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.