A Grand day out with Yuki and Sushi! Time once again for my latest update. Sorry! I was going to tell you all about my week, but I’ve had such an exciting Sunday, I mat as well talk to you about that. After an entire day yesterday when I did absolutely nothing but sleep, watch TV, play on the computer and do some cross-stitch (long story) it was nice to get up early for the first “English Corner” of the term. The sun was out and there were loads of students from the English Association, our classes and other departments around to chat to, about whatever they wanted to. The aim of English corner is to give the students a place where they can go to practice their English, preferably with each other, but today we had the usual arrays of what is your name, where are you from, do you like Chinese food, etc, as well as an in depth conversation with an eight year old boy about Harry Potter. It was so cool – here was this 8 year old that could speak better English than most of my students! I even lent him my Harri Potter book! Goodness knows how he will get along with it! It took him 3 weeks to read the Chinese version! There was also a teacher from the PE department and an old man from somewhere who could speak a bit of English, and loads of passers by, including many parents with their children who came to investigate and listen in. It’s nice when you feel that you are actually here for a reason – when all these people have come to talk to you of their own free will. So that was really cool, as was my first middle school visit. David picked up a “random” a while ago, who appears about once a week and brings us gifts (hence the cross-stitch!). She is a teacher at one of the middle schools, so this week I went visit her class. I presume the size of the class she usually teaches is about 50 - all the students sitting two to a desk on small wooden benches. All these students kept appearing in the classroom until you physically couldn’t fit another soul in the classroom so some students stood outside and looked through the window, all excited to have a loawei in their school and wondering why. I introduced myself to the 150/200 odd students in the class (the benches for 2 people managed to fit at least four, although it was pushing it a bit!) and got them to ask me questions (who needs a lesson plan?). For those that were shy I took a bag of sweets with me, and people who asked questions got sweets. This only became a problem when I through a jelly to a student and it hit her before exploding everywhere! Afterwards I must have written in about a hundred English books – all the students wanted my signature and I had so many books pushed on me I thought at one stage there was going to be a riot! It was great – I felt just like a film star! I was even sent a car to pick me up from college! That evening David, Andrew, Nancy and I were invited out for a meal with Kate (the random), the head teacher and some other teachers from the school, along with the driver. It was time once again for pigs’ ears, cicadas (big insecty things – stir fries with spicy and a little crunchy for my liking), some wild rabbit and the usual assortment of fish, sour cabbage soup, intestines and my absolute favourite – sweetcorn! Even after being here since January and having eaten pretty much anything that flies or walks on two, four, six or eight legs I still want to vomit when I see and smell sweetcorn. Some things never change! The wine we drank at the meal was just a tasted for the amount of alcohol we would be drinking that evening. Returning to the college we called up some of Dave’s students (who I taught last term) for a drinking session. Because they live in dormitories and the dormitories are locked after midnight, they would usually get into trouble returning late, so we accompanied them back to ensure that they had no problems getting back in. The guard was fast asleep with the gates wide open at 2 in the morning, so we all went to say hello to his dorm-mates. One of them was on the phone to his girlfriend, so I did the most embarrassing thing I could think of to him – I had a chat with her, only to discover that she is one of my first year students. Bless them! Most of the students are forbidden to have boyfriends/ girlfriends by their parents, so there’s nothing quite like a bit of matchmaking to end an evening! Oh yeah – back to Sunday afternoon. Had another meal with Kate today – she had invited us to have a meal with her family when we had mentioned that we might go to the park this weekend. Since she lives in the park her brother met us at the gate, and we met all her family. It was the first time that I had ever been to the house of a “real” Chinese person, and didn’t now what to expect. At first I was a little horrified at the conditions in which they live, then realised that they were quite well-off (it was the one room which we were shown into that was really bare and empty) and that it wasn’t that bad (though must be freezing in the winter) when we had the tour. It was still quite an eye-opener for me though when you realize how fortunate you are, etc, etc. Her father cooked us a big meal and opened the bijou. Being a girl, I managed to avoid the bijou challenge (the challenge being to drink any at all!), but David and Andrew weren’t that fortunate. Nothing quite like hard spirits with your Sunday lunch at one in the afternoon. Kate’s 16 year old brother was poured a glass by their father, but his mother quickly removed it. All mothers around the world are the same! Then out came the photo albums before a stroll around the park. The great thing about the park is that it’s not just a park, but a museum and an amusement park as well. We had a tour of the museum – a museum about the life of a great soldier from Suzhou who fought against the Japanese but whose life was tragically cut short at the young age of 37 and whose wife is a heroine for being married to such a great hero who did so much for China, etc, etc. Might be in the next edition of the Lonely Planet? Or not! There were a few other people milling about, one of who spoke German so naturally tried to speak in German to us. Bearing in mind that it has been over 6 years since I last spoke any German, my German’s not that much better than my Chinese at the moment! It was pretty cool (and unusual!) anyway. After our brief introduction to Suzhou’s local historical figures we decided to sample some of Suzhou’s activities. Many of you know about extreme sports – hang gliding, bungee jumping, parachuting, etc. China has its own version – water tractors! They are a bit like the little paddle boats you get on lakes in the UK and on the beaches abroad – you cycle like you would a bike, but you are sitting on a big plastic tractor that is full of holes and rusting, and which you are convinced, is liable to collapse at any moment. Although it may have been safer than the paddleboats we went on – you have to avoid the one that’s sunk in the middle of the river! These activities were just a warm up for doing possibly the scariest thing I have ever done in my life – getting on to a Chinese roller coaster. I really should know better, having lived by a fun fair with one of the worst safety records in the UK for most of my life, but figured that I had insurance if anything went wrong. (Although now I realize that if something had gone wrong it would have meant certain death or at least a trip to the local hospital - not a pleasant prospect!). The rust growing on the supports for the coaster, and on the carriages just added to the excitement, but we were more concerned with the carriage leaving the rails whenever a corner in the track appeared. I still enjoyed it, so much so that I tried another roller coaster – one where my cart actually stopped and had to be pushed! We skipped the house of horrors this time, but went on the bumper cars instead. At least in China you are actually allowed to bump the cars into each other (although the concept of a seatbelt is yet to emerge!) Because Kate and her brother and neighbour live in the park, we got to go on all the rides for free, and then we had our photo taken with a big stone elephant at the gate of the park. There was a couple getting their wedding photos taken in the park – when they moved to another place to take a photo, the bride hitched up her skirt to reveal a black pair of trousers under her wedding dress! Maybe I just don’t get it! The three of us are having a competition at the moment, inspired by our trip to the park. We all bought fish from the woman who sells fish outside, and are taking bets on how long they will live. I reckon Dave’s might go the whole two weeks – he has a much bigger fish tank than either me or Andy, but we will have to wait and see. Seeing as I don’t have Pippin the dog anymore, at least now I have my fish to talk to – Sushi and Yuki (Yu meaning fish). Here’s to hoping they last a bit longer than Alcon, my last fish who had a watery grave. These ones are bigger, so if they die they might block up the toilet! The taxi driver must have thought we were all a bit loopy, with our fish in bags and tanks, water splashing everywhere while he drove like a maniac over the huge potholes in the road. Or maybe just another ordinary day in the life of a local taxi man? Next week I should have some lessons, which I am excited about. Last week I taught only two classes, since all of my students had their military training. They spent all day, everyday, marching about the campus, being yelled at by soldiers. Rather them than me! It did look pretty cool though. Anyway, that just about sums up this week in the life of Jo. Hope everything is cool wherever you are. Take care Love and sunshine Jo, Sushi and Yuki!

19.2.04 08:36 Permalink / 3 Comments / comment

Halloween Lessons and My First Date! As Halloween approaches, my lessons have been based on what Halloween means today – what is Halloween, what scares people and how people deal with those fears. Doing a game of “Simon Says” with the students is always a good way to wake them up after their afternoon nap (due to the long – although much shorter than they used to be – two and a half hour lunch break), especially when I can get them to pretend they are ghosts, cats and, my favourite, monsters. The “monsters” theme works well, as I turn around and put on my Halloween mask, and they all laugh, so they seem a little more receptive to the rest of the lesson for, ooohh, about five minutes. Its weird, this is only the second “festival” I have been in China for (the first being Easter, for which nothing happened, with the exception of watching a man walk down the street with a Christmas tree!). This time however, I am determined to celebrate it. On Friday we will have a “Fright Night” – hire a room for the students and show them a scary movie, and with any luck give out prizes to the best dressed. To what extent the students will dress up is anybody’s guess, but I am little annoyed upon speaking to the college, for hiring a room to show a video in is anything but easy. You would think that it is such an easy task, but to hire a room that can hold the same number of students that turned up to the last video evening is anything but easy. To hire a decent room, we must apply to the college at least a week in advance and pay 100 Yuan (about 8 squid) for the room for the evening. (To put this into perspective, an average wage in China is maybe 300 Yuan a month, and the money would come from the student association, for an event designed to improve their English. Go figure!) As it is we will probably have the same problem as last time the student association held a film evening, where there were not enough seats for the 150 students or so who were trying to watch a film on a 14 inch TV with bad sound. Bless the poor things! So for this I am a bit narked! Anyway, my lessons have been on fears, things that are scary, Halloween and dreams. For the “dreams” as a discussion exercise I tried to get the students to envisage a bit of “pop psychology’ that I picked up on my travels (Thanks Warren!) Where emotions attached to certain things that you see resemble people and their characteristics, or your beliefs on a subject. So simple in theory, but when you ask a person to write down their favourite animal 3 times before he tells you that he has no paper you start to get a little frustrated. (For Goodness sake, ask your mate for a piece, you wally! You are about to start teaching in the next year or two – you are not five years old – get a grip! Arghh!). In revenge I set the whole class homework – it should be interesting to see who hands it in – I told them that if I do not receive the homework I will fail them in their end of term exams – being a bitch is great! J ). So my lessons have been fun this week. The weekend was also very enjoyable – from Saturday morning to Sunday night I became a hermit – I refused to answer either my phone or the door – perfect bliss. Sometimes its nice to escape without actually going anywhere. I also went on a date! Friday night I went on my first date in China – I have been here since January, but I am a little choosy. I have a certain criteria that must be met by Chinese men. They must be taller than me (difficult to find!), speak at least some English (even harder!) and not be a student (in case they meet the first two criteria, and it would be a little unethical!). Now, these are not high standards by any means, and yet it takes me 10 months to find such a man? We are not even talking such criteria as GSOH! As it turns out it was a very enjoyable evening and I am only using the term “date” to make myself feel better! I received a phone call on Friday evening asking whether I would like to go out for a meal. I had no idea who it was until after I had hung up the phone (everybody always eats out in China – it is very cheap, sometimes cheaper than cooking for yourself!). He also asked if David and Andrew would like to come out for a meal, but they had both gone elsewhere for the weekend, so I suggested we go out on another evening, but no Friday night it was. So I met Apollo (yes, that was his “English” name!) and spent a very enjoyable evening with him, having a nice “natter” as it were. AND he fulfilled all my three criteria! He’s even invited us (well, me, but I’m saying “us” meaning me, D and A) to have a meal with his family. The need for it to be “us” stems from when David was invited to go to his ex girlfriend’s niece’s birthday – read meet the family you WILL marry into – very scary! Last week was a lot of fun. Aside from my “date” and the umpteen lessons I taught (I covered for Andy on Friday) I got to teach at a primary school. Although I love children (they taste very nice!!!) remind me never, ever, to decide to become a primary school teacher, ever. Please shoot me if I ever get such notions! In just a few hours I think I screwed my ears up for life. You may think what’s so bad about primary schools? I went to a primary school with 269 other students. We screamed a lot, had a lot of fun, and learned a little about different things. Fair enough. Multiply that by ten! I gave a lesson to Class Five (10 year olds). I did the usual round of “Heads Shoulders, Knees and Toes” the “rainbow song” and the “Hokey – Kokey” which was a lot of fun, and was given a serenade by the class on their wooden flutes (equivalent to our recorder clubs!) Delightful. But bear in mind that, on average, each class has 70 (yes, SEVENTY!) students and the school has 2700 “little darlings”! Also bear in mind that most children have no siblings due to the one child policy and are therefore the apple of their parents’ eyes and can do no wrong. Is it just me or is this “Hell” here in the classroom? I was given a huge bouquet of flowers to compensate, which did make my day. I’m such a girl! Give me flowers and I’ll be happy! And that basically brings us back to last weekend. That’s my latest update for the week. Love and sunshine Jo and Sushi

30.10.03 10:38 Permalink / 6 Comments / comment

October Holiday in Yangshou Long time no contact, mostly because I’ve been on holiday (yeah!) and staying - you guessed it - at the Fawlty Towers hotel - how cool is that? So its been a week of random acts of energetic drunkenness (I thoroughly recommend climbing hills at 7-30 in the morning while still drunk cos you haven’t been to bed yet cos you were still drinking at 7 cos when you get to the top of the very high mountain you can take lots of photos, enjoy the view and forget the pain involved cos you were drunk and don’t really remember it!) Or swimming in random rivers after long bike rides and being offered alcohol while you are still swimming. Or going for a meal, enjoying the availability of western foods, order a pizza, put some parmesan cheese on it, find it crawling with little insects which your brother then starts to eat using his chopsticks, complaining and being brought a new pot of cheese to compensate They don’t really get it over here but it s lots of fun. Arrived in Yangshou, after more train journeys from hell, to meet up with Dave's girlfriend and her friend from placement, who I was expecting to be complete mouthy bitches, to find that they are both really nice (and most importantly - normal!) but it seems that to come to china you must be a complete twat. Maybe I just attract them, but I have met the weirdest bunch of foreigners on the planet here, including a Canadian that thought that the Vietnam "conflict" was never actually a war, and a Norwegian weirdo who was completely insane in a kind of mass murderer way. At least I've bought lots of pretty pictures and trashy souvenirs. This week (and a bit) has been spent in the delightful town of Yangshou, near Guilin in Guangxi province. For those of you whose Chinese geography is equivalent to mine (very poor) or even worse, Yangshou is in Southern China. For those who are saying to yourselves, "so what?" I'm staying in the Chinese "Fawlty Towers" hotel. Thankfully the service here is better than its namesake - although we have tried our best to annoy the hotel staff. They didn’t complain when David was setting off firecrackers outside his hotel window, but seemed slightly miffed when he was throwing them in the corridor! At me! At 11-30 at night! Although they were very polite about it. More polite than a few nights previously when I was trying to get into my room, quite drunk (I blame the tequila, others would put it down to the amount of it we drank!) with the wrong key. After trying to explain for five minutes in what I thought was pretty fluent Chinese they just turned to me and said "For Gods sake, please talk in English!" :-) I love the ability to do absolutely anything when you are drunk! We had a bit of a session a few nights ago (well, we are on holiday!), drinking till well past sun up. You realise that it must be time to go to bed when everybody starts setting up their stalls for the day and you still have a beer in your hand! However, being the hard-core souls that we are, we could not finish the night on such a lame note (even after the sure fire cures for hiccups have been tried and tested - my favourite being the "lets get a random person passing to take our photo, works every time!") so we decided to climb a mountain. Naturally! Mark was the initiator of the idea, and Lucy decided to be lame and pull out, wondering what crazy people actually climb mountains at all, let alone at 7 without having gone to bed! So the two of us set off on out mission - probably the most surreal thing I've done this week, walking through a park where all the old women were doing their morning exercises and tai chi, while all the old men were playing boules (in China?) and we started our little trek. We stopped for a while halfway up to watch this random woman run around a little temple (weirdo! Didn't she get dizzy?) before making it to the top and a lovely little temple where we sat precariously on the edge of a wall and discussed the state of the world, whether the Vietnam war was actually a war (long story!) and how crap this country would become if it continued developing at the rate it currently is doing so. Coming back down of the hill and out of the park were these really psycho warrior women, doing martial arts with not one, but two huge swords and scaring the life out of all the passers by. Xena eat your heart out! The point of this story is that my sober state (!) enabled me to do all this and its only now when I look at the mountain and think "Oh, my God!, how on earth did we manage it?" am glad that I was drunk and cant remember the effort (or pain) involved! Yangshou is basically a triangle of streets that are filled with Parisian style cafes and foreigners, where you can while the days away people watching, playing on free computers, shopping for touristy tat (is buying five handbags and three purses in one week a bad thing?), drinking beer and watching DVDs. We have managed to get out on a couple of occasions, but the above pretty much sums up the week I’ve had and its a little weird when you are so relaxed you get bored? On one occasion we hired bikes and went for a ride in the countryside, looking for a place along the river which we had been told was absolutely beautiful and unmissable. Hannah (Dave's current girlfriend) and Lucy (VSO, Hannah's friend from home) had insisted on bikes with baskets and regretted it when their saddle and pedals fell off, and every question became "are we nearly there yet?" (Mark: "10 minutes") or "how much further?" (Mark: "1500 yards") until we found the river (complete with kids who had followed us running nearly all the way there when Lucy had shown a minor interest in the tat that they were trying to sell her, passing the woman with her baskets selling her produce - in one basket oranges, in the other, a toddler!). We parked the bikes and dove in, and it was so beautiful. The experience was improved greatly when the group of Chinese tourists having their picnic, on what can only be described as a floating dock, were laughing at us and inviting us to drink beer with them. Nothing quite like drinking and drowning! :-) The journey to get here was an ordeal in itself. Dave, being a man, had decided it would only be about 12, maybe 15 hours on the train. On getting back from Beijing he had bought us tickets to Zhengzhou, six hours away from where we would be able to get the fast train to Guillin (an hour from Yangshou) after only an hour or so wait for the connection. So we spent 12 hours killing time until our 2 am train. We tried every "pub" in the lonely planet, only to find them all closed, and after a while wandering around in the freezing rain, checked into a hotel and played scrabble for a few hours! Dave jumped onto the bed, and there was this huge resounding "crack" when he realised that the "bed" consisted of a solid hard frame, with a blanket on top! We eventually got on to the train, to discover we couldn't upgrade to sleeper tickets, and there were no seats available for our "unreserved seat" tickets. We spent the next 6 hours in the aisle, sitting on my rucksack, when people weren’t trying to pass, before eventually managing to upgrade and pass out! Eventually we got to Yangshou, thankfully! The next day we try and get tickets to get back to Suzhou, only to find out that due to the high demand for tickets, it would be impossible to get tickets to get us back to work on time, the first available tickets getting us back (hopefully) on Saturday (lessons started Wednesday!). Fingers crossed for a trouble free journey! Especially after my Beijing escapades. Have decided that traveling in China is a nightmare, and the travelers here are all a few sandwiches short of a picnic! I can’t remember the last time I met such a bunch of weirdos in one place. No matter what country they come from they all seem to have a few screws loose in the head. Is that why I am here? The topics of conversation don’t seem to improve either, involving what not to do to lobsters, Chippendales, crabs and eyes, and all the delights that come when people start discussing politics and religion. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! At least it’s been interesting! Five of us went for a foot massage, and I don’t think I’ve ever been put through so much pain. Between the five of us, at any one time somebody was either shouting expletitives, in hysterics, crying, really enjoying the massage, or in my case, doing all at one time. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much I cried! I don’t think Lucy was that impressed with the bruises she was left with, but no pain, no gain and all that! If I ever make it back home there’s a lot I'm gonna be missing out on. I'll be walking down the street and wondering why people aren't taking sly photos of me for the 27th time that day, or being dragged away to join an "English corner" to chat to students asking the cardinal three questions - "where are you from? Do you like China? Can you use chopsticks?" Oh what fun! Anyway, that’s been a week in the life of Jo. Hope you are all living life as much as you can, wherever you may be.

1.10.03 11:20 Permalink / comment

Chinese Nightclubs Tea in the park and ladyboys! Well, if I can fit both of these into one day, I must have had a good day! Friday night was spent doing many things. The English association (English club) had arranged for a video on Friday night and we felt it necessary to show our faces, so me Andy and Dave went along, said a few words before the start of the movie and stayed for the first (of 5!) VCDs, prepared of course, with a few beers to get us through the first 45 minutes of “Gone with the wind”. Before making our excuses and going back to my flat for a home cooked meal. (I have a groovy microwave as well as two hotplates and had been given some gorgeous Fulian ji (spicy chicken) by one of my students. We got out they gin and Jim Beam that had been held in reserve and made a meal of it! Followed by more cucumber beer (goodness knows why we were given such a vast supply of it!) and a couple of VCDs (we need a couple, as half the time they are either all in Chinese or a completely different movie from what the box says!) Saturday arrived, complete with hangover and a visit from Douglas, one of David’s students from last year who now has a job teaching in Hangzhou, a very famous and allegedly beautiful city about 12 hours away, near Shanghai. To celebrate Douglas, David and I went out for lunch, but seeing as it was almost three o clock the restaurant that had David insisted we go to was closed. So we got in to another taxi and, upon discovering that Suzhou actually has a park, with trees and open spaces (a novelty in the city!) we piled there, paid our entrance fee and strolled around. The park was really cool – there were a couple of “boating lakes” (one has plastic water tractors), areas for the smaller children with trampolines and other really cool playthings, a roller skating rink, bumper cars and some other mild fairground type rides. Since half of the roller coasters were pretty rusty we decided that maybe we would choose our deaths to be on other days. We did however go to the “haunted house”. I don’t think I have ever been to a less scary place in my life, and it would have been funny if the displays were not so decrepid and poor. The only scary thing about it was the fact that it was really dark and the floor was uneven, so I kept thinking that I would fall over and crash into some rotten display and get tetanus! Walking around we passed a marquee with hundreds of old people sitting around little tables whiling the day away playing mahjongg, all with their flasks of tea, and a little racetrack. So we had to have a bit of a race in the two little cars (max speed maybe 10 mph!) and the colour Douglas turned was worth any money when he decides to let David drive one car after a few laps and joined me with my Michael Schumacher manouvres! David had warmed up for this entry into the world of high speed motor racing by getting into an electric “noddy car” and taking that for a “spin”! A few hours after our sojourn in the park, and making out excuses for being unable to attend the same viewing of Gone With The Wind on the East Campus (now almost an hour away by bus due to the collapse of the railway bridge) we went out for a nice meal (fish head – dofu soup and frogs were suggested, but not taken up!) followed by our second trip to the Apple Club this week. The thing that I love about this club is that being a girl, you get in for free, and every time we go the boys are given free tickets to get in next time. And the boss of the place is quite a dude as well. We did however have to pay three Yuan (about 25 pence) for the “performance” that would take place that night, and believe me – it was worth every fen! To see this guy come onto the dance floor in full drag, parading around was hilarious, but not half as funny as seeing him dance and snog a couple of the guys that were there, convinced that it was a woman. It was not until he had finished his first song ands he started to speak that for many the proverbial “penny” dropped. Next time he went towards one of the guys he had previously been dancing with they ran a mile. Then it was time for a quick costume change (short yellow pvc dress) and some props. Seeing a fully grown male in a “kinky” pvc outfit, strutting his stuff with live snakes before removing his outfit to show an empty black bra and black pants with a frilly thong on top were not my idea of a turn on. Amusing. But not that attractive. Whatever you makes you happy I suppose! This wasn’t my most disturbing moment of the evening. The problem with Chinese nightclubs, like most public places in china, has to be the toilets. Now its bad enough squatting over a hole in the ground as it is. But when somebody strikes up a conversation with you, you can just about cope. Until they then stand up, look over the (low) partition between where you are squatting and continue the conversation. Do these people not appreciate the need for privacy of bodily functions? Later on the dance floor she insisted on dragging me round by my arm to dance, before proclaiming her love. I got quite scared! Then ran away to the sanctity of the bar and Douglas! She followed! I now have two stalkers! Sunday has, as always, been spent productively, reading books, planning lessons and eating. I don’t know why, but my days always seem to be based around going out for meals. I was supposed to go to the gym this evening, but got a phone call at five saying, come out for a beer. Since I had agreed to go out today with some of my students in the last lesson I had with them, the gym was put on the back burner for the second time in two days and I went out to eat instead. I really like going out for meals with my students – it means I actually get to put names with faces and find out a bit about them. I consider most of my students to be my mates, and most of them are nice as pie. These students this evening however are “bad” girls – all of them drinking beer! Disgraceful behaviour! Last night I did my utmost to get Florence, one of my students from last year and now the manager of the library, drunk, but they all wanted to drink beer this evening. What kind of an influence am I having on them all? One of them has been working for the last 4 years in “business”, whatever that means, so it turns out she is older than me, despite being a first year. The only problem is that her English is really appalling. What kind of an English teacher she will make is anybody’s guess! Currently listening to Andy Peters on BRMB, finding it strange that he is still around, but weird that after CBBC and Edd the Duck he is back to bad local radio. Somebody has to do it though. So that’s been my life over the last few days. Hope yours has been just as exciting. Loads of Love and Sunshine

14.9.03 10:55 Permalink / 1 Comment / comment

Scrapyard Challenge and Baton twirling! You know you need to get yourself a life when: You watch the international finals of the baton twirling and ribbon dancing grand prix. In your lunch break. Followed by scrapyard challenge. In Chinese! You collect your students’ work at the end of the lesson to mark, just to give you something to do in the evening. You have read the new Harry Potter book three times in one week, because you have nothing better to do. You go to the shops everyday, but the fridge is always empty. (Except for beer and half a moldy carrot. Maybe this has something to do with there not being mush in the shops to buy?) You get excited when students come around to visit and bore you with their troubles about whether or not two students can be manager of the library this year. In Chinglish You start imaging that Freddy and Jason in the back of Class 5 are going to grow long fingernails, stripy jumpers, chainsaws and hockey masks and start trying to kill each other. You practice the Chinese you learnt in your last lesson. Trying to fit in such topics as the “Post Office” or “In the bank” into everyday Chinese conversation is more difficult that you can imagine. You watch four movies in less than 48 hours. You buy a skipping rope and take it up as a “hobby” You watch documentaries (in Chinese of course) about Karen Carpenter and her battle with anorexia. Your bath is so clean it sparkles (which is an achievement with a matt plastic bath tub!). You sleep for almost twelve hours a day, just to kill time. Although afternoon naps are a pretty efficient way to spent a three-hour lunch break. You become addicted to minesweeper. You get jealous that your brother receives flowers and random statues from his students on teachers’ day. I want some dead flowers! You take up aerobics! I kid you not. I just have to go and buy a leotard! It was quite a laugh – me and Nancy prancing around like idiots and falling over when we couldn’t quite follow the steps! The audience (there is always an audience!) couldn’t stop laughing! You start writing long emails home, titled “you know you need to get a life when . . . ” It’s not all that bad. Yesterday was Mid-Autumn festival, a big Chinese festival where families get together and eat chicken and mooncakes (and no, they’re not “happy” mooncakes, although I am not really a cake psychologist – they could be ecstatic, or manically depressed, but they are a bit shy with their feelings). So to celebrate we went out for a meal, which thankfully did not involve the dreaded bijou, but lots of cucumber beer. These infamous “mooncakes” have various fillings. I think the rotten duck eggs were my favourite! Following a meal with dishes including many Chinese specialties. I have gotten quite a taste for baby sparrow at the moment, but still don’t really appreciate the delicate flavour of pigs’ ears. Although sheep stomach is quite nice. And to think I was a fussy eater as a kid! The contestants on the last episodes of “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here” have nothing on me! The best news I’ve discovered this week is that I have a “trouble maker” in one of my classes. Thank God! I have a class, or at least a student, with an outgoing personality. And some students who are not all asleep in the afternoon. It makes such a refreshing change. That was the best news of the week, but the best thing to happen is that my computer is now connected to the internet! Hooray! It took nearly two weeks, but at 10-30 last night, it was finally sorted. The poor bloke spent so long trying to connect it, until we realised he was trying to use a wrong telephone number. Bless him. I felt so bad that I gave him the rest of my rotten-duck egg mooncakes. Well, it was one way to get rid of them. Question – how come Mark Owen has a new single out? I thought he had died, when he drowned in his sleep, asphyxiated by the grease in his hair? What is even better than having internet is having broadband! I am living the life over here! The BBC website is no longer censored either – how cool is that? I can listen to the radio back home! And annoy everybody even more with my long rambling emails. Does this mean I now have a life?

7.9.03 11:25 Permalink / 2 Comments / comment

Get me out of here or get me a man! Help – get me out of here or get me a man, pet or jigsaw. I am soooooooooooooo bored. You know what its like when you have absolutely nothing to do and you actually want to do some work? I’ve reached that stage! In the last week since I arrived I have taught two lessons, planned the rest of my lessons for the entire year, cleaned my flat so that it sparkles (its been mopped five times in the last three days and the bath literally sparkles!), washed (and ironed!) my clothes just to give me something to do, gone to the supermarket on many occasions just to buy one thing and get me out of the flat, played five games of scrabble, watched four movies and an interesting documentary about the Athens 2004 Olympics (in Chinese!), read three and a half books, taken up skipping (its good exercise!) and played minesweeper for more hours than I actually want to admit. I’m so bored. Since most of my classes are the new students, they only arrived on the weekend and lessons don’t start till tomorrow, and the lessons we are giving the teachers don’t start until next week. I don’t even have the internet to play around on, as its not connected yet, and I have decided to let Pippin the puppy stay where he is, with the Doc’s assistant somewhere in a neighbouring province. Maybe I’ll get another goldfish this afternoon, which may last a little longer than the last one if I feed it this time! At least this afternoon I should have a lesson – my first Chinese lesson of the term, the only problem being that I cant remember a word of Chinese and don’t have the motivation to learn any at the moment. God, am I whinging or what? I’m going to the “gym” this afternoon with Nancy which should also be quite interesting seeing as I cant remember the last time I felt this unfit! We went and had a look at the “gym” on the weekend on the way to arranging Andy and Nancy’s Erholt lessons. Why they want to learn to play an instrument that sounds like a cat is having its innards removed is anyone’s guess, or maybe they also want to find a way to kill their time. At least I’m far enough away from their flat so I don’t have to hear their practicing!

5.9.03 11:27 Permalink / 1 Comment / comment

Back to Suzhou Hello Kiddies! Hope all is groovy! Have finally made it back to Suzhou, which in itself is a miracle in three parts – the fact that I came back to China at all; the four flights and a train journey that were involved in getting back here; and the fact that the luggage that I was carrying weighed almost two thirds my own body weight. Those SAS Commando troops have it easy! So, back here and the city has changed so much. No more it is a tiny (comparatively – 3 million is nothing over here!) backwater rural faming community (was it ever?) but now it’s got a Baghdad meets Canary Wharf in the tropics kind of vibe to it. I almost forgot what I was missing out on. They’ve done a lot of construction in my absence (and even more demolition!). There are lots of new restaurants and even (are you ready for this?) – a KFC! It is amusing to go in, as it has only just opened and all these Chinese people are going in, pushing their way to the front of the queue and standing there, trying to make out what all the fuss is about and what kind of strange food is this? I would imagine that very few people here have ever left Anhui province, if even Suzhou. Yes, western influences have infiltrated every corner of the globe, even in Anhui province, and we have fast food! I’m still not sure if this is a good thing, but with KFC here (wow! – you do not realize the significance of those three little letters!) what will be next? I, personally, am hoping the next western influence will be a Carrefour (the huge French hypermarkets that they have in the big cities), or failing that, a shop where you can buy cheese. I have only been here 24hrs but I feel that the cheese craving may arise within the next week or two. Loads of other restaurants have either disappeared (i.e., nearly all of the street stalls) which may just be a temporary thing (although it is nice actually being able to walk down the street a little easy, but its still dodging death just walking out of the front door!) or changed from being mediocre edible places to “porridge” shops (sloopy rice, I think?). I have not made it up the “high street” yet but who knows what I will uncover. Already I have spotted a huge new building that, shock horror, is not covered in awful 1960s style wall tiles, but instead has a very modern glass / steel look to it. Amazing. Maybe you don’t get the excitement about a lack of wall tiles either – at some stage I’ll get some photos. I’ll also get some photos of the “war zone” - the main road crossings have huge trenches metres wide and deep across them, the road in front of the college is now a lots quieter thanks to the collapse of an under- bridge pass, and as a result all the roads that used to be two lane have twice as much traffic on them and, with the exception of where the trenches have been dug, are now four lane/ one lane nightmares of noise, dust and confusion. Maybe I have already mentioned that to drive in china you only need a lot of money, and a test that involves driving in a circle and using your horn. I am looking forward to driving a police van again this weekend with Lee’s police friend, as is Dave, which could be interesting (especially since its still illegal for me to drive over here, maybe more so for Dave whose never taken his driving test!). I suppose all this means life’s back to the usual. Last night we had a meal with some of the teachers (in a new restaurant) which, ultimately involved bijou. I had forgotten how awful the stuff is. Andy managed to cry off the bijou, claiming sickness and Dave managed to “dispose” of much of his into other vessels. I managed to ensure that not that much went into my glass, but with all the toasts and drinking to each other that is customary it was still too much! The only other female teacher there had the right idea though – she was drinking milk and toasting everyone! Even the college itself has changed. The entire English department is now based in the old campus so no longer will I have to get up at a silly time to get the 30 minute bus to the other campus (maybe it takes longer now the bridge has collapsed!) but take a leisurely stroll of a hundred metres out of my front door to the classroom. I am so happy about this, but many of my students from last term are not so happy. The accommodation and classrooms over on this site are hideous; they have existed a lot longer and are much more cramped, dirty and smelly. Oh well. There are also around 30 new teachers in the department as the college is trying to increase its status. This term the new intake of students is around 900. Of these, three hundred are coming to the English department, and I get to teach them all, being the lucky teacher that I am. I am actually quite happy about this, as the new students are always really sweet, unsure of themselves and tend to be a little more confident when they start, so getting any person in the class to speak is not as much of a mission. The only problem is that a lot of the time I have enough of a problem remembering my own name, so how am I going to cope with 300 new students and a hundred old students (new to me) is anybody’s guess! Again, like last term, most of the new students will want English names. It was hard enough finding 80 last time around, so I am going to need some help from you lot on this one. I need 250 girls names and 50 boys names by Monday. I have some themes in mind, but have already done the Neighbours and Eastenders cast and crew, and never really watched Emerdale or Corrie. I need help!!! Answers on a postcard please, although on second thoughts, the postal system over here is rubbish – just email! This term Dean Hu has decided that we are also going to teach the teachers (my what fun that will be!) He thinks that by us being part of the college, it’s a great opportunity for the teachers to improve their English skills, which is a valid point. The problem is that they are being forced to come to our lessons (given specifically for their benefit) when they may have other things to do. It could be, um, interesting. Does this bump my status up from college teacher to “professor”? Do I become a lecturer, with all that follows (the strange, unintelligible grating voice, the tweed smoking jackets - with arm patches! – and braces)? Most of the teachers are quite young anyway, but I’m only little. It should be interesting! I had forgotten what being back here was like. My flat is still standing (although my own penicillin is growing in some corners) and being able to empty out my rucksack and do some washing was such a nice feeling. My garden has grown into a jungle, but I am unsure what to do about it. I have strange creepers growing up outside my window, but when attempting to cut them down I realized that they were supported by strings and had flowers growing on them. I don’t know what the proper etiquette is here in China for wanting to cut down plants that are in your own garden but which somebody else planted. Maybe I should ask around on this one? It is nice to be a superstar again, although the feeling will wear off quite quickly, I’m sure. On going to the supermarket yesterday we had our usual crowd of stares and followers. It’s also nice to meet up with some of my old students again, but I am talking to them, always thinking – are you my student or somebody else’s? And if you were my student last term, what on earth is your name? How I am going to cope this term should be fun to find out. I have not got Pippin back yet, partly because I have absolutely no idea where he is or whether or not he made a nice meal for somebody! My neighbour was asking after him this morning and I had no idea how to reply. Hopefully I’ll pick him up in the next few days, but he will probably not have any idea who I am, or remember any of the English I taught him – “sit”, “stay”, “heel”, etc (not that he ever listened before!). Until then I can enjoy the quiet and cleanliness of my flat, as it won’t last long. When I say “quiet” I use the term loosely – the trains still make one hell of a racket, 24/7, with their huge bellowing horns, but at least I don’t get the car horns so much anymore. Evenings here can, as always be quite entertaining. As there is so little to do in the city, we had to make our own entertainment. I have to admit, it has been a long time since I last spent an evening playing scrabble, so to compensate for the intellectual stimulation that it provided it seemed only appropriate to kill some brain cells, although this time not involving alcohol (which makes a change), but with the latest delights that Hollywood has to offer. “Freddy Vs Jason” it was then. Nothing quite like a bit of gratuitous violence and copious amounts of tomato ketchup before bedtime, not to mention the stripy jumpers, manicured fingernails and appearances from yet more members of Destiny’s Child that want to make the leap from pop princess to actress. I haven’t laughed so much in a while, but not really the best of films to ensure pleasant dreams.

2.9.03 11:29 Permalink / comment

 [next page]