johannainchina
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God Life Is Dull!
Well, after faffing abbout for a few weeks and catching up on my daytime tv, have finally found myself a job and am starting to question my return to the uk. Aside from being back in time to see the last few episodes of Sex and the City everything is pretty dull and everyone is just going about their dull little lives complaining that everything is dull and bad and evil (which it is!) and little else.
Maybe the problem is that I have returned back to my previous workplace. This is the third time I have been working for the RAC doing temp work, and I seem to be doing the rounds of the different departments, and yet little has changed. The people that call in (I am on the phones - and all the people either have received a very simplified form which clearly states what they should do and they are incapable of following instructions (eg, "I just got this form and it says to fill it in and send it back. What should I do?" Duhhh! And these ones always speak in heavy Westcountry or Glaswegian accents!) or want to yell at me (again in Glaswegian accents! Why they all seem to come from Glasgow is anybodys guess!) Needless to say its not very exciting, but I know that when I hand in my notice all that would happen is that i would go back to the agency and end up in a different department here. Such is my exciting life! Long live free tea and coffee!
I suppose the upside of being in work again is that I get paid. Hooray! And I am having the weirdest experiences of deja-vu and freakiness that my head just cant cope. Not only have I spent the last 45 minutes listening in to an old biddy going on and on and on about something (I fail to remember what, but I dont think it really matters that much if she receives a free brolly or something!) but I have had a blast from the past.
You know when you meet someone and you think you recognise them but are not sure from where or why? Well, I was on my coffee break and there was this guy that I recognised and he recognised me, but I couldnt quite place him, but thought he was someone I used to work with last time I was here. Turns out he was an ex who I havent seen for about 5 years and it was so satisfying that I could be really smug in that he recognised me and I couldn't recognise him. Is that wrong?
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Spaced Out
Well, Jo is no longer somewhere exotic and weird but has made it back to Thornbury for the weirdest experiences and spaced out-ness that have ensued.
I dont know why supermarkets are the scariest places, especially since most young people in the UK, including me, have worked in one at some time before the age of 20, but they are scary. Walking into my local one was just as if I had never been away and had just woken up from the weirdest dream. Maybe it was the long flights and lack of sleep and the lasting effects of sleeping tablets combined with allcohol and the jet lag, but i was such a space cadet on returning and couldnt stop giggling like an escapee from the local looney bin. And the supermarket was the cherry on top - just so completely overwhelming that you could choose from 97 different types of cheese and 10 types of muesli and all such weird and wonderful edible food with no dog heads in sight.
One of the weirdest things about being back is that there is so much that I wasnt expecting. Like the weather. I figure its almost March, it should be getting warm by now, but no - the day i return its freezing and I am wandering around heathrow in my sandals, accentuated by my airplane socks. A fashion statement Im sure, but one that will catch on? And then it started to snow. In a really mad way, the entire town i covered in a heavy layer of snow and there are kids everywhere making snowmen and having snowfights. And I was expecting spring!
Then there is the food. My parents are still on the Atkins diet, which involves not eating anything besides meat and vegetables and only some vegetables at that, so since I have been back all I have been eating is salad and stir fry and I am still craving that bacon sarnie three days after my return!
I went shopping today, which has been fantastic. Not only can i actually fit into the clothes here, as most of the clothes in asia come in two sizes - tiny or very tiny, but now I feel all 'normal' as in the shops not only are there clothes that actually fit me without having to go to the boys section, but they actually fit me well and I have somehow managed to go down 2 clothes sizes since I left last year, which can only be a good thing. Yippee! (Here's hoping it lasts!)
In the same way that everything has changed, nothing has changed. The pubs are all the same with the same people, just fewer of them as everyone has slowly moved away, and driving is something that I had forgotton but picked up again, just like riding a bike, but scarier when all these cars come at you from nowhere.
After watching Neighbours twice i feel that i have caught up on everything of importance that has happened in the last year, although it might take a bit longer for Eastenders!
Its so weird to be home, and so nice, but my stir fry is calling.
Take care
Love and sunshine
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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!
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Day 3
Great Wall of China - from Jiangshinling to Simitai
"You are not a great man unless you have set foot on the Great Wall" said Chairman Mao (or something similar!) We took quite a few steps! Although the plan was originally going to Simitai only a last minute change of plan took us on the same route as a load of other Westerners.
We asked the hostel for a wake up call at 7 am, which we got at 11pm (or were they asking if we wanted hookers?) but such is life! That night we heard UK (Scottish) voices in the hallway outside - I almost lept straight out of my bed to go and speak to someone other than Dave!
The bus took 3 1/2 hours, but despite a numb bum, it was quite a nice ride - saw children going to school, dead fish, rabbits. pheasants (???) and all displayed on hooks by the roadside and random high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere. At one point it looked as if Vegas was going up - a big new development in the middle of nowhere.
At the Wall we were accompanied by a flock of natives who showed us the path and then accompanied us almost all the way to Simitai. It was quite some trek! The first climb to the entrance of the wall was enough to give us heart failure! It didn't stop! For some reason I fail to understand, we were climbing constantly, despite the wall going up AND down over the ridges. Some of it was a hands and knees job, muttering "I will get to the next tower, I will, I will!"
It was really weird - semi picturesque although the land seemed so barren and dead, and yet at times it was reminiscent of the feeling I got when I went to the Grand Canyon, years ago; "Oh my God, is this for real???". When we got to Simitai, the section of the wall went completely crazy - it just went up, and up, and up! Didn't fancy climbing that far!
Did experience the "You need to pay for everything if we can charge for it we will!" that I had heard about: entrance fee at Jingshanling, fee to finish walk at Simitai, fee to cross the bridge, fee to go to the toilet, fee to have cup of tea (Neccessary expenditure, and justified!), but since I expected it, I can't really complain.
One guy on the walk was this huge black American with his tiny Chinese girlfriend. He kept complaining that his feet/ knees/legs body was hurting. This tiny Chinese girl had just done the same walk as us - in four inch high stilletos! Crazy!
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Day 2
So, day 2 and I think I forgot to mention all about the changing of the guards, the tireless walking and the (thoughtful) revalation that they have Cadbury's here (and cheese!).
Day 2 was a late starter, but had yum yum chinese dinner to rival any chinese restaurant back home. So more relief!
The weather much colder today - no fishermen on the banks of the river.
Bought tickets for Guillin (I think?) at railway station - they have escalator attendants (what a job!) - here it seems that since there are 1.3 billion most of them are young (the old hide away!) and most people need a job to occupy their time and give them some sort of income. Despite the lack of cost-effectiveness there seems to be a train of thought going that "why get one person to do a job, when three people can share it between them?". There seem to be a prevalence of "bobbies on the beat" who seem to congregate to prevent "jay-walkers". Others merely point to signs that say "stay back from the road - wait for the bus on the pavement"! What a job! At least china doesn't appear to suffer from high unemployment. Only poverty (*note written by Dave in my diary - "yes it does - this is starting to be a chronic problem and will become worse").
Went to Beihei park today - a restored (read: left burned, derelict and with lots of work work to make it look like it would have done 100+ years ago) to its C18th origins. However it was V pretty. The big lake was all frozen over with kids (and adults!) on what looked like old fashioned wooden sledges "skiing" with poles accross the ice. It was quite sweet to watch!
have learnt how to count to five - Dave has just taught me - ee, ar, san, si, woo. Hooray! Rob would be pleased! I'll have to email him to let him join in the fun. Maybe he would like to borrow the tapes!? (I used to drive Rob to work, listening to my "learn to speak chinese tapes!)
From the top of the island in the lake (via a steep climb) were more pagodas and wonderful views over the city, enhanced by the rivers and lakes and land all being frozen. I could see accross the Forbidden Palace - I thought Tianammen Square was large! - the palace is more like a city than anything, going on for acres and acres. Will have to explore - maybe another time. Beijing still V big.
Tommorow - the Great Wall!
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Bye Bye to China?
I am afraid this will probably be the last china-related article (and its not even that!) for the time being as Johanna is no longer in china and is currently somewhere in Asia on her way home.
I am sure there will be more to come shortly, as anyone who has been living in China knows it will be a place to return to again and again, but for now, take care of yourselves and happy new year!
p.s. happy birthday ben and lisa!
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