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...

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

an assortment of chinese dumplings.

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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

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.

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.