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!

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...