!!
earthquake: as i'm sure you're all aware there was a horrific earthquake in sichuan province on the 12th of may. the first i heard of it was when my aunty cat emailed me asking me if i was ok - carina and i never turn on the tv and hadn't been on the computer that day, so we we're completely ignorant. no one in our area felt a thing.
its been amazing to see the outpouring of grief in china. i had a senior 3 student come to me in tears because she was so upset about it. she said she thought it was terrible that so many students her age had died just before they had their national college entrance examinations, and before they had a chance to live their lives. at the beginning of every class students would ask me if i knew about it, and start relating survival stories they had heard. they school asked the students to donate money for the relief effort, and they donated all the money they had, despite the fact that most of these students are the children of poor families. walking down the street in nanning the week after we were invited to sign a banner bearing a good will message to the people of sichuan.
just last week we saw some people writing messages of hope for the victims and releasing it into the sky. it's not that the chinese people are more upset then people in any other country would be, but actions like this set them apart.
weather: tis summer time in china, which means wet season =D rain will come from no where, and will last for hours, flooding the oval and basketball courts and making rivers everywhere. it rains so much here - it's rained everyday for the past 6 days. but its pretty awesome rain. walking in it is so much fun!! giant raindrops soak through your clothes in a matter of minutes, leaving you looking like a drowned rat. but everyone carries on as normal, mostly because the rain provides some relief from the oppressive heat.
senior 3s: senior 3s recently completed their big college entrance examinations - three days, four exams. all of them were reeeeeeeeally stressed. everyone in china takes these exams seriously - the senior 1 and 2 students are sent home for the duration of the exams, surrounding streets are blocked during exam hours, and everyone in the town does all they can to support the senior 3s.
carina and i went away for the exams - we didn't want to disturb the girls living above us - and when we returned most of the senior 3s had left =[ fortunately they have to come back for an oral english exam, so we got to say good bye to our friends. it's so weird with out them, our building is silent, and the school is a lot quieter with 1000 less students. we're defiantly going to miss the senior 3's. they were so friendly and always willing to help us when our chinese failed =P they were great company, and we miss talking to them =[ we've given out our email address though, so hopefully some will keep in touch. we see them one more time on the 24th of june when they come to chose their colleges =D
junior 2's: the principal of hengxian no. 1 junior school invited us to come and teach two junior 2 (year 8) classes as part of their open day. i think it was an open day for senior schools to come and poach the top students as opposed to the junior school inviting people to come and look around. so not only did we get to teach, we also had to talk to some of the junior 3 students - foreign teachers are rare in hengxian, and therefor the schools affiliation with gap is a huge drawing card.
having only ever taught senior students, carina and i were rather apprehensive about teaching junior kids, especially since we found out that not only would the classes be 3 times bigger then what we are used, we would have a whole group of teachers and parents watching. turns out we we're teaching in front of over 100 people. we we're a tad nervous, to say the least!! we spoke to other gappers who teach this age group and worked out some lesson plans, and had forewarned our link teacher she would probably have to translate, but we still didn't feel prepared. so we rocked up, sat in the principals office for a bit, all the while being stared at by curious students who were returning from their lunch breaks, and were then dragged off to perform!!
first lesson was an epic failure. the lesson plan wasn't long enough, so we had to ad lib for 20 minutes, which is not easy. the students were horribly shy and not used to our voices, so they spent most of the lesson looking like stunned mullets =D
second lesson was a better lesson plan, and we pulled it off nicely. even the teachers who were watching got involved, it was awesome! for the second lesson we did body parts, and played simon says with the students, they were very good at it and squealed when we gave them small koala key rings as prizes. all in all i think we made a good sales pitch for the school.
finishing dates: carina and i recently received our finishing date, after a bit of confusion about when we finished teaching and when we were allowed to leave. we now finish teaching on the 27th of june, but have been asked to hang around until the 30th so the school can throw us a party ^_^
the finishing date has elicited mixed emotions - im really excited about continuing my wondrous journey and catching up with my friends, but im really sad about leaving hengxian. i've had an amazing time here, and made so many friends, its going to be hard to say good bye. i'll miss being a teacher, and i'll defiantly miss my students. i now only have four lessons left with each class =[
i cant believe we will be leaving so soon. sometimes it feels like i've been here forever, sometimes it feels like i've just arrived. it hasn't always been the greatest fun - been bored a lot lately because the students are busy studying for graduating exams, and all the senior 3s have left, and this town is tiny - but it's certainly been interesting, to say the least =P
until next time citizens!
claire. xo.
earthquake: as i'm sure you're all aware there was a horrific earthquake in sichuan province on the 12th of may. the first i heard of it was when my aunty cat emailed me asking me if i was ok - carina and i never turn on the tv and hadn't been on the computer that day, so we we're completely ignorant. no one in our area felt a thing.
its been amazing to see the outpouring of grief in china. i had a senior 3 student come to me in tears because she was so upset about it. she said she thought it was terrible that so many students her age had died just before they had their national college entrance examinations, and before they had a chance to live their lives. at the beginning of every class students would ask me if i knew about it, and start relating survival stories they had heard. they school asked the students to donate money for the relief effort, and they donated all the money they had, despite the fact that most of these students are the children of poor families. walking down the street in nanning the week after we were invited to sign a banner bearing a good will message to the people of sichuan.
just last week we saw some people writing messages of hope for the victims and releasing it into the sky. it's not that the chinese people are more upset then people in any other country would be, but actions like this set them apart.
weather: tis summer time in china, which means wet season =D rain will come from no where, and will last for hours, flooding the oval and basketball courts and making rivers everywhere. it rains so much here - it's rained everyday for the past 6 days. but its pretty awesome rain. walking in it is so much fun!! giant raindrops soak through your clothes in a matter of minutes, leaving you looking like a drowned rat. but everyone carries on as normal, mostly because the rain provides some relief from the oppressive heat.
senior 3s: senior 3s recently completed their big college entrance examinations - three days, four exams. all of them were reeeeeeeeally stressed. everyone in china takes these exams seriously - the senior 1 and 2 students are sent home for the duration of the exams, surrounding streets are blocked during exam hours, and everyone in the town does all they can to support the senior 3s.
carina and i went away for the exams - we didn't want to disturb the girls living above us - and when we returned most of the senior 3s had left =[ fortunately they have to come back for an oral english exam, so we got to say good bye to our friends. it's so weird with out them, our building is silent, and the school is a lot quieter with 1000 less students. we're defiantly going to miss the senior 3's. they were so friendly and always willing to help us when our chinese failed =P they were great company, and we miss talking to them =[ we've given out our email address though, so hopefully some will keep in touch. we see them one more time on the 24th of june when they come to chose their colleges =D
junior 2's: the principal of hengxian no. 1 junior school invited us to come and teach two junior 2 (year 8) classes as part of their open day. i think it was an open day for senior schools to come and poach the top students as opposed to the junior school inviting people to come and look around. so not only did we get to teach, we also had to talk to some of the junior 3 students - foreign teachers are rare in hengxian, and therefor the schools affiliation with gap is a huge drawing card.
having only ever taught senior students, carina and i were rather apprehensive about teaching junior kids, especially since we found out that not only would the classes be 3 times bigger then what we are used, we would have a whole group of teachers and parents watching. turns out we we're teaching in front of over 100 people. we we're a tad nervous, to say the least!! we spoke to other gappers who teach this age group and worked out some lesson plans, and had forewarned our link teacher she would probably have to translate, but we still didn't feel prepared. so we rocked up, sat in the principals office for a bit, all the while being stared at by curious students who were returning from their lunch breaks, and were then dragged off to perform!!
first lesson was an epic failure. the lesson plan wasn't long enough, so we had to ad lib for 20 minutes, which is not easy. the students were horribly shy and not used to our voices, so they spent most of the lesson looking like stunned mullets =D
second lesson was a better lesson plan, and we pulled it off nicely. even the teachers who were watching got involved, it was awesome! for the second lesson we did body parts, and played simon says with the students, they were very good at it and squealed when we gave them small koala key rings as prizes. all in all i think we made a good sales pitch for the school.
finishing dates: carina and i recently received our finishing date, after a bit of confusion about when we finished teaching and when we were allowed to leave. we now finish teaching on the 27th of june, but have been asked to hang around until the 30th so the school can throw us a party ^_^
the finishing date has elicited mixed emotions - im really excited about continuing my wondrous journey and catching up with my friends, but im really sad about leaving hengxian. i've had an amazing time here, and made so many friends, its going to be hard to say good bye. i'll miss being a teacher, and i'll defiantly miss my students. i now only have four lessons left with each class =[
i cant believe we will be leaving so soon. sometimes it feels like i've been here forever, sometimes it feels like i've just arrived. it hasn't always been the greatest fun - been bored a lot lately because the students are busy studying for graduating exams, and all the senior 3s have left, and this town is tiny - but it's certainly been interesting, to say the least =P
until next time citizens!
claire. xo.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
may day holiday part 2:
Longyan:
well, before longyan, there was zhangzhou. we took the less direct yet cheaper route back to matt and ryan's placement so we could visit ally and phoebes. zhangzhou is a boring town, which is why the girls frequently escape to longyan on the weekends. their apartments are nice though, and their link teacher susan was lovely. unfortunatly we didnt get to meet the other link teacher, piano =P then it was onto longyan. longyan is a rather large city, especailly comapred to hengxian. the most amusing part is that, because of some inconvinietly placed mountains, two of the ditricts are 2 hours apart, and dont even ask me where the others are hidden.
ryan and matt teach at longyan yi zhong, longyan number one middle school. turns out its number one in the province and number ten in the country, or something along those lines.
we stayed int he boys apartment, which is an absolute pigsty. nice enough though. arrived there quite late on sunday so we just went out for dinner (delicious noodles =D) and stayed up playing cards.
next day we went with the boys to watch while they taught. they teach much larger classes than us, the standard chinese size of 50 - 60 students. they were giving some of their classes a lazy lesson of playing hide and seek tag in the garden, as they had exams the next week and weren't that keen on focusing. so carina and i got roped into playing, which was highly amusing. it resulted in carina climbing a tree to catch a student, and me injurying my knee whilst running =D so i got to spend the rest of my time in longyan hobbling.
ok, so hotmail has been playing up, and im forgetful and lazy, so you're going to get a really breif version of the rest of my holiday! which is probably what i should have been doing all along, but oh well!
so we hung around longyan for a few days, watched the boys classes, played card games, road around on their mopeds (dont worry, my insurance covers it!), and ryan taught me to drive his, which was fun! and i didnt kill anyone!!!
found a store here that sells western food =D i bought malteasers!! MALTEASERS! i was a happy girl!
from longyan we caught a bus to SHANGHAI! 18 hour bus ride. 18 hours... but it was a sleeper bus! we had beds! on a bus! it was weird, and cramped, but probably better then sitting up!
shanghai was crazy busy. ate some cool chinese food, and lots of yummy western food =D went shopping at markets, i have aquired some awesome bargaining skills whilst in china! went to the sex culture museum, very... phallic. walked along the bund, its dirty plauged by foreigners and people selling their dodgy wears. went to the peoples square, attempted to go to yuyuan gardens, but my attempt was thwarted by laziness of others.
went clubbing in shanghai!! was crazy! i also have mad dancing skills! and i am becoming very good at looking after drunks. being the only sober person this job was usually given to me. it was fun though, awesome meeting up with lots of gappers! there was about 25 of us at one stage, all staying at the same hostel.
the thing i said most whilst in shanghai was "BU YAO!" which means "not want!" because all these poeple on the street show you picutres of rolex watches and luis vitton bags, and offer them to you cheap, if yu go with them. one group of people said yes and were taken down some seedy back alley. they ran away. but they got really annoying, so we started saying "feichang bu yao!" which means "extremely not want!!". travelling certainly improved my chinese =D
left shanghai after four days, and trotted up to nanjing! fun city, went to the nanjng massacre museum. its on the site of a few mass graves, so they have pits showing all the bones and stuff, rather sad. althrough it talked about how horrible the japanese invasion was, and how bad they japanese are, then in the lst room it spoke about how china needs to forgive and forget, and move on. but, just as we though everything was fine and dandy, the next sentence goes on about how the japanese are evil and whatnot. it went on like this for the rest of the final display. so just your usual chinese history.
also saw the ruins of ming temple, and tried to go to a museum, but it was closed =[
after three days in nanjing and a lovely relaxing 2 weeks, carina and i headed home to hengxian. we had to take a train from nanjing to shanghai, which was 2 hours, then a train from shanghai to nanning, the capital of our province. it took TWENTY EIGHT HOURS. twenty eight hours!!! on a train!!! SITTING! on hard seats! because they were the cheapest tickets. but its like tow bench seats facing each other, three poeple to a seat, no arm rest in between!! at one stage i had some strange lady sleeping on my shoulder! carina had the luxary of a window seat. but we spent the entire time sitting opposite strange men, who we gave code names so we could talk about them! not that they spoke any english anyway... and they dont turn the lights off, so it was almost impossible to sleep!!!!!!!! and people were constantly staring, and taking photos and muttering "lao wei" (politically incorrect yet most common term for foreigner), it was insane! for 28 hours!!! ah well, its the price you pay of being poor.
got to nanning and were picked up by our link teacher lily, and were swept back to our sleepy little town!
so that was my holiday! it was great getting to see other westerners, practice my chinese and see more of this crazy place.
so, until next time, stay safe dont do drugs, and may the force be with you.
love from claire!
well, before longyan, there was zhangzhou. we took the less direct yet cheaper route back to matt and ryan's placement so we could visit ally and phoebes. zhangzhou is a boring town, which is why the girls frequently escape to longyan on the weekends. their apartments are nice though, and their link teacher susan was lovely. unfortunatly we didnt get to meet the other link teacher, piano =P then it was onto longyan. longyan is a rather large city, especailly comapred to hengxian. the most amusing part is that, because of some inconvinietly placed mountains, two of the ditricts are 2 hours apart, and dont even ask me where the others are hidden.
ryan and matt teach at longyan yi zhong, longyan number one middle school. turns out its number one in the province and number ten in the country, or something along those lines.
we stayed int he boys apartment, which is an absolute pigsty. nice enough though. arrived there quite late on sunday so we just went out for dinner (delicious noodles =D) and stayed up playing cards.
next day we went with the boys to watch while they taught. they teach much larger classes than us, the standard chinese size of 50 - 60 students. they were giving some of their classes a lazy lesson of playing hide and seek tag in the garden, as they had exams the next week and weren't that keen on focusing. so carina and i got roped into playing, which was highly amusing. it resulted in carina climbing a tree to catch a student, and me injurying my knee whilst running =D so i got to spend the rest of my time in longyan hobbling.
ok, so hotmail has been playing up, and im forgetful and lazy, so you're going to get a really breif version of the rest of my holiday! which is probably what i should have been doing all along, but oh well!
so we hung around longyan for a few days, watched the boys classes, played card games, road around on their mopeds (dont worry, my insurance covers it!), and ryan taught me to drive his, which was fun! and i didnt kill anyone!!!
found a store here that sells western food =D i bought malteasers!! MALTEASERS! i was a happy girl!
from longyan we caught a bus to SHANGHAI! 18 hour bus ride. 18 hours... but it was a sleeper bus! we had beds! on a bus! it was weird, and cramped, but probably better then sitting up!
shanghai was crazy busy. ate some cool chinese food, and lots of yummy western food =D went shopping at markets, i have aquired some awesome bargaining skills whilst in china! went to the sex culture museum, very... phallic. walked along the bund, its dirty plauged by foreigners and people selling their dodgy wears. went to the peoples square, attempted to go to yuyuan gardens, but my attempt was thwarted by laziness of others.
went clubbing in shanghai!! was crazy! i also have mad dancing skills! and i am becoming very good at looking after drunks. being the only sober person this job was usually given to me. it was fun though, awesome meeting up with lots of gappers! there was about 25 of us at one stage, all staying at the same hostel.
the thing i said most whilst in shanghai was "BU YAO!" which means "not want!" because all these poeple on the street show you picutres of rolex watches and luis vitton bags, and offer them to you cheap, if yu go with them. one group of people said yes and were taken down some seedy back alley. they ran away. but they got really annoying, so we started saying "feichang bu yao!" which means "extremely not want!!". travelling certainly improved my chinese =D
left shanghai after four days, and trotted up to nanjing! fun city, went to the nanjng massacre museum. its on the site of a few mass graves, so they have pits showing all the bones and stuff, rather sad. althrough it talked about how horrible the japanese invasion was, and how bad they japanese are, then in the lst room it spoke about how china needs to forgive and forget, and move on. but, just as we though everything was fine and dandy, the next sentence goes on about how the japanese are evil and whatnot. it went on like this for the rest of the final display. so just your usual chinese history.
also saw the ruins of ming temple, and tried to go to a museum, but it was closed =[
after three days in nanjing and a lovely relaxing 2 weeks, carina and i headed home to hengxian. we had to take a train from nanjing to shanghai, which was 2 hours, then a train from shanghai to nanning, the capital of our province. it took TWENTY EIGHT HOURS. twenty eight hours!!! on a train!!! SITTING! on hard seats! because they were the cheapest tickets. but its like tow bench seats facing each other, three poeple to a seat, no arm rest in between!! at one stage i had some strange lady sleeping on my shoulder! carina had the luxary of a window seat. but we spent the entire time sitting opposite strange men, who we gave code names so we could talk about them! not that they spoke any english anyway... and they dont turn the lights off, so it was almost impossible to sleep!!!!!!!! and people were constantly staring, and taking photos and muttering "lao wei" (politically incorrect yet most common term for foreigner), it was insane! for 28 hours!!! ah well, its the price you pay of being poor.
got to nanning and were picked up by our link teacher lily, and were swept back to our sleepy little town!
so that was my holiday! it was great getting to see other westerners, practice my chinese and see more of this crazy place.
so, until next time, stay safe dont do drugs, and may the force be with you.
love from claire!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
mayday holidays part 1.
hello all!
my lack of blog recently is becuase i was on holidays =D
as part of the nanjing agreement gap has with china, gappers get a 5 day holiday, with the weekends either side. but our students had one week of mid-term examinations, and the week before for studying, so dexter (aka carina, my gap partner) and i ended up with two weeks!!
because no one else started their holidays that early, we decided to go the fujian province first to meet up with some gappers there...
depature and xiamen:
we decided to fly to xiamen, a city in fujian, so our friends who were not yet on holiday could spend the weekend there with us. our flight was 8pm on friday the 25th of april. fortunatly our school offered to drive us the 2 hours from hengxian to nanning airport. unfortunatly they could only do so at 12.30 pm. so, with an hour delay, we had a 6 hour wait at nanning airport. 6 hours. 6 long, slow, boring hours. we met a nice brazilian family while we were waiting, turns out they live in bai hai, a nice costal town in guangxi, so we spoke for ages and exchanged numbers, so now dexter and i can experience the chinese seaside!
we arrived at our hostel in xiamen at midnight-ish, and our friend matt came and took us to kk, a chinese club where the others were.
before we continue, i should tell you who we met up with in xiamen. as i mentioned, there was matt, a gapper from england, and his gap partner ryan, from canada. then there were two australian girls, phoebe and ally.
back to the story. for those who aren't aware, i have never been to a club before. considering that i dont drink, dont know how to dance, and am not a huge fan of the music they play at clubs, i've never felt the desire to go to one. however, to a club i went. and i was afraid. terribly, horribly afraid. and rather tired. so as you can imagine, i didn't enjoy myself. at all. fortunatly we went back to the hostel fairly soon.
the next day everyone slept in till some rediculouly late hour, then go tup and went for a breakfast of awesome noodles with peanut sauce. thats all it was, noodles, with peanut sauce. it was so tasty!!!!
then we ventured to nan putou temple. it was so pretty and colourful!! matt and ryan, having visted some chinese temples instructed us on the correct way to offer incense. it is a really large temple, with lots of people. there was a lake out the front that had rocks covered in turtles sunning themselves.
we got accosted by a group of students asking for our photos, which was fun. one of them though ryan was the character from the movie superbad, and refused to believe him when he said he wasn't, so she now thinks she has met someone famous, when it was only ryan. poor girl.
after cruising around the temple for a bit, we decided to climb the big hill/small mountain behind it. it was a bit trickey, at some points you had to squeeze yourself through rocks that were help us with small sticks. yes, sticks. giant boulders held up by STICKS! only in china.
it was a nice view from the top, more students wanted photos with us =D im so very popular! going down was easy, took no time at all.
then we went to mcdonalds!!!! which would normally never excite me, but it was the first western food i had had in 2 months, so i was greatly amused.
then we went shopping and i got a nice bracelet, and bargained on my lonesome for the first time =D i later realised i didnt do very well, but meh! i know have awesome bargaining skills!
then phoebe, a fellow nerd, and i visited the foreign language bookstore, but failed to find anything good.
we then spent the afternoon playing uno and catching up which was fun. the we went to pizza hut for dinner!! its was on the 24th floor of some building, so we had an awesome view. pizza hut in china is a rather upmarket restraunt, ie: its expensive. but so tasty!! i had been craving cheese like a pregnant woman, so i got a cheese pizza, then poured (kraft!!!) parmasan cheese on it. it was quite like what i imagine heaven to be.
then we went clubbing. which, to my great suprise, was actually enjoyable!! i managed to sway my hips enough to pass it off as dancing, so i didn't feel like a fool. it was a hilrious evening. we went to kk again, and as there aren't many westerners in xiamen, we got free entry and half price drinks!! spent the evening dancing, then came home sometime in the morning, and slept late again!
next day we left xiamen, and went to vist zhangzhou, where phoebe and ally are placed. a boring town, but they teach at a teachers training college, so there's always cool people around and fun stuff happening. we hung out there for a few hours and then left for longyan, where matt and ryan are placed and dexter and i would be staying for a few days...
my lack of blog recently is becuase i was on holidays =D
as part of the nanjing agreement gap has with china, gappers get a 5 day holiday, with the weekends either side. but our students had one week of mid-term examinations, and the week before for studying, so dexter (aka carina, my gap partner) and i ended up with two weeks!!
because no one else started their holidays that early, we decided to go the fujian province first to meet up with some gappers there...
depature and xiamen:
we decided to fly to xiamen, a city in fujian, so our friends who were not yet on holiday could spend the weekend there with us. our flight was 8pm on friday the 25th of april. fortunatly our school offered to drive us the 2 hours from hengxian to nanning airport. unfortunatly they could only do so at 12.30 pm. so, with an hour delay, we had a 6 hour wait at nanning airport. 6 hours. 6 long, slow, boring hours. we met a nice brazilian family while we were waiting, turns out they live in bai hai, a nice costal town in guangxi, so we spoke for ages and exchanged numbers, so now dexter and i can experience the chinese seaside!
we arrived at our hostel in xiamen at midnight-ish, and our friend matt came and took us to kk, a chinese club where the others were.
before we continue, i should tell you who we met up with in xiamen. as i mentioned, there was matt, a gapper from england, and his gap partner ryan, from canada. then there were two australian girls, phoebe and ally.
back to the story. for those who aren't aware, i have never been to a club before. considering that i dont drink, dont know how to dance, and am not a huge fan of the music they play at clubs, i've never felt the desire to go to one. however, to a club i went. and i was afraid. terribly, horribly afraid. and rather tired. so as you can imagine, i didn't enjoy myself. at all. fortunatly we went back to the hostel fairly soon.
the next day everyone slept in till some rediculouly late hour, then go tup and went for a breakfast of awesome noodles with peanut sauce. thats all it was, noodles, with peanut sauce. it was so tasty!!!!
then we ventured to nan putou temple. it was so pretty and colourful!! matt and ryan, having visted some chinese temples instructed us on the correct way to offer incense. it is a really large temple, with lots of people. there was a lake out the front that had rocks covered in turtles sunning themselves.
we got accosted by a group of students asking for our photos, which was fun. one of them though ryan was the character from the movie superbad, and refused to believe him when he said he wasn't, so she now thinks she has met someone famous, when it was only ryan. poor girl.
after cruising around the temple for a bit, we decided to climb the big hill/small mountain behind it. it was a bit trickey, at some points you had to squeeze yourself through rocks that were help us with small sticks. yes, sticks. giant boulders held up by STICKS! only in china.
it was a nice view from the top, more students wanted photos with us =D im so very popular! going down was easy, took no time at all.
then we went to mcdonalds!!!! which would normally never excite me, but it was the first western food i had had in 2 months, so i was greatly amused.
then we went shopping and i got a nice bracelet, and bargained on my lonesome for the first time =D i later realised i didnt do very well, but meh! i know have awesome bargaining skills!
then phoebe, a fellow nerd, and i visited the foreign language bookstore, but failed to find anything good.
we then spent the afternoon playing uno and catching up which was fun. the we went to pizza hut for dinner!! its was on the 24th floor of some building, so we had an awesome view. pizza hut in china is a rather upmarket restraunt, ie: its expensive. but so tasty!! i had been craving cheese like a pregnant woman, so i got a cheese pizza, then poured (kraft!!!) parmasan cheese on it. it was quite like what i imagine heaven to be.
then we went clubbing. which, to my great suprise, was actually enjoyable!! i managed to sway my hips enough to pass it off as dancing, so i didn't feel like a fool. it was a hilrious evening. we went to kk again, and as there aren't many westerners in xiamen, we got free entry and half price drinks!! spent the evening dancing, then came home sometime in the morning, and slept late again!
next day we left xiamen, and went to vist zhangzhou, where phoebe and ally are placed. a boring town, but they teach at a teachers training college, so there's always cool people around and fun stuff happening. we hung out there for a few hours and then left for longyan, where matt and ryan are placed and dexter and i would be staying for a few days...
Sunday, April 20, 2008
photos
(Hi all - Lauren here. Claire asked me to post this link to her photos for people without facebook. Just click on the link and it'll take you to them.)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32333&l=bdbb9&id=731306263
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32333&l=bdbb9&id=731306263
an assortment of chinese dumplings.
s
well! long time no speak! im rather lazy on the blogging front. tre sorry.
i cant remember what i last told you all about, so i'll start with qing ming =D
qing ming:
qing ming is a chinese festival. during this festival you honour your ancestors by cleaning their tombs and offering sacrifices. everyone told us qing ming means "tomb sweeping". this is a very deceptive name. there are no brooms involved. why? because tombs in china are a mound of earth. most of the time you wouldnt even know it was a tomb, you would assume it was part of the landscape. sometimes they have a concrete ring around them, and even more rarely they have a small gravestone, but other then that, you wouldn't be able to tell what it was. anywho, these mounds/graves are covered in weeds, hence the sweeping. one must remove these weeds using a variety of garden tools. then a very shallow trench is dug around the outside. after the tomb has been swept, rectangles of coloured paper are placed in a circle on top, and either side of the entrance to the trench around the tomb.
and thus your tomb is clean. but yet to be decorated or your ancestors honoured. carina and i celebrated this festival at lily's husbands house. it was great! we arrive at about 10:30 am, sat around for while, then went and did the aforementioned activity. most tombs in rural china aka hicksville are up the side of mountains, so it takes a fair effort to get there. fortuantly for us lily's husbands family and the rest of their village don't live that close to a mountain, so their tombs are out int he field, nice and close to their house =D when we arrived at the house, everyone was busy preapring lunch, as every chinese festival involves a big family meal. we then sat down and ate some super delicious food, which included coloured rice! there was balck, purple, pinky/red, yellow and white, all mixed intogether ^_^ it's sticky rice that is then fried, its really tasty! the only person there who could speak english though was lily, so we made her translate things to the other family members and had amusing conversations. the craziest thing was though, as soon as they cleared away lunch, people started preapring food for dinner!!! i'd barely even begun to digest my food and they were already plotting to give me more!! it was nuts!
while others were preparing the meal (we weren't allowed to help, i dont think they wanted our vegetarian hands spoiling their lovely food) we returned to the tombs for some hardcore sacrificing and honouring. family members light incense and bow three times whilst making a wish to their ancestors. the incense is then placed int he ground at the front of the tomb. the more incense your tomb has, the more loved you are! then paper money and other paper things are burnt as gifts to the dead. then food that was going to be consumed for dinner was layed out before the tomb as an offering, and then the real fun began! the love affair chinese people have with firecrackers means the set off for any and no reason. so, of course, qing ming is no excuse. first they let off the ones that explode and sned sraps of coloured paper flying every where, then they let off these ones that look like a row of bullets you would insert to a machine gun or sling over your shoulder if you wanted to look like a buff army man. they go off like bullets too, and let of a LOT of smoke, and leave red paper everywhere. its very violent. in fact, the entire thing looks very violent. if you look over the fields, you see coloumns of smoke rising up into the sky, hear something that sounds like gun shots, and see lines of people snaking through it all. it looks rather like a war zone. not that i've ever seen a war zone, but i watch the news!
after this we went and ate more food =D it was as delicious as lunch time but i could barely eat any as i had barely digested the food i ate earlier. so i consumed some delicious vegetables, and then sat around waiting to explode. while i was waiting explode, lily decided to make me sing. someone had fed her the lie that i had a good voice, and one of her relatives is a very good singer and wanted to hear me sing. first this nameless but very nice young lady sang me a chinese folk song and then asked me to sing an australian song. my attempts at protest were thwarted by carina who told lily that i was a good singer, thus forcing me to perform. i sang the only australian song i could think of that wasn't the national anthem. i am australian. and not only did i have to sing, but lily made every single person there stop and listen! everyone! it was horrific! fortuantly none of them excpet lily spoke english, so they were not aware that i was butchering the song. after that i was roped into singing the titanic song. i was then given permission to retreat and wallow in shame.
after my little display, we sat around watchign the men play some drinking/hand/number game thing that involved the loser drinking alot of wine.
then we went home! it was a throughly enjoyable day.
hair:
during a conversation with one of the english teachers, linsey, carina discovered it is rediculously cheap to have your hair permanently straighted in china. as carina has extremely curly hair that the weather was wreacking havoc upon, and had not brought her own hair straightener with her, she jumped at the chance to have super straight locks with minimal effort. so after 4 hours in the hair dresser, and 160Y (less than $30), carina now has extremely straight hair. however, whilst in the hair dresser, i decided to have my hair cut =D seeing as how is hasn't seen a real hairdresser in about 10 months, i thought it would be a wise decision. so on wednesday i went to the hair dresser with linsey and requested that they fix my blonde mop. first however, they had to wash my hair. this was a very interesting experience. not only do they wash your hair, but they give you a massage. it involved alot of hitting on my head, and rubbing of my shoulders and back. however it also included a very odd arm massage when the shake your arm and whatnot. but the weirdest part was the ear wash. the lady not only massaged and cleaned the out side of my ear, she cleaned inside too!! it was so bizzare!! after that amusing experience, a lovely young chinese man spent about and hour hacking off the feral yellow bits of my hair (remenents of many types of hair dyes), and now i have some short, layered, bob like thing with a fringe =D at first i was sad because it looked very mullet-y, but then i came home and hacked off the mullet-y its and now its glorious!
classes:
are fantastic! im having so much fun teaching, and they kids are awesome! i only have one mildy unenthusiastic, boring class, but the others more then make up for that! the kids are really friendly, and when i had a bit of a cold recently they were very concerned; they all told me i had to rest and go to the doctor and look after myself! and they keep bringing gifts of food and one students made me something to hang in my room. its called a chinese knot, and im not even going to attempt to describe, but its very nice. starting to run out of lesson ideas though... i recently did a lesson on hero's with my students and three students said i was their hero ^_^ i also had some of the english teachers sit in on my class, and they were very impressed. lily said she enjoys my classes so much she would like to come and watch every time i do a new lesson plan!
KTV:
known to those in oz as kareoke. here ktv places are as common as pubs, and have the same function in society as a pub would in a western country. which is why it is suprising that it took untill last sunday for carina and i to experience it. it wasnt quite what we expected. for starters, its not in a public room with us singing to a bunch of stangers. instead was in a private room, but we were still singing to a bunch of strangers, as a number of teachers we had never met came along. we arrived early with linsey, and so she made us sing english songs while we waited. linsey and carina got me to sing happy birthday for you mum =] (for those not yet aware, i forgot it was my mothers birthday when she rang me. sorry mum) oddly enough, the film clip that played was the part of the sounds of music where they prance around the hills singing do re mi. we hoped we wouldn't be expected to sing for the whole night, and fortunalty we weren't. as the others arrived the took over and belted out chinese songs, thus absolving carina and i from singing any more. until they requsted we sing do re mi. and then they made us singing it again. it was horrible. and the film clip they played awas some couple roaming around 90's sydney!!! it was so weird!! whilst all this was happening we were being fed yummy fruit and popcorn and everyone was drinking beer. fortuantly we weren't expected to. then after a while they decided they were bored of singing and suddenly a strobe light comes on and carina and i are being forced to horrible club music! i was so confused!! it was made worse by the fact that i dont know how to dance, so i sort of shuffled my feet and swayed my hips. it was torture. finally, at midnight, everyone decided to go home and carina and i were left feeling slightly bewildered and keen for another even of hilariality!
thats all folks, hope your all wonderful, i certainly am!
may the force be with you.
love from claire xo.c
ho
well! long time no speak! im rather lazy on the blogging front. tre sorry.
i cant remember what i last told you all about, so i'll start with qing ming =D
qing ming:
qing ming is a chinese festival. during this festival you honour your ancestors by cleaning their tombs and offering sacrifices. everyone told us qing ming means "tomb sweeping". this is a very deceptive name. there are no brooms involved. why? because tombs in china are a mound of earth. most of the time you wouldnt even know it was a tomb, you would assume it was part of the landscape. sometimes they have a concrete ring around them, and even more rarely they have a small gravestone, but other then that, you wouldn't be able to tell what it was. anywho, these mounds/graves are covered in weeds, hence the sweeping. one must remove these weeds using a variety of garden tools. then a very shallow trench is dug around the outside. after the tomb has been swept, rectangles of coloured paper are placed in a circle on top, and either side of the entrance to the trench around the tomb.
and thus your tomb is clean. but yet to be decorated or your ancestors honoured. carina and i celebrated this festival at lily's husbands house. it was great! we arrive at about 10:30 am, sat around for while, then went and did the aforementioned activity. most tombs in rural china aka hicksville are up the side of mountains, so it takes a fair effort to get there. fortuantly for us lily's husbands family and the rest of their village don't live that close to a mountain, so their tombs are out int he field, nice and close to their house =D when we arrived at the house, everyone was busy preapring lunch, as every chinese festival involves a big family meal. we then sat down and ate some super delicious food, which included coloured rice! there was balck, purple, pinky/red, yellow and white, all mixed intogether ^_^ it's sticky rice that is then fried, its really tasty! the only person there who could speak english though was lily, so we made her translate things to the other family members and had amusing conversations. the craziest thing was though, as soon as they cleared away lunch, people started preapring food for dinner!!! i'd barely even begun to digest my food and they were already plotting to give me more!! it was nuts!
while others were preparing the meal (we weren't allowed to help, i dont think they wanted our vegetarian hands spoiling their lovely food) we returned to the tombs for some hardcore sacrificing and honouring. family members light incense and bow three times whilst making a wish to their ancestors. the incense is then placed int he ground at the front of the tomb. the more incense your tomb has, the more loved you are! then paper money and other paper things are burnt as gifts to the dead. then food that was going to be consumed for dinner was layed out before the tomb as an offering, and then the real fun began! the love affair chinese people have with firecrackers means the set off for any and no reason. so, of course, qing ming is no excuse. first they let off the ones that explode and sned sraps of coloured paper flying every where, then they let off these ones that look like a row of bullets you would insert to a machine gun or sling over your shoulder if you wanted to look like a buff army man. they go off like bullets too, and let of a LOT of smoke, and leave red paper everywhere. its very violent. in fact, the entire thing looks very violent. if you look over the fields, you see coloumns of smoke rising up into the sky, hear something that sounds like gun shots, and see lines of people snaking through it all. it looks rather like a war zone. not that i've ever seen a war zone, but i watch the news!
after this we went and ate more food =D it was as delicious as lunch time but i could barely eat any as i had barely digested the food i ate earlier. so i consumed some delicious vegetables, and then sat around waiting to explode. while i was waiting explode, lily decided to make me sing. someone had fed her the lie that i had a good voice, and one of her relatives is a very good singer and wanted to hear me sing. first this nameless but very nice young lady sang me a chinese folk song and then asked me to sing an australian song. my attempts at protest were thwarted by carina who told lily that i was a good singer, thus forcing me to perform. i sang the only australian song i could think of that wasn't the national anthem. i am australian. and not only did i have to sing, but lily made every single person there stop and listen! everyone! it was horrific! fortuantly none of them excpet lily spoke english, so they were not aware that i was butchering the song. after that i was roped into singing the titanic song. i was then given permission to retreat and wallow in shame.
after my little display, we sat around watchign the men play some drinking/hand/number game thing that involved the loser drinking alot of wine.
then we went home! it was a throughly enjoyable day.
hair:
during a conversation with one of the english teachers, linsey, carina discovered it is rediculously cheap to have your hair permanently straighted in china. as carina has extremely curly hair that the weather was wreacking havoc upon, and had not brought her own hair straightener with her, she jumped at the chance to have super straight locks with minimal effort. so after 4 hours in the hair dresser, and 160Y (less than $30), carina now has extremely straight hair. however, whilst in the hair dresser, i decided to have my hair cut =D seeing as how is hasn't seen a real hairdresser in about 10 months, i thought it would be a wise decision. so on wednesday i went to the hair dresser with linsey and requested that they fix my blonde mop. first however, they had to wash my hair. this was a very interesting experience. not only do they wash your hair, but they give you a massage. it involved alot of hitting on my head, and rubbing of my shoulders and back. however it also included a very odd arm massage when the shake your arm and whatnot. but the weirdest part was the ear wash. the lady not only massaged and cleaned the out side of my ear, she cleaned inside too!! it was so bizzare!! after that amusing experience, a lovely young chinese man spent about and hour hacking off the feral yellow bits of my hair (remenents of many types of hair dyes), and now i have some short, layered, bob like thing with a fringe =D at first i was sad because it looked very mullet-y, but then i came home and hacked off the mullet-y its and now its glorious!
classes:
are fantastic! im having so much fun teaching, and they kids are awesome! i only have one mildy unenthusiastic, boring class, but the others more then make up for that! the kids are really friendly, and when i had a bit of a cold recently they were very concerned; they all told me i had to rest and go to the doctor and look after myself! and they keep bringing gifts of food and one students made me something to hang in my room. its called a chinese knot, and im not even going to attempt to describe, but its very nice. starting to run out of lesson ideas though... i recently did a lesson on hero's with my students and three students said i was their hero ^_^ i also had some of the english teachers sit in on my class, and they were very impressed. lily said she enjoys my classes so much she would like to come and watch every time i do a new lesson plan!
KTV:
known to those in oz as kareoke. here ktv places are as common as pubs, and have the same function in society as a pub would in a western country. which is why it is suprising that it took untill last sunday for carina and i to experience it. it wasnt quite what we expected. for starters, its not in a public room with us singing to a bunch of stangers. instead was in a private room, but we were still singing to a bunch of strangers, as a number of teachers we had never met came along. we arrived early with linsey, and so she made us sing english songs while we waited. linsey and carina got me to sing happy birthday for you mum =] (for those not yet aware, i forgot it was my mothers birthday when she rang me. sorry mum) oddly enough, the film clip that played was the part of the sounds of music where they prance around the hills singing do re mi. we hoped we wouldn't be expected to sing for the whole night, and fortunalty we weren't. as the others arrived the took over and belted out chinese songs, thus absolving carina and i from singing any more. until they requsted we sing do re mi. and then they made us singing it again. it was horrible. and the film clip they played awas some couple roaming around 90's sydney!!! it was so weird!! whilst all this was happening we were being fed yummy fruit and popcorn and everyone was drinking beer. fortuantly we weren't expected to. then after a while they decided they were bored of singing and suddenly a strobe light comes on and carina and i are being forced to horrible club music! i was so confused!! it was made worse by the fact that i dont know how to dance, so i sort of shuffled my feet and swayed my hips. it was torture. finally, at midnight, everyone decided to go home and carina and i were left feeling slightly bewildered and keen for another even of hilariality!
thats all folks, hope your all wonderful, i certainly am!
may the force be with you.
love from claire xo.c
ho
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
bad chinese pop.
ni hao! how are you all? im faaaaaaaaaaaaaaantastic!
i have been terribly busy though!
first, let us begin with some gossip...
as some of you would know there were two other gap students, lauren and caitlin, placed about an hour and a half away from us in the provincial capital of nanning. they were lovely girls, and we had already gone up to nanning to visit them. but alas, they are leaving!!! there placement turned out to be horrible. the students were uncontrollable, didnt want to learn english, abused them, refused to listen, and only wanted to play games like the other gappers had. the school was very unhelpful, and the teachers had very poor english, whcih made it hard to communicate their problems - one of the english teachers didnt even understand the basic question "where do you live?". on top of all these problems with their classes, caitlin was tricked by one of the university students they were friends with into going into a room full of drunken men who tried to grope her, and then nearly had her drivers license stolen whilst being questioned about the state of her parents finances. when the girl finally let her go, caitlin went to the school and asked them to take her to the police station to report it, the school said there was nothing to report, and that the girl hadnt done anything wrong, simply tried to show her foreign friend off. so caitlin and lauren complained to gap who are having them moved to another school in qingdao, on the east coast near shanghai. as they were the only other gappers in our province, we our now officially the most isolated gappers =D
so onto less depressing things:
classes:
we started teaching last week, and oh my gosh, ITS SO MUCH FUN! my first few lessons sucked, but now its great fun! the kids are really well behaved, a bit rowdy at times, but other wise fine. in one of my introductory lessons i asked the students is they had any questions for me and one boy asked "what do think of the human rights in australia?" what?!?!?!?! it was so weird! so i said i didnt know much about it, except that it was a bit different from australia, and quickly changed the topic of conversation.
i teach senior 2 students (yr 11), so their english is quite good. they're very nice and very amusing. they always arrive for class at least ten minutes early and hang around for ages at the end. they always ask for permission to come into classes if their late, which would be very quaint and all, except that they're 10 MINUTES EARLY!
we just finished a lesson on describing people, and all my classes thought it was hilarious to yell out the word sexy when we were brainstorming vocab... theyre very enthusiastic. everytime i pull out stickers or other prizes, they start screaming and begging for one, its great!
i did have to field an awkward question in one of my first lessons. one of the boys asked me what i thought of the human rights in china and i dribbled out something about how i dont know much about it but i hear its very different from australia and then quickly changed the subject. was a bit scary.
amusing story - one of the students was trying to tell us which country his brother was studying, and we were listing some, and carina said taiwan, and he just stared at her and said "taiwan is a province of china." carina had to do some major backpeddling...
tai chi:
i cant remember if i told you this, but i now do tai chi =]
my link teacher betty took me to the park, where an old man gives free tai chi classes. carina feels she is above itm so she goes for runs instead. its sooo good. i fail at it, and can only do the first 6 moves (theres something like a hundred), but its fun, and relaxing, and the park is beautiful. its really green, and has traditional architecture every where, and there were peach blossoms last week so it was tre romantic.
the funniest bit about doing tai chi in the park is the poeple who stare. they seem to think its hilarious. after i had finished the other day i sat down and some middle aged man walked up, smiled, took a photo of me and ran away! it was great.
womens day:
international womens day in china is pretty big. its on the eigth of march for all those who dont know, and basically they just celebrate women, its great! we went on a march with a huge group of female teachers, it was hilarious! lily got us tracksuits to wear - all the teachers had pink matching tracksuits, and carina had blue and i had red. mine was an xxl, and was rather tight, it ao amusing. clearly i am not built for china sizes, which is fine by me, i shall save my pennys! anyway, lily chucked us right up the front, it was great! we marched along the streets and through the park with all these other women representing group - one was representing an electricity company, one was the local badminton club, and there was about 4 groups sporting olymipc themes.
towards the end of the march a reporter and her camera man approached lily and asked if we could do an interview, so we got to answer questions about womens day and what we thought of chinese women. all in all a morning well spent!
that night two of my students brought me red carnantions - turns out the thing to give to your teachers on womens day, so i was happy!
celebrity satus:
the stares as we walk down the street have taken on a new meaning lately. turns out carina and i have been on tv twice since we arrived here. one was our interview from womens day, and one was from us teaching. we werent even aware of the second time - we just remember some ladies walking into our classes with a video camera, but we just ignored them. turns out it was for the local news and since then lily has been getting comments on "the two beautiful foreign teachers!". then today they came to film the teachers english corner and students english corner. (english corner is a voluntary thing twice a week where the students get to "freely use their english". basically means more work for me). we had to do a mock students english corner because they reporters didnt want to hang around for the real one. so i got to talk to a group of my senior two students about a whole heap amusing things, was great fun! then they interviewed me, and waske me the stock standard "why did you come to china?", "what do you think of the students?" and "have you adapted to life here?", was great, and i had to do it alone because carina was teaching. fun fun fun!
sport:
since i've been here i've been doing alot of this thing called "sport". it takes alot of energy, but its actually rather rewarding! i've been playing badminton, volleyball, basketball and pingpong, its awesome! the kids here are obsessed with sport, they do it all the time! it took me a while to find some students who didnt. the students are really busy, so its the best way to get to know them and hang out. i feel bad though, because i suck at it. reeeaaally suck. especially basketball. but its fun! and know im playing with the teachers. thats bad.
bikes:
carina and i finally got our bikes, theyre awsome! mines blue and carina's is silver. mine is called mike ^_^ its not that scary rising on the roads here, theyre not that busy, and no one follows the rules so i dont have to worry about breaking them. its a great way to see the town, although it only takes 20 minutes to ride from one end to the other. im quiet good at finding my way around, but carina is band from ever choosing the direction, after she tried to lead us in the opposite direction to the school down a road we had never seen when we were trying to get back one day. so, as of yet, no amusing near death experiences to relate to you!
hope your all having fun, i am!!!!!!
dont miss me too much now!
love from claire xo.
i have been terribly busy though!
first, let us begin with some gossip...
as some of you would know there were two other gap students, lauren and caitlin, placed about an hour and a half away from us in the provincial capital of nanning. they were lovely girls, and we had already gone up to nanning to visit them. but alas, they are leaving!!! there placement turned out to be horrible. the students were uncontrollable, didnt want to learn english, abused them, refused to listen, and only wanted to play games like the other gappers had. the school was very unhelpful, and the teachers had very poor english, whcih made it hard to communicate their problems - one of the english teachers didnt even understand the basic question "where do you live?". on top of all these problems with their classes, caitlin was tricked by one of the university students they were friends with into going into a room full of drunken men who tried to grope her, and then nearly had her drivers license stolen whilst being questioned about the state of her parents finances. when the girl finally let her go, caitlin went to the school and asked them to take her to the police station to report it, the school said there was nothing to report, and that the girl hadnt done anything wrong, simply tried to show her foreign friend off. so caitlin and lauren complained to gap who are having them moved to another school in qingdao, on the east coast near shanghai. as they were the only other gappers in our province, we our now officially the most isolated gappers =D
so onto less depressing things:
classes:
we started teaching last week, and oh my gosh, ITS SO MUCH FUN! my first few lessons sucked, but now its great fun! the kids are really well behaved, a bit rowdy at times, but other wise fine. in one of my introductory lessons i asked the students is they had any questions for me and one boy asked "what do think of the human rights in australia?" what?!?!?!?! it was so weird! so i said i didnt know much about it, except that it was a bit different from australia, and quickly changed the topic of conversation.
i teach senior 2 students (yr 11), so their english is quite good. they're very nice and very amusing. they always arrive for class at least ten minutes early and hang around for ages at the end. they always ask for permission to come into classes if their late, which would be very quaint and all, except that they're 10 MINUTES EARLY!
we just finished a lesson on describing people, and all my classes thought it was hilarious to yell out the word sexy when we were brainstorming vocab... theyre very enthusiastic. everytime i pull out stickers or other prizes, they start screaming and begging for one, its great!
i did have to field an awkward question in one of my first lessons. one of the boys asked me what i thought of the human rights in china and i dribbled out something about how i dont know much about it but i hear its very different from australia and then quickly changed the subject. was a bit scary.
amusing story - one of the students was trying to tell us which country his brother was studying, and we were listing some, and carina said taiwan, and he just stared at her and said "taiwan is a province of china." carina had to do some major backpeddling...
tai chi:
i cant remember if i told you this, but i now do tai chi =]
my link teacher betty took me to the park, where an old man gives free tai chi classes. carina feels she is above itm so she goes for runs instead. its sooo good. i fail at it, and can only do the first 6 moves (theres something like a hundred), but its fun, and relaxing, and the park is beautiful. its really green, and has traditional architecture every where, and there were peach blossoms last week so it was tre romantic.
the funniest bit about doing tai chi in the park is the poeple who stare. they seem to think its hilarious. after i had finished the other day i sat down and some middle aged man walked up, smiled, took a photo of me and ran away! it was great.
womens day:
international womens day in china is pretty big. its on the eigth of march for all those who dont know, and basically they just celebrate women, its great! we went on a march with a huge group of female teachers, it was hilarious! lily got us tracksuits to wear - all the teachers had pink matching tracksuits, and carina had blue and i had red. mine was an xxl, and was rather tight, it ao amusing. clearly i am not built for china sizes, which is fine by me, i shall save my pennys! anyway, lily chucked us right up the front, it was great! we marched along the streets and through the park with all these other women representing group - one was representing an electricity company, one was the local badminton club, and there was about 4 groups sporting olymipc themes.
towards the end of the march a reporter and her camera man approached lily and asked if we could do an interview, so we got to answer questions about womens day and what we thought of chinese women. all in all a morning well spent!
that night two of my students brought me red carnantions - turns out the thing to give to your teachers on womens day, so i was happy!
celebrity satus:
the stares as we walk down the street have taken on a new meaning lately. turns out carina and i have been on tv twice since we arrived here. one was our interview from womens day, and one was from us teaching. we werent even aware of the second time - we just remember some ladies walking into our classes with a video camera, but we just ignored them. turns out it was for the local news and since then lily has been getting comments on "the two beautiful foreign teachers!". then today they came to film the teachers english corner and students english corner. (english corner is a voluntary thing twice a week where the students get to "freely use their english". basically means more work for me). we had to do a mock students english corner because they reporters didnt want to hang around for the real one. so i got to talk to a group of my senior two students about a whole heap amusing things, was great fun! then they interviewed me, and waske me the stock standard "why did you come to china?", "what do you think of the students?" and "have you adapted to life here?", was great, and i had to do it alone because carina was teaching. fun fun fun!
sport:
since i've been here i've been doing alot of this thing called "sport". it takes alot of energy, but its actually rather rewarding! i've been playing badminton, volleyball, basketball and pingpong, its awesome! the kids here are obsessed with sport, they do it all the time! it took me a while to find some students who didnt. the students are really busy, so its the best way to get to know them and hang out. i feel bad though, because i suck at it. reeeaaally suck. especially basketball. but its fun! and know im playing with the teachers. thats bad.
bikes:
carina and i finally got our bikes, theyre awsome! mines blue and carina's is silver. mine is called mike ^_^ its not that scary rising on the roads here, theyre not that busy, and no one follows the rules so i dont have to worry about breaking them. its a great way to see the town, although it only takes 20 minutes to ride from one end to the other. im quiet good at finding my way around, but carina is band from ever choosing the direction, after she tried to lead us in the opposite direction to the school down a road we had never seen when we were trying to get back one day. so, as of yet, no amusing near death experiences to relate to you!
hope your all having fun, i am!!!!!!
dont miss me too much now!
love from claire xo.
Friday, February 29, 2008
blog S2793/52J
so! hengxian! im going to try and condense the last week into one post, or else i'll spend the rest of my stay here writing blogs. so i shall give things headings, because i like headings, and i like things to be organised. if you have adverse effects when reading heading, i suggest you leave. now.
our first morning:
we awoke on the first morning in hengxian to the pitter patter of about 700 feet right outside our room. turns out the basketball courts is the site of the compulsory morning exercise routine. i managed to sleep through the majority of it though. it was hard, but i battled on and slept in till the indecent hour of 9.30, whence i was awoken by the musical strains of an avril lavigne song... they're obsessed with her here, her posters are everywhere, the students all love her, its crazy!
our first outing:
on our first day here lily took us for a walk out in the town to show us where the supermarket is. was a very interesting experience. let me just say i have never been stared at so much in my life! people would stop what they were doing to watch us walk past. people on motorbikes would turn their head to stare as they drove by, its crazy! and they all smile and wave, and some say hello, its great. little kids and old poeple seem to get the biggest kick out of it. however we didnt realise how odd it is for them to see a western until...
mobbed by students:
we came back from our first solo walk around the town, and one of the students, a lovely boy named danny, came up to us and started talking to us. so far the students had kept their distance, content with simply waving and saying hello. danny, it appears, was simply confident enough with his english skills to approach us. so we were chatting to him on the basketball courts when another boy, lung, came up and asked us if we would like to stand in the shade, as "the sun is bad for you" (everyone here is worried the sun will ruin our lovely pale skin...). as soon as we were in the shade and talking to danny and lung, WHAM! we were sorrounded by about 20 students, it was insane! they were all saying hello and trying to introduce themselves. we started talking about their exams (they have uni entrance exams in june) and why we were here, and they were all shocked to find out we were only 18. the only students at the school at the moment are senior 3 (yr 12) students, and they're all between the ages of 18 and 20. the most bizzare and amusing part of this conversation was that one of the students told carina we were the first foreigners she had ever seen. and she's 18!! and she's not the only one. a senior 2 student (yr 11), told carina the same thing at dinner the other day. so im sure you can imagine the reactions we get from the students.
dinner at lily's:
on our second night in hengxian, our link teacher lily showed up and invited us around to her apartment to meet her family. turns out today is another celebration of the spring festival that only happens in the country, so lily had lots of family over. they were all very friendly but didnt speak much english. then lily brings out something that looks like a stick of bamboo, and asks us if we would like some. turns out its sugar cane, so lily suts a huge piece each. so prizes for guessing what it tastes like. it wasn't too bad, bit weird though. she tried to offload some onto us, but we hastily declined. turns out that the farmers were having trouble selling sugar cane because the cold weather made it go hard in the middle. so the government orded all government workers, including teachers, to buy 100 sticks of sugar cane! even students had to buy some!!! twas communism in action my friends! then she tells us its dinner time and tries to make us eat more food, even though we had told her we'd already eaten. in the end we just ate anyway. she made some lovely tofu, and was extremely flattered when i told her how good it was. it was a throughly enjoyable evening, but i think i had enough food to last me unitl next week. but of course, as we were leaving, lily gave us some apples and oranges... all anyone ever does around here is feed us!!
observing classes:
we spent some time this week watching english classes, just to familiarise oursleves with the battle field. the first classes we watched was lily's senior 3's. you should have seen the reception! as we were walking past the classes rooms students were waving and yelling hello, and we got to lily's classroom everyone cheered, it was hilarious!!! the students kept inviting us to next to them but we opted to sit up the back out of harms way. they had a double english lesson and in the break lily went to find another class for us to watch, leaving us to the mercy of her students. as soon as she left they ran to the back of the class and bombarded us with questions and whatnot. one of the students told carina that lung, the boy we spoke to the other day, was going around telling everyone he thought she was beautiful!! then lung asked her how much money she had?! was very amusing.
all the students seem to be well behaved, bit mechanical though. shall be interesting to see how they respond to the games i have planned for them!
hengxian:
hengxian. it's actually a rather rural town. if i knew the population i would tell you. its 115km from the provincial capital nanning, and anything outside nanning if pretty much rural. its a very cute little town,not much traffic, but those who do drive dont seem to know. i keep going to cross the road only to be honked at by someone because i've looked right instead of left. must get used to that little peculiarity. carina believes our school is in the "bronx" part of town. the other part of town is "fifth avenue". the only difference is that the few nice shops in hengxian are in the smae area, and it's a bit cleaner round there. we went for a walk near the school the other day which was fun. carina freaked out at the sight of two dog carcasses hanging in the window. we also found a pet store that sells the cutest little turtles. they ranged from about 4 cm long to 9 cm long. if they didnt carry selamonella i would buy one. those three wheeled motor taxis that i will one day get a photo of si#o you understand what im talking about, only cost 2 yuan maximum to get anywhere in town, thats how midget sized we are!
the school:
the school is rather large. there are 2678 students here, virtually all of which board. they sleep in dormatories of twelve, some of which dontnhave windows, just metal bars... their beds are wooden slats which they cover with a woven reed mat and a thin quilt. sure as hell makes me appreciate my apartment!! were on the ground floor of a seven storey apartment building, which is one of the tallest in the school. there are six basketball courts, an oval with a running track around the outside, and two volleyball/badminton courts. they school is extremely clean and extremely green. southern gunagxi is subtropical, so there are plants and trees everywhere. the classrooms are nice, heated by some magical system that i couldnt see, and small but not cramped.
food:
we're given free meals in the school canteen, and lily kindly explained to the staff that we are vegetarians. she's told half the school it would seem; whilst waiting for bowls yesterday one boy told us that after lily told them we were vegetarian he started eating vegetables and stopped eating meat!!! it was only a temporary change of heart however.
for students, breakfast is at 6.15, but lily arranged it so we can go and get it when ever we want and just heat it up in the apartment. each day we get two steamed buns each - one with some kind of sweet seasame paste, and the other plain (which we've been smothering with jam we found in nanning!!) they also give us two hard boiled egss and some horrible tasting millk which we've been trying to explain we dont want, without any success.
lunch is begins at 11.20am (!!!!) and dinner at 5.35pm (!!!), however we've been told that we can go 10 minutes earlier to avoid the rush. and boy is there a rush!!! first you have to line up to get your bowl and spoon. next you have to line up to get rice. they give you HEAPS of rice, and thankfully carina and i got across that we dont need that much. next you go to a seperate line for the rest of the food. and boy do they give you food. all of this takes about 15 minutes. im yet to finish a single meal ive had at that canteen. i think thats just me though, carina cant seem to get enough food. its pretty bland stuff though, and the rice is a bit dry. theres not much variety, but we dont mind because its freeeee!!
everyones shocked that we keep eating there, even lily! she's worried we dont like it, but its not that bad. some of the students have offerd to show us the restraunts in hengxian, but im not sure if they will have much vegetarian food, and anyway, they're not free!
being vegetarin in china isnt that hard, its the explaining it to people thats difficult, especially in restraunts. we had lunch with our other link teacher the other day and she said people dont understand why were vegetarian, because in china they put meat in everything! other then that no one seems to have a problem with it!
classes:
we found out the other day that our classes are voluntary, and were teaching out of a text book, which we thought would be disasterous, but has turned out ok. the text book is pretty good, and it takes the stress out of lesson planning. we've also been given the ok to teach some of our own stuff which is nice.
we got our timetables yesterday, which is all good news! we teach 6 classes each, but we have them twice a week (means double the lesson plans though =[ ). carina is teaching all senior 1 classes (yr 10's) and im teaching all senior 2 classes. and because the classes are voluntary theyre tiny by chinese standards. our largest class is 31, and our smallest 27. and, just to make things brilliant, i odnt start teaching untill 4.05pm everyday!!! gives carina and i plenty of time to cycle around hengxian on the bikes were yet to get. i start teaching on monday and i have written up my first lesson plan, all by myself! its all about australia, and about me learning students names.
giving someone a name:
alot of consideration goes into naming someone. you have to make sure the name you give them is interesting, reflects their chracter, and is a bit unique. it has to be a name they can be proud of, but is still respeactable. something that is cool now, but will be equally awesome next week. there is a lot of pressure on the namer.
alot of our students have approached us with requests for english names. they see it as a bit of a status symbol. and fortunatly thye understand that it is easier for carina and i to pronounce and remember, although we have been trying hard with their chinese names. so when lung, the boy who questioned carina about the state of he finances in what iwas sure was some kind of marrige proposal, asked us to give him an eglisg name, we thought long and hard about it for 20 seconds and called him liam. what a lovely name! i hear you cry. why thanks you, carina and i thought so ourselves, which is why we chose it. since that day of triumph, two young girls have also requested english names. we named one shy yet charming girl penny, and a friendly and good natured girl kim (it suites her perfectly, i dont know why though). which is a vast improvement upon the english name her friends were calling her - table! turns out her name sounds like the chinese word for table. i was speaking to a senior 3 student last night who i had met before, and i told her i had unfortunatly forgotten her name, and could she please teach it to me again. with much patience and good humor, she taught me her name, and then told me she would think of an english name for herself, as it would be easier for me to remember, and she was sick of her friends calling her ice cream (never fully understood why they did that). about twenty minutes later she asked me what i thought of the name 'sunny', and i told her it was perfect. it suites her good nature and happy disposition perfectly. now all i ahve to worry about is that the students will become better at it then me and i'll be out of a job!
well thats all for now folks, as more intersting things happen i'll forget to tell you about them.
hope your all having a wonderful time with out me, i dont see hwo you could though.
love from claire.
our first morning:
we awoke on the first morning in hengxian to the pitter patter of about 700 feet right outside our room. turns out the basketball courts is the site of the compulsory morning exercise routine. i managed to sleep through the majority of it though. it was hard, but i battled on and slept in till the indecent hour of 9.30, whence i was awoken by the musical strains of an avril lavigne song... they're obsessed with her here, her posters are everywhere, the students all love her, its crazy!
our first outing:
on our first day here lily took us for a walk out in the town to show us where the supermarket is. was a very interesting experience. let me just say i have never been stared at so much in my life! people would stop what they were doing to watch us walk past. people on motorbikes would turn their head to stare as they drove by, its crazy! and they all smile and wave, and some say hello, its great. little kids and old poeple seem to get the biggest kick out of it. however we didnt realise how odd it is for them to see a western until...
mobbed by students:
we came back from our first solo walk around the town, and one of the students, a lovely boy named danny, came up to us and started talking to us. so far the students had kept their distance, content with simply waving and saying hello. danny, it appears, was simply confident enough with his english skills to approach us. so we were chatting to him on the basketball courts when another boy, lung, came up and asked us if we would like to stand in the shade, as "the sun is bad for you" (everyone here is worried the sun will ruin our lovely pale skin...). as soon as we were in the shade and talking to danny and lung, WHAM! we were sorrounded by about 20 students, it was insane! they were all saying hello and trying to introduce themselves. we started talking about their exams (they have uni entrance exams in june) and why we were here, and they were all shocked to find out we were only 18. the only students at the school at the moment are senior 3 (yr 12) students, and they're all between the ages of 18 and 20. the most bizzare and amusing part of this conversation was that one of the students told carina we were the first foreigners she had ever seen. and she's 18!! and she's not the only one. a senior 2 student (yr 11), told carina the same thing at dinner the other day. so im sure you can imagine the reactions we get from the students.
dinner at lily's:
on our second night in hengxian, our link teacher lily showed up and invited us around to her apartment to meet her family. turns out today is another celebration of the spring festival that only happens in the country, so lily had lots of family over. they were all very friendly but didnt speak much english. then lily brings out something that looks like a stick of bamboo, and asks us if we would like some. turns out its sugar cane, so lily suts a huge piece each. so prizes for guessing what it tastes like. it wasn't too bad, bit weird though. she tried to offload some onto us, but we hastily declined. turns out that the farmers were having trouble selling sugar cane because the cold weather made it go hard in the middle. so the government orded all government workers, including teachers, to buy 100 sticks of sugar cane! even students had to buy some!!! twas communism in action my friends! then she tells us its dinner time and tries to make us eat more food, even though we had told her we'd already eaten. in the end we just ate anyway. she made some lovely tofu, and was extremely flattered when i told her how good it was. it was a throughly enjoyable evening, but i think i had enough food to last me unitl next week. but of course, as we were leaving, lily gave us some apples and oranges... all anyone ever does around here is feed us!!
observing classes:
we spent some time this week watching english classes, just to familiarise oursleves with the battle field. the first classes we watched was lily's senior 3's. you should have seen the reception! as we were walking past the classes rooms students were waving and yelling hello, and we got to lily's classroom everyone cheered, it was hilarious!!! the students kept inviting us to next to them but we opted to sit up the back out of harms way. they had a double english lesson and in the break lily went to find another class for us to watch, leaving us to the mercy of her students. as soon as she left they ran to the back of the class and bombarded us with questions and whatnot. one of the students told carina that lung, the boy we spoke to the other day, was going around telling everyone he thought she was beautiful!! then lung asked her how much money she had?! was very amusing.
all the students seem to be well behaved, bit mechanical though. shall be interesting to see how they respond to the games i have planned for them!
hengxian:
hengxian. it's actually a rather rural town. if i knew the population i would tell you. its 115km from the provincial capital nanning, and anything outside nanning if pretty much rural. its a very cute little town,not much traffic, but those who do drive dont seem to know. i keep going to cross the road only to be honked at by someone because i've looked right instead of left. must get used to that little peculiarity. carina believes our school is in the "bronx" part of town. the other part of town is "fifth avenue". the only difference is that the few nice shops in hengxian are in the smae area, and it's a bit cleaner round there. we went for a walk near the school the other day which was fun. carina freaked out at the sight of two dog carcasses hanging in the window. we also found a pet store that sells the cutest little turtles. they ranged from about 4 cm long to 9 cm long. if they didnt carry selamonella i would buy one. those three wheeled motor taxis that i will one day get a photo of si#o you understand what im talking about, only cost 2 yuan maximum to get anywhere in town, thats how midget sized we are!
the school:
the school is rather large. there are 2678 students here, virtually all of which board. they sleep in dormatories of twelve, some of which dontnhave windows, just metal bars... their beds are wooden slats which they cover with a woven reed mat and a thin quilt. sure as hell makes me appreciate my apartment!! were on the ground floor of a seven storey apartment building, which is one of the tallest in the school. there are six basketball courts, an oval with a running track around the outside, and two volleyball/badminton courts. they school is extremely clean and extremely green. southern gunagxi is subtropical, so there are plants and trees everywhere. the classrooms are nice, heated by some magical system that i couldnt see, and small but not cramped.
food:
we're given free meals in the school canteen, and lily kindly explained to the staff that we are vegetarians. she's told half the school it would seem; whilst waiting for bowls yesterday one boy told us that after lily told them we were vegetarian he started eating vegetables and stopped eating meat!!! it was only a temporary change of heart however.
for students, breakfast is at 6.15, but lily arranged it so we can go and get it when ever we want and just heat it up in the apartment. each day we get two steamed buns each - one with some kind of sweet seasame paste, and the other plain (which we've been smothering with jam we found in nanning!!) they also give us two hard boiled egss and some horrible tasting millk which we've been trying to explain we dont want, without any success.
lunch is begins at 11.20am (!!!!) and dinner at 5.35pm (!!!), however we've been told that we can go 10 minutes earlier to avoid the rush. and boy is there a rush!!! first you have to line up to get your bowl and spoon. next you have to line up to get rice. they give you HEAPS of rice, and thankfully carina and i got across that we dont need that much. next you go to a seperate line for the rest of the food. and boy do they give you food. all of this takes about 15 minutes. im yet to finish a single meal ive had at that canteen. i think thats just me though, carina cant seem to get enough food. its pretty bland stuff though, and the rice is a bit dry. theres not much variety, but we dont mind because its freeeee!!
everyones shocked that we keep eating there, even lily! she's worried we dont like it, but its not that bad. some of the students have offerd to show us the restraunts in hengxian, but im not sure if they will have much vegetarian food, and anyway, they're not free!
being vegetarin in china isnt that hard, its the explaining it to people thats difficult, especially in restraunts. we had lunch with our other link teacher the other day and she said people dont understand why were vegetarian, because in china they put meat in everything! other then that no one seems to have a problem with it!
classes:
we found out the other day that our classes are voluntary, and were teaching out of a text book, which we thought would be disasterous, but has turned out ok. the text book is pretty good, and it takes the stress out of lesson planning. we've also been given the ok to teach some of our own stuff which is nice.
we got our timetables yesterday, which is all good news! we teach 6 classes each, but we have them twice a week (means double the lesson plans though =[ ). carina is teaching all senior 1 classes (yr 10's) and im teaching all senior 2 classes. and because the classes are voluntary theyre tiny by chinese standards. our largest class is 31, and our smallest 27. and, just to make things brilliant, i odnt start teaching untill 4.05pm everyday!!! gives carina and i plenty of time to cycle around hengxian on the bikes were yet to get. i start teaching on monday and i have written up my first lesson plan, all by myself! its all about australia, and about me learning students names.
giving someone a name:
alot of consideration goes into naming someone. you have to make sure the name you give them is interesting, reflects their chracter, and is a bit unique. it has to be a name they can be proud of, but is still respeactable. something that is cool now, but will be equally awesome next week. there is a lot of pressure on the namer.
alot of our students have approached us with requests for english names. they see it as a bit of a status symbol. and fortunatly thye understand that it is easier for carina and i to pronounce and remember, although we have been trying hard with their chinese names. so when lung, the boy who questioned carina about the state of he finances in what iwas sure was some kind of marrige proposal, asked us to give him an eglisg name, we thought long and hard about it for 20 seconds and called him liam. what a lovely name! i hear you cry. why thanks you, carina and i thought so ourselves, which is why we chose it. since that day of triumph, two young girls have also requested english names. we named one shy yet charming girl penny, and a friendly and good natured girl kim (it suites her perfectly, i dont know why though). which is a vast improvement upon the english name her friends were calling her - table! turns out her name sounds like the chinese word for table. i was speaking to a senior 3 student last night who i had met before, and i told her i had unfortunatly forgotten her name, and could she please teach it to me again. with much patience and good humor, she taught me her name, and then told me she would think of an english name for herself, as it would be easier for me to remember, and she was sick of her friends calling her ice cream (never fully understood why they did that). about twenty minutes later she asked me what i thought of the name 'sunny', and i told her it was perfect. it suites her good nature and happy disposition perfectly. now all i ahve to worry about is that the students will become better at it then me and i'll be out of a job!
well thats all for now folks, as more intersting things happen i'll forget to tell you about them.
hope your all having a wonderful time with out me, i dont see hwo you could though.
love from claire.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
from beijing to hengxian (not very inventive, but it'll get better).
sooo, where are we up too... ahh yes, the 4 am make up call! how terribly delightful!
got up and realied i wasnt as packed as i thought, so had a mad rush to get everything in pack and down stairs by 4.30. lost one of my padlocks, which ended up being at the bottom of my pack, but it meant that most of my clothes in the bottom pocket of my bag were vulnerable for the entire trip =[
got given a "breakfast box" on the bus. mine contained a pastry like edible, which was quite nice, but contained a solid slab of something green that looked like seaweed flavoured jelly. i avoided that bit. said good bye to everyone at the airport, except for four gappers who were flying later. checked in without any problems, except that my bag had magically gained weight even though i didnt buy anything in beijing.
just to show you how good chinese airport security is: i took a pocket knife onto the plane in my hand luggage =D accidently of course. they scanned my bag yet didnt notice it was in there, and i had completely forgotton about it.
flight was ok, slept for most of it though. the woman infront of us put her seat back just after take off, told us to shut up, and went to sleep. this of course made us giggle for a good 5 minutes, all the while eliciting evil glares from the man next to her, who we assumed was some sort of male relation and not just an angry passanger.
arrived in nanning at about 11am found our luggage with out any troubled (thankfully my unprotected clothes had not been violated), and were met by our link teacher betty and the school driver. they had a very cute sign with our names on it. caitlin and lauren were met by their link teacher, shadow, who started stroking their arms and saying "ohhhhh, so beautiful!". our link teacher has studied in canada, so we didnt get that kind of reception. on the way out she asked us if we would like to go out for lunch and we declined, but realised that gap may not have informed them of our vegetarianism (carina is also vegetarian). we had assumed they wouldd have, but it occured to us on the plane that they may have left that responsibility up to us... it appears this was the case. fortunatly she was shocked but not mortified as we had expected. on the way to hengxian (pronounced hung-she-en), we pulled over; turns out betty decided we needed food anyway. we were a bit apprehensive as to how she would take the whole vegetarian thing - turns out she understood perfectly! the food was nice, but the drinks... chinese people dont drink alot of water, especially not at meal times; they always drink tea. however we were lucky enough to experience the wonders oooofff...... corn juice! yes corn juice. it is really just pureed corn. warm purred corn. its actually not that bad. but i would never drink it again. ever. its weird.
we arrived at our school and were shown to our ground floor apartment. tis very big, but terribly cold. its all tiles, and a bit drafty, but im sure it'll be great in summer. we have seperate bedrooms, a lounge/computor room, a laundry, something you could call a kitchen if you wanted to, and a bathroom with a western toilet. we also have a squat toilet, but thats acting as a drain for the washign machine. we've called it 'the wooden palace', because everything is made of wood. everything. all the furniture is wood, the COUCHES are wood, and i swear on my life that the matresses have wood in them some where. we've called the bathroom 'the swamp', because there is no seperate shower cubicle, so the water just goes straight onto the floor and down a drain. but the drain is a bit dodgy, so it floods a bit first, hence the name. everything is brand new, because they've never had gapper before so thats nice.
that night betty and lily took us out for dinner to meet all the other english teachers. we rode to the restraunt in a vehicle that is very hard to describe. its a kind of three wheeled motorbike thing, with an area at the back to sit in, but not like a rickshaw. i shall get a photo of one so you can see. the dinner was nice except they kept trying to feed us an eggplant dish that had chicken in it. we just kept ignoring it. and they gave us more corn juice...
the 21st was the lantern festival, the last day of the spring/new year festival, so children were letting off crackers and fire works. we told our link teachers that in australia you need a permit to let of fire works and whatnot, and they were very shocked. they offered to take us to buy some after dinner, an offer we hastily excepted. we bought 60Y of fireworks and crackers, and took them back to the school to let of on the oval. they were spectacular! one of them started shooting balls of fire or something along the ground, a spectacle we were not prepared for, and one of them hit carina in the leg, twas hilarious! some of the smaller ones were these amazing showers of sparks, and one of them was like fireworks we get at home; huge colourful explosions in the sky.
one of them was a dud, so lily went and returned it, so we have a spare one to let off next celebration.
that night all we heard was the sound of fireworks. it was a very exciting welcome to our new home.
got up and realied i wasnt as packed as i thought, so had a mad rush to get everything in pack and down stairs by 4.30. lost one of my padlocks, which ended up being at the bottom of my pack, but it meant that most of my clothes in the bottom pocket of my bag were vulnerable for the entire trip =[
got given a "breakfast box" on the bus. mine contained a pastry like edible, which was quite nice, but contained a solid slab of something green that looked like seaweed flavoured jelly. i avoided that bit. said good bye to everyone at the airport, except for four gappers who were flying later. checked in without any problems, except that my bag had magically gained weight even though i didnt buy anything in beijing.
just to show you how good chinese airport security is: i took a pocket knife onto the plane in my hand luggage =D accidently of course. they scanned my bag yet didnt notice it was in there, and i had completely forgotton about it.
flight was ok, slept for most of it though. the woman infront of us put her seat back just after take off, told us to shut up, and went to sleep. this of course made us giggle for a good 5 minutes, all the while eliciting evil glares from the man next to her, who we assumed was some sort of male relation and not just an angry passanger.
arrived in nanning at about 11am found our luggage with out any troubled (thankfully my unprotected clothes had not been violated), and were met by our link teacher betty and the school driver. they had a very cute sign with our names on it. caitlin and lauren were met by their link teacher, shadow, who started stroking their arms and saying "ohhhhh, so beautiful!". our link teacher has studied in canada, so we didnt get that kind of reception. on the way out she asked us if we would like to go out for lunch and we declined, but realised that gap may not have informed them of our vegetarianism (carina is also vegetarian). we had assumed they wouldd have, but it occured to us on the plane that they may have left that responsibility up to us... it appears this was the case. fortunatly she was shocked but not mortified as we had expected. on the way to hengxian (pronounced hung-she-en), we pulled over; turns out betty decided we needed food anyway. we were a bit apprehensive as to how she would take the whole vegetarian thing - turns out she understood perfectly! the food was nice, but the drinks... chinese people dont drink alot of water, especially not at meal times; they always drink tea. however we were lucky enough to experience the wonders oooofff...... corn juice! yes corn juice. it is really just pureed corn. warm purred corn. its actually not that bad. but i would never drink it again. ever. its weird.
we arrived at our school and were shown to our ground floor apartment. tis very big, but terribly cold. its all tiles, and a bit drafty, but im sure it'll be great in summer. we have seperate bedrooms, a lounge/computor room, a laundry, something you could call a kitchen if you wanted to, and a bathroom with a western toilet. we also have a squat toilet, but thats acting as a drain for the washign machine. we've called it 'the wooden palace', because everything is made of wood. everything. all the furniture is wood, the COUCHES are wood, and i swear on my life that the matresses have wood in them some where. we've called the bathroom 'the swamp', because there is no seperate shower cubicle, so the water just goes straight onto the floor and down a drain. but the drain is a bit dodgy, so it floods a bit first, hence the name. everything is brand new, because they've never had gapper before so thats nice.
that night betty and lily took us out for dinner to meet all the other english teachers. we rode to the restraunt in a vehicle that is very hard to describe. its a kind of three wheeled motorbike thing, with an area at the back to sit in, but not like a rickshaw. i shall get a photo of one so you can see. the dinner was nice except they kept trying to feed us an eggplant dish that had chicken in it. we just kept ignoring it. and they gave us more corn juice...
the 21st was the lantern festival, the last day of the spring/new year festival, so children were letting off crackers and fire works. we told our link teachers that in australia you need a permit to let of fire works and whatnot, and they were very shocked. they offered to take us to buy some after dinner, an offer we hastily excepted. we bought 60Y of fireworks and crackers, and took them back to the school to let of on the oval. they were spectacular! one of them started shooting balls of fire or something along the ground, a spectacle we were not prepared for, and one of them hit carina in the leg, twas hilarious! some of the smaller ones were these amazing showers of sparks, and one of them was like fireworks we get at home; huge colourful explosions in the sky.
one of them was a dud, so lily went and returned it, so we have a spare one to let off next celebration.
that night all we heard was the sound of fireworks. it was a very exciting welcome to our new home.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
More from Beijing
hello my friends!
hope all is well where ever you are, i can assure you that im fine. as i said before, i can't access this blog site, therefore i cant read what ive written, so i apologise in advance if i repeat myself.
so, beijing. a very intersting city. not as dirty as i expected. less smog. i didnt have any trouble breathing, the air tasted/smelt fine. although this probably has alot to do with the up coming olympics. which china is obsessed with. there are ads and count down boards, and baloons, and merchendise, EVERY WHERE. im already sick of the olympics. SICK OF THEM I SAY!
so, onto my next two days in bejing.
DAY 2:
we had a breifing at the "cultural and education section" of the british embassy. soooooo boring and pointless. is was stuff we had heared A MILLION times before, about respecting chinese culture and customs, not putting yourself in danger, and what services our embassy offers (not THOSE kinds of services you dirty minded people! although if it was about those kinds of services the morning maight have been more interesting.) the only good thing to come out of this session was the free pencil that you dont need to sharpen. dont need to sharpen! how brilliant! you just change over this little nib thing, and wow. anyway, moving on from my childish distractions.
after this boring waste of time (yes, i know its important that i listen to these things, BUT I ALREADY KNOW THEM! and if other gappers didn't they're deaf and deserve to be mugged), we went for luch, which was a much more pleasent experience. we did something rather smart, and got all the vegetarians on the one table (something we did for the rest of our meals in beijing), and got tom the tour guide to order soe extra vegetarian food for us. it was very nice, but sooo filling,a dnthey just keep bringing food, food, and more food! we were never able to finish a meal, we felt so wasteful. the meal was rather uneventful, except that one of the gappers on another table kept asking what each dish was, and it turns out that one of the dishes was toad (not suprising as they had live toads hopping around in a tank to one side of the restraunt). the most amusing thing about this was that it seemed to be the most popular dish, and when i told everyone what it was they (mostly ditzy girls) freaked out and were utterly repulsed. so i, wonderful i, used this oppurtunity to falunt my moral superiority by laughing at all the meat-eating fools who cant stomach their habits.
after lunch we went to tiananmen square which is huge, but not quite as huge as i expected. it was covered in people though. so many people. sooooo many people. they were everywhere. we didn't stay very long, and didn't get to see mao's body, *tear*, but we did get a nice group photo infront of the entrace to the forbidden city. onto the city of forbiddenness. quite amazing. its absolutly flippin' huge (that was for you diana). amazing architechture, as we all know. everything was so colourful and intricate and amazing. and you cant go inside any of the buildings though, and you cant see much of the inside, so it becamse a bit repetative though. still a wonderful experience though. we went to look at the gardens, which were a bit plain though because it's winter, but still lots to see. they have these weird trees that grow with lots of twists and turns. one of them it supported by these big metal frames and straps, and we decided it looks like a distressed mental patient. there was also this huge rock formation one of the emporers orded to be carried from somewhere; its very big and full of little nooks and crannies, and therefor the ideal climing rock. which has obviously been observed by others, because there was a sign saying "a single act of carelessness leads to an eternal loss of beauty". tre prophetic.
the forbidden city was interesting becuase it was our first experience of being a speactacle. people would point and wave and smile and take photos with us, it was great. one leady literally draged her son over to say hello to us and have his photo taken with us. chinese children are so cute, the wear the craziest clothes and hairstyles and are so adorable!one small child was staring at caitlin and i so we said "no hao" to her, and her mother told the child to say hello back, but she was too shy. instead of leaving it as most western mothers would, she refused to leave untill the child said ni hao to us in the sweetest little voice, we felt so loved.
it wasnt only small children who were amused by us. a middle aged man said hello to caitlin in english (she gets alot of attention becuase she has noticably blue eyes and blonde, curly hair), and she responded with ni hao, which he thought was absolutly hilarious, and so pointed, laughed and said something in chiese, it was an absolute riot!
that night we went to see and acrobatics show, which tom the tour guide told us we "certainly wouldnt fall asleep in!". it was absolutly amazing. men doing these amzing flips and balancing acts, women bending themselves in ways you would never think possible with out the breaking of bones. one act was a group of men jumping through quite small wooded hoops. which doesnt sound too hard, but you should see it. at one stage the top hoop was atleast 8-9ft tall, and these men were doing the craziest flips and jumps through, with a simple run up to launch themselves, it was insane!!!! one of the most hilarious part of the evening was when a large group of chinese people walked past us in the lobby, and two of the women at opposite end of the group were having a massive, extremely vocal argument about something, which resulted in one throwing her water bottle at the other, is was so bizzare, but so throughly amusing, i loved it!
after the show we went to a restraunt, which was pretty much the same as all the others, without any amusing toad stories. when we got back to the apartment we decided to go find and internet cafe. we ran into one of the others gappers, tom, who had thought ahead and got the hotel staff to write down the chinese chracters for internet cafe. we tried showing it to a few poeple, but they gave very compicated directions, and we never managed to find an internet cafe. in the end we stopped some man who was running past us and he seemed very excited and asked us to follow him. it may not have been the safest thing to do, but he was rather weedy, and we were in a group large enough to be considered a mob, so we felt safe. anyway, he led us down a dark alleyway, and we started to susupect he was going to take us to his house or something, but alas, good ol' il capitano (he gave us his buisness card and his english name was captain =P) led us to an internet cafe!!!! but the fun didnt stop there. there was a sign written in perfect english that said it cost 4 yuan an hour, but for some reason the women kept trying to charge us 10... so the whole group (about 10 of us) were pointing at the sign saying "si!" the chinese word for four, and she eventually got the message, but it was all very weeeeiird...
after that we went back to the hotel and i found a note in my room from my gap partner carian, who hadn't joined us on our adventure, saying she was two rooms down. so i joined her and had a wonderful evening staying up until 2.30am talking to a whole group of lovely gap people!
now, DAY 3:
go a wake up call at the late hour of 7am, breakfasted, and departed for a wonderful morning of rickshaw races around the hutong area of china. its very old and has traditional houses with the cetral courtyard. we visited one and the owner told us that the rooms were available for rent for students and backpackers (lauren, i do believe we should look into this...), and delighted in telling us that only a few weeks before that a newly married couple had spent their wedding night in one of the rooms. there were three caged brids in the courtyard and there was one big fat black one that looked like pure evil. it kept flufifng its feathers up and staring at it, it had the wierdest eyes, it was hilarious! it looked like it was on speed.
afterwards we went on a tour of the area in rickshaws; its a great way to see the city. we went past beautiful old buildings and bridges, and old men smoking pipes, it was so quaint! the rickshaw drivers were racing one another and at one stage our driver hung onto the back of another rickshaw and stopped peddling! lazy lazy man!
next we visited the summer palace, its huge, and by huge, i mean absolutly freaking massive!!!!! most of it is taken up by this giant lake, and as it is winter in beijing, it was frozen, it looked amazing! the buildings were really similar to those in the forbidden city, and the long corridor was beautiful. we were pressed for time so we didnt get to see all of it, but what we did see was fascinating. with so many people there its hard to imgaine what it would have been like when the dowager empress livid there. next stop was lunch, which, as usual, was uneventful, except i did have my first experience of a squat toilet, which isnt as bad as everyone says it is; it just like going to the toilet when camping except that someone has already dug the hole for you and you DEFINATLY DONT flush toilet paper =D
next was the great wall; an exhilirating experience! it was 600m to the highest point in the area, and i only made it half way! go me and my half-arsed effort. its really hard though, becuase the wall its self is quite steep, and each step is very steep, and very worn in places. it was a nice view, bit bare because its winter, and unclear because of the smog, but still quite nice. coming down the wall requires less effort, but is far more difficult, and requires alot more skill and balance. one of the gappers matt thought it would be amusing to HOP down the great wall - mata, one of the nz gappers had her phone really to film his failure, but alas, he made it =P i found the best way to do it is at a slow jog with a steady rythem.
that night we went back to the internet cafe, and nearly three quarters of the group joined us; the lady at the desk look horrified, eh eh eh eh eh!
nothing more happened - we went and had an early night as we were getting a 4 am wake up call =D to catch our 7:30am flight.
so this is where i leave you my friends, next time will be all about hengxian....
saty safe, dont do drugs, i know i wont =D
love from claire. =D
xo.
hope all is well where ever you are, i can assure you that im fine. as i said before, i can't access this blog site, therefore i cant read what ive written, so i apologise in advance if i repeat myself.
so, beijing. a very intersting city. not as dirty as i expected. less smog. i didnt have any trouble breathing, the air tasted/smelt fine. although this probably has alot to do with the up coming olympics. which china is obsessed with. there are ads and count down boards, and baloons, and merchendise, EVERY WHERE. im already sick of the olympics. SICK OF THEM I SAY!
so, onto my next two days in bejing.
DAY 2:
we had a breifing at the "cultural and education section" of the british embassy. soooooo boring and pointless. is was stuff we had heared A MILLION times before, about respecting chinese culture and customs, not putting yourself in danger, and what services our embassy offers (not THOSE kinds of services you dirty minded people! although if it was about those kinds of services the morning maight have been more interesting.) the only good thing to come out of this session was the free pencil that you dont need to sharpen. dont need to sharpen! how brilliant! you just change over this little nib thing, and wow. anyway, moving on from my childish distractions.
after this boring waste of time (yes, i know its important that i listen to these things, BUT I ALREADY KNOW THEM! and if other gappers didn't they're deaf and deserve to be mugged), we went for luch, which was a much more pleasent experience. we did something rather smart, and got all the vegetarians on the one table (something we did for the rest of our meals in beijing), and got tom the tour guide to order soe extra vegetarian food for us. it was very nice, but sooo filling,a dnthey just keep bringing food, food, and more food! we were never able to finish a meal, we felt so wasteful. the meal was rather uneventful, except that one of the gappers on another table kept asking what each dish was, and it turns out that one of the dishes was toad (not suprising as they had live toads hopping around in a tank to one side of the restraunt). the most amusing thing about this was that it seemed to be the most popular dish, and when i told everyone what it was they (mostly ditzy girls) freaked out and were utterly repulsed. so i, wonderful i, used this oppurtunity to falunt my moral superiority by laughing at all the meat-eating fools who cant stomach their habits.
after lunch we went to tiananmen square which is huge, but not quite as huge as i expected. it was covered in people though. so many people. sooooo many people. they were everywhere. we didn't stay very long, and didn't get to see mao's body, *tear*, but we did get a nice group photo infront of the entrace to the forbidden city. onto the city of forbiddenness. quite amazing. its absolutly flippin' huge (that was for you diana). amazing architechture, as we all know. everything was so colourful and intricate and amazing. and you cant go inside any of the buildings though, and you cant see much of the inside, so it becamse a bit repetative though. still a wonderful experience though. we went to look at the gardens, which were a bit plain though because it's winter, but still lots to see. they have these weird trees that grow with lots of twists and turns. one of them it supported by these big metal frames and straps, and we decided it looks like a distressed mental patient. there was also this huge rock formation one of the emporers orded to be carried from somewhere; its very big and full of little nooks and crannies, and therefor the ideal climing rock. which has obviously been observed by others, because there was a sign saying "a single act of carelessness leads to an eternal loss of beauty". tre prophetic.
the forbidden city was interesting becuase it was our first experience of being a speactacle. people would point and wave and smile and take photos with us, it was great. one leady literally draged her son over to say hello to us and have his photo taken with us. chinese children are so cute, the wear the craziest clothes and hairstyles and are so adorable!one small child was staring at caitlin and i so we said "no hao" to her, and her mother told the child to say hello back, but she was too shy. instead of leaving it as most western mothers would, she refused to leave untill the child said ni hao to us in the sweetest little voice, we felt so loved.
it wasnt only small children who were amused by us. a middle aged man said hello to caitlin in english (she gets alot of attention becuase she has noticably blue eyes and blonde, curly hair), and she responded with ni hao, which he thought was absolutly hilarious, and so pointed, laughed and said something in chiese, it was an absolute riot!
that night we went to see and acrobatics show, which tom the tour guide told us we "certainly wouldnt fall asleep in!". it was absolutly amazing. men doing these amzing flips and balancing acts, women bending themselves in ways you would never think possible with out the breaking of bones. one act was a group of men jumping through quite small wooded hoops. which doesnt sound too hard, but you should see it. at one stage the top hoop was atleast 8-9ft tall, and these men were doing the craziest flips and jumps through, with a simple run up to launch themselves, it was insane!!!! one of the most hilarious part of the evening was when a large group of chinese people walked past us in the lobby, and two of the women at opposite end of the group were having a massive, extremely vocal argument about something, which resulted in one throwing her water bottle at the other, is was so bizzare, but so throughly amusing, i loved it!
after the show we went to a restraunt, which was pretty much the same as all the others, without any amusing toad stories. when we got back to the apartment we decided to go find and internet cafe. we ran into one of the others gappers, tom, who had thought ahead and got the hotel staff to write down the chinese chracters for internet cafe. we tried showing it to a few poeple, but they gave very compicated directions, and we never managed to find an internet cafe. in the end we stopped some man who was running past us and he seemed very excited and asked us to follow him. it may not have been the safest thing to do, but he was rather weedy, and we were in a group large enough to be considered a mob, so we felt safe. anyway, he led us down a dark alleyway, and we started to susupect he was going to take us to his house or something, but alas, good ol' il capitano (he gave us his buisness card and his english name was captain =P) led us to an internet cafe!!!! but the fun didnt stop there. there was a sign written in perfect english that said it cost 4 yuan an hour, but for some reason the women kept trying to charge us 10... so the whole group (about 10 of us) were pointing at the sign saying "si!" the chinese word for four, and she eventually got the message, but it was all very weeeeiird...
after that we went back to the hotel and i found a note in my room from my gap partner carian, who hadn't joined us on our adventure, saying she was two rooms down. so i joined her and had a wonderful evening staying up until 2.30am talking to a whole group of lovely gap people!
now, DAY 3:
go a wake up call at the late hour of 7am, breakfasted, and departed for a wonderful morning of rickshaw races around the hutong area of china. its very old and has traditional houses with the cetral courtyard. we visited one and the owner told us that the rooms were available for rent for students and backpackers (lauren, i do believe we should look into this...), and delighted in telling us that only a few weeks before that a newly married couple had spent their wedding night in one of the rooms. there were three caged brids in the courtyard and there was one big fat black one that looked like pure evil. it kept flufifng its feathers up and staring at it, it had the wierdest eyes, it was hilarious! it looked like it was on speed.
afterwards we went on a tour of the area in rickshaws; its a great way to see the city. we went past beautiful old buildings and bridges, and old men smoking pipes, it was so quaint! the rickshaw drivers were racing one another and at one stage our driver hung onto the back of another rickshaw and stopped peddling! lazy lazy man!
next we visited the summer palace, its huge, and by huge, i mean absolutly freaking massive!!!!! most of it is taken up by this giant lake, and as it is winter in beijing, it was frozen, it looked amazing! the buildings were really similar to those in the forbidden city, and the long corridor was beautiful. we were pressed for time so we didnt get to see all of it, but what we did see was fascinating. with so many people there its hard to imgaine what it would have been like when the dowager empress livid there. next stop was lunch, which, as usual, was uneventful, except i did have my first experience of a squat toilet, which isnt as bad as everyone says it is; it just like going to the toilet when camping except that someone has already dug the hole for you and you DEFINATLY DONT flush toilet paper =D
next was the great wall; an exhilirating experience! it was 600m to the highest point in the area, and i only made it half way! go me and my half-arsed effort. its really hard though, becuase the wall its self is quite steep, and each step is very steep, and very worn in places. it was a nice view, bit bare because its winter, and unclear because of the smog, but still quite nice. coming down the wall requires less effort, but is far more difficult, and requires alot more skill and balance. one of the gappers matt thought it would be amusing to HOP down the great wall - mata, one of the nz gappers had her phone really to film his failure, but alas, he made it =P i found the best way to do it is at a slow jog with a steady rythem.
that night we went back to the internet cafe, and nearly three quarters of the group joined us; the lady at the desk look horrified, eh eh eh eh eh!
nothing more happened - we went and had an early night as we were getting a 4 am wake up call =D to catch our 7:30am flight.
so this is where i leave you my friends, next time will be all about hengxian....
saty safe, dont do drugs, i know i wont =D
love from claire. =D
xo.
Friday, February 22, 2008
ni hao to you all my friends!
sorry about the late post, it appears chinese internet does not allow one access to my blog site =[
not to worry, my darling sister is posting my rants for me, so now you shall never miss out on my wonderous adventures! [Which I promise that I will in no way alter, censor or embelish - Lauren]
so let us start from the beginning (i hear its a very good place to start):
i caught my flight from melbourne at 5pm, after a lovely farewell from family and friends (pork, im yet to use your gift....). No problem, all smooth sialing to Singapore, except for a migrain i had untill i got to the hotel in Beijing, and then on to beijing! customs and whatnot were fine, and nothing of much interest had happend at this time. arrived at about 7.30 am on the 18th to -7 degrees celcius. fun times all round. it actually wasnt as cold as i expected; i didnt even need my hat or gloves. my scarf was a life saver though as my face was fair freezing.
we were given untill 5pm to do as we pleased, as the uk gappers werent arriving untill later and our tour guide, a lovely man named Dong Wei (english name was tom), thought we would like the time to rest and whatnot. i shared my room with my wonderful gap partner carina, and we spent a few hours wandering around beijing with caitlin (one of the other gappers form our province) and a few other gap kiddies.
beijing is a very intersting city, but its also freaking huge, and many of the attractions are far apart. we didnt go too far from our hotel because we were afraid if getting lost, so we didnt see all that much. what we did see, and something that is a very common occurance around beijing, is these free outdoor fitness centers which basically look like adult play ground. they have weight machines, ski machines, and massagers?!?!?!?!?!? and theyre made of the same materials and colours as kids playgrounds! and people really do spit on the streets, but not as frequently as we were made to think.
our next experience of beijing was attempting to buy lunch. an absolute disaster. tom told us the name of a good restraunt and we asked the hotel staff where it was and to write down the name in chinese chracters so we could ask people if we got lost. their instructions were very clear butb when we followed them we found no retraunt, just shops. we asked a few people for directions and showed them the name if the restraunt but the didnt seem to understad. in the end we jsut went to a restraunt that looked popular. were still not sure if it was the right place or not. then we attempted to order. and failed. fourtunatly one of the gappers, christina, new a little bit of chinese from school, so were were eventually able to order some food. but as for explaining vegetarian...
i tried to use the phrase book, but im 100% sure i was pronouncing it wrong, and even when we showed them the word and they appeared to understand it, the first the they pointed to on the menu was shrimp...
we eventually got through to them and ordered some potatoe dish which was described as sliced potatoe. it lied. it was basically shredded potatoe in oil with a small amount of carrot and something green. and it was cold. and possibly raw.
and then there was the issue of some bizzare bowl of liquid they gave us. we werent sure if it was to be drunk, or used as part of some kind of cleansing ritual, or what. it looked like water, but slightly more yellow, and with oil in it. in the end we decided to ignore it. the four meat eaters on our table ordered three kinds of dumplings and got two types of dumplings and one cold meet dish that had some kind of browish jelly in the middle, which was apprently quite nice.
after lunch we went back to the hotel for a bit. the hotel was quite nice. it was clean and modern and had a western toilet. but dont be fooled into thinking the absence of a sqaut toilet also ment the absence of any problem, oooohhhh no! you see, in china people dont flush toilet paper. theyre sewarge system cant handle. and i forgot. which resulted in a highly awkward situation involving the house keepers, and chardes, an electronic dictionary and a plumber. needless to say i learnt my lesson there....
that afternoon the english gappers arrived and we met the other gapper in our province, caitlins partner, lauren. shes very nice, and has such an amusing accent that started to rub off on caitlin =P
that night tom took the entire group out for dinner at a nearby restraunt and we finally got some decent vegetarian food. there is four vegetarians out of the group of 44, 3 of us are aussies and one is a brit. there was some wierd stuff on the table though, the worst being the preserved egg... its egg that, as we found out from another gapper whos family is chinese, is preserved in a lye solution which turns it black. BLACK. BLACK!!!!!!!!!! it seriously looks like rotten egg. and it smells and tastes horrible. not that i tried any, i wanted to live long enough to at least get to my placment. everyone was trying it whole, but we found out later you're supposed to eat it like blue cheese a very small amount on bread or a biscuit. tre odd.
after dinner a group of us went to the super market to buy bottled water, as the stuff in the hotel was very expensive. it was such an amusing adventure! everything was crazy!! there was coffee flavoured gum, and mango flavoured chips and dried roast veggies, and all sorts of odd things! and dove chocolate, thats big over here.
anywho, that was my first day of adventures, shall keep updating this thing through loztron over the next few days, hope your all well, and, as tom advised us, dont run away with beautifu chinses boys!
thats all folks!
love claire xo.
not to worry, my darling sister is posting my rants for me, so now you shall never miss out on my wonderous adventures! [Which I promise that I will in no way alter, censor or embelish - Lauren]
so let us start from the beginning (i hear its a very good place to start):
i caught my flight from melbourne at 5pm, after a lovely farewell from family and friends (pork, im yet to use your gift....). No problem, all smooth sialing to Singapore, except for a migrain i had untill i got to the hotel in Beijing, and then on to beijing! customs and whatnot were fine, and nothing of much interest had happend at this time. arrived at about 7.30 am on the 18th to -7 degrees celcius. fun times all round. it actually wasnt as cold as i expected; i didnt even need my hat or gloves. my scarf was a life saver though as my face was fair freezing.
we were given untill 5pm to do as we pleased, as the uk gappers werent arriving untill later and our tour guide, a lovely man named Dong Wei (english name was tom), thought we would like the time to rest and whatnot. i shared my room with my wonderful gap partner carina, and we spent a few hours wandering around beijing with caitlin (one of the other gappers form our province) and a few other gap kiddies.
beijing is a very intersting city, but its also freaking huge, and many of the attractions are far apart. we didnt go too far from our hotel because we were afraid if getting lost, so we didnt see all that much. what we did see, and something that is a very common occurance around beijing, is these free outdoor fitness centers which basically look like adult play ground. they have weight machines, ski machines, and massagers?!?!?!?!?!? and theyre made of the same materials and colours as kids playgrounds! and people really do spit on the streets, but not as frequently as we were made to think.
our next experience of beijing was attempting to buy lunch. an absolute disaster. tom told us the name of a good restraunt and we asked the hotel staff where it was and to write down the name in chinese chracters so we could ask people if we got lost. their instructions were very clear butb when we followed them we found no retraunt, just shops. we asked a few people for directions and showed them the name if the restraunt but the didnt seem to understad. in the end we jsut went to a restraunt that looked popular. were still not sure if it was the right place or not. then we attempted to order. and failed. fourtunatly one of the gappers, christina, new a little bit of chinese from school, so were were eventually able to order some food. but as for explaining vegetarian...
i tried to use the phrase book, but im 100% sure i was pronouncing it wrong, and even when we showed them the word and they appeared to understand it, the first the they pointed to on the menu was shrimp...
we eventually got through to them and ordered some potatoe dish which was described as sliced potatoe. it lied. it was basically shredded potatoe in oil with a small amount of carrot and something green. and it was cold. and possibly raw.
and then there was the issue of some bizzare bowl of liquid they gave us. we werent sure if it was to be drunk, or used as part of some kind of cleansing ritual, or what. it looked like water, but slightly more yellow, and with oil in it. in the end we decided to ignore it. the four meat eaters on our table ordered three kinds of dumplings and got two types of dumplings and one cold meet dish that had some kind of browish jelly in the middle, which was apprently quite nice.
after lunch we went back to the hotel for a bit. the hotel was quite nice. it was clean and modern and had a western toilet. but dont be fooled into thinking the absence of a sqaut toilet also ment the absence of any problem, oooohhhh no! you see, in china people dont flush toilet paper. theyre sewarge system cant handle. and i forgot. which resulted in a highly awkward situation involving the house keepers, and chardes, an electronic dictionary and a plumber. needless to say i learnt my lesson there....
that afternoon the english gappers arrived and we met the other gapper in our province, caitlins partner, lauren. shes very nice, and has such an amusing accent that started to rub off on caitlin =P
that night tom took the entire group out for dinner at a nearby restraunt and we finally got some decent vegetarian food. there is four vegetarians out of the group of 44, 3 of us are aussies and one is a brit. there was some wierd stuff on the table though, the worst being the preserved egg... its egg that, as we found out from another gapper whos family is chinese, is preserved in a lye solution which turns it black. BLACK. BLACK!!!!!!!!!! it seriously looks like rotten egg. and it smells and tastes horrible. not that i tried any, i wanted to live long enough to at least get to my placment. everyone was trying it whole, but we found out later you're supposed to eat it like blue cheese a very small amount on bread or a biscuit. tre odd.
after dinner a group of us went to the super market to buy bottled water, as the stuff in the hotel was very expensive. it was such an amusing adventure! everything was crazy!! there was coffee flavoured gum, and mango flavoured chips and dried roast veggies, and all sorts of odd things! and dove chocolate, thats big over here.
anywho, that was my first day of adventures, shall keep updating this thing through loztron over the next few days, hope your all well, and, as tom advised us, dont run away with beautifu chinses boys!
thats all folks!
love claire xo.
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