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.smugmug.com/gallery/5590333_GK9wS#342965359_rS4fk">http://saundersag.smugmug.com/gallery/5590333_GK9wS#342965359_rS4fk
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:

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...

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.

after our 10 hours in a wangba, we caught a train to the tropical island paradise of...

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.

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...

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.

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.