School here is a funny thing

So the kids think they have it hard - they get a 2 and a half hour lunch break!!!

But, they do start school at 7.35am. The whole get up early and then have an afternoon nap feels slightly counter productive. I presume the lunchtime downtime exists because its so bloody hot here at that time, there's no point in trying to do anything so you might as well sleep.  It just means that the kids get up really early and don't go to bed until 11pm every night so they are being deprived of the '8 hours sleep that teenagers need'- all that sleep research obviously doesn't wash here! It also means that like all teenagers across the world all they want to do all day is sleep - i've lost count of the number of desks i've slammed to wake them all up!

Also the teachers all seem to have pupils who come and collect the teacher's latop and then carry it up to the classroom, while the teacher merrily walks along beside them - that didn't really make sense to me! But the kids do seem to be treated a little bit like slaves and second class citizens at times.

Some of the girls also seem to have taken to wearing purple contact lenses!  The coloured lense is also bigger than their normal iris so it makes their eye, so it looks really strange - this really messes with my head! I was speaking to one of the girls the other day (who was wearing this weird purple lenses) and I literally couldn't stop looking at her eyes - its a great way to get people to maintain eye contact!

And finally, for the time being. They started playing music from all the other accommodation blocks during lunch time the other day.The song they chose to blare out first was 'Fuck You' by Lily Allen - the irony of this song being blared out in a school in China was not lost on me. While nobody else batted an eyelid, I couldn't stop laughing (I must have looked mad) - the powers that be clearly don't know what it means!

G x

The egg mystery is solved!

So the reason I got given two eggs this morning is actually rather lovely.

About a month ago one of the teachers had a baby boy (congratulations to them).

So it's customary in China, when the baby is about 1 month old, to give out eggs - which have been covered with red dye - to your colleagues (and probably friends and family) to celebrate. The red dye is used because the colour red is a symbol of happiness and celebration in China and the egg is presumably because babies start off as eggs....? or maybe the first person to do it was a chicken farmer...! I'll let you ponder that one.

On a very practical western note though, surely if you have a 1 month old baby the last thing you want to be doing is mass producing boiled eggs and the sheer investment in eggs - think how many nappies (or bottle of wine) that would buy.

Just saying.

G x

The weekend

So even though i've been here for 4 weeks now, I still feel like I haven't seen very much of my surroundings. It gets dark here about 6.30/7pm so there isn't really any time to go out after work and do some exploring which is sad. This means that I only really get the chance to play tourist at the weekends. 

 A few weeks ago after, we had a practise china lesson,  we had a very casual afternoon in Guangzhou, which involved sampling some of the (plentiful) roadside restaurants and having a wander to Canton Tower. We didn't go up the tower (we will save that for another day) but we got close enough for me to decide that the massive gaps between the floor sections (you can see the big sections inside the covering in the photo) is cheating when it comes to building a very tall tower! (Empty space shouldn't be counted)

Canton Tower up close

Not entirely sure what this is but I thought it was pretty, it was in the park next door to the tower.

On the next day, after a failed attempt to find the bus to take us to Xiqiao Mountain National Park - There's a big Buddha on the hill! (Even the tourist office didn't have a clue!), we decided to go the Zu miao ancestral temple in Foshan. 

If you are into martial arts then this is the place to go - there is a lot on Ip Man, Bruce Lee and martial arts - don't quiz me i've forgotten it all already! But the temple itself is quite big as well as old. It was a nice place to spend the day because there was a Confucius temple, Cantonese Opera, Lion dancing as well as lots of beautiful buildings to look at.

I'm a bit of a sucker for pretty old buildings so I loved just standing admiring the contrast of the old temple with the modern city surrounding it as well as the amazing details in the buildings.

I loved the detail on the roof of this part of the temple.

I loved the colours and the shapes and the details and pretty much everything about it!

Cantonese Opera - it was an experience!

The wishing tree

The highlight of the day was definitely the lion dancing. We were roasting sitting in the shade so the men in the suits must have been cooked! I didn't expect to get to see anything like this until Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) so this was a nice surprise. It's amazing how they get into character and act like animals (quite dog like), they went round the audience and snuggled up on the benches next to the audience - the bum wiggling they did entertained me no end. The detail in the costumes is beautiful as well.

I included a video - not quite the most impressive bit but good to see none the less. Enjoy!

I also learnt that the mid autumn festival (which happened a few weeks ago) is timed to coincide with when the moon is at its biggest for this time of year - I did think the moon was very large and bright when we were in Guangzhou taking pictures but I thought that was just a coincidence (and something to do with being in China)...yes that makes me sound very simple but in all fairness I know nothing about astronomy.  It's always funny learning the ins and outs of Chinese culture after the event!

G x

Just to prevent any confusion...

So before I came to China I went a little bit crazy (with some help from Mum) in regards to collecting things to decorate my new classroom. The look I was going for was going to be crazy Scottish lady in the very Scotland heavy decorated classroom. Alas, no such decoration has taken place. Sadly, I don't have my own classroom here. In China the teachers move round the classrooms rather than the pupils moving round every lesson - it must be hellishly boring stuck in the same classroom for 9 hours a day. In a bid to over come this, the seating plan changes every two weeks - nothing like seeing a different corner of the classroom to enrich your life - it really confused me the first time it happened!

Anyway so due to my lack of classroom I was left with lots of British postcards, giant maps of the world and UK and some trinkets - therefore I needed an outlet for all of this stuff.  

After giving away some of the bigger posters that I didn't need I decided to decorate my desk - just to really make my mark.

This was the result...

I'm quite pleased - I like coming into my brightly decorated desk every morning.

Close up of Queeny - this is my favourite magnet ever!

It is funny though because all the 'real' teachers have desks full of textbooks and marking and teaching tool whereas, when I leave at the end of the day all that remains is an empty desk with a Nessie and a mouse sitting on it - I clearly have better desk organisation! (and no crap to keep).

I came into cultural sacrilege the other morning....

What kind of twisted individual creates this sort of cultural carnage! It did make me laugh though. If Nessie and Mr Scotland (that's his name I've decided) can create some welcome homework distraction to one of the teachers children I am more that happy! I'm not entirely sure what the queen is supposed to be doing - they clearly didn't know who she is!

So after my decoration i've been left with a drawer-full of tartan and spurtles - i'm well equipped for departing gifts next year! 

G x

p.s. there is NO political message in my desk decoration, a political analyst would have a field-day. I was very aware of the fact though that it just so happened this decoration took place on the 18th September!

So i've just been given some eggs....

So a man just came round and gave me some eggs - not a clue why!

He had a giant box full with freshly boiled eggs (they are still hot) and went round and gave every teacher two - that's some extra protein at lunch sorted.

They have had some kind of red vinegar poured over them so the taste could be interesting. I've had soy sauce coated eggs before which were quite nice....

This is what I love about China - it's full of surprises!

G x

Swings and roundabouts

So next week is National Day, which means we get week off - but there's catch. We are getting our week off from lunchtime on September 30th until lunchtime on October 7th - weird or what! To top it off, i've just been told we have to work this weekend to make up for having the days off - that's going to be a bummer!

That means a 9 day working week for me this week- it's like being back in the co-op!

This definitely means I need to get my act together and work out what on earth I am going to do for National week. That in itself is going to be a challenge because trains immediately get booked up here (you can only book two weeks in advance)and anything remaining, including flights, are going to be pricey!

There are too many places to choose from!!!

G x

So guess what I googled...

Maybe don't read this if you are about to eat...

I genuinely just googled 'How to use a squat toilet in China'. Thankfully the results were useful (and cartoonised).  The pictures of the injuries some people have sustained squatting on top of a western toilet are interesting though (as long as you're not squeamish). I feel like my childhood refusal to pee in a bush during days out has come back to bite me.

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Squat-Toilet (useful life skill to have in the bank).

Using public toilets here are an experience. Anywhere within a 50m radius of one (even the female ones) fills your nostrils with that lovely  (horrific) urinal smell you get when you walk past some dodgy men's toilets - not pleasant.

I will also forever see toilet paper as a luxury - no matter how close the texture is to sandpaper (ok maybe I won't find that luxurious). Toilet paper is not something you get in the toilets here - it's a case of bring your own or wallow in your own unprepared-ness. You also have to put your toilet paper in a bin and not down the hole -something I can't get used to - I hate to think how fragile the plumbing is here if it can't cope with a bit of toilet paper! Heaven forbid you drop anything valuable or important down there - you ain't getting it back!

I genuinely used a toilet the other day and saw the building in a whole new luxurious and lavish light purely because they had toilet roll and soap! I can see that becoming the gold standard for anywhere I visit - if there's toilet roll and soap its getting at least a 3 star rating!

Soap is another thing that they don't seem to believe in - hand hygiene is not peddled here like it is in the west! I'm not quite sure how the population aren't all doubled over with some nasty infection of some sort!  Maybe you don't get hand soap because due to the sheer numbers of people it's not an economically viable option but I thought soap would at least be a teacher perk! I can see my desk and all my bags growing a collection of toilet paper and soap.

Here they also don't have the same legislation that there is in the UK in regards to having toilets in restaurants. You go to the fanciest restaurants here and they don't have their own toilet - you have to go along the street to one of the public ones. No wonder there are some many eateries here - they don't have the extra expense of plumbing in a toilet! Therefore every toilet passed is playing chicken with your bladder!

Going back to people squatting on western toilets. My students were clueless when I tried to describe a western toilet to them - surely they must have seen one. This means that a picture of a toilet is definitely cropping up in one of my lessons and probably a how to guide on how to use one - I now feel like it's my public duty!

So in summary, don't forget you hankies and use every toilet you see!

G x

16 classes down, 3 to go...

So unbelievably I only have one day left in what is my third week of teaching! Happily the busy days just fly past - a 40 minute lesson feels like 20 (I can only hope the pupils feel the same). This weeks lesson has been on sports - the word basketball just seems to engage the whole class (the whole country seems obsessed with the sport). Not surprisingly they know who David Beckham is (they know him for playing football and being handsome - the only two answers I ever got). And happily they know who Andy Murray is, but it took me a while to work this out because they all pronounced his name Moorah - I thought they were saying something in Chinese! oops.

So this week we have had 2 trial Chinese lessons in two different language schools - who knew picking a language teacher would be so difficult! (and we still haven't decided who to go with). Hopefully we will sort it out soon though without having to resort to rock, paper, scissors....

I also had to use my brollie for the first time on Wednesday to protect me from the rain instead of the sun - I thought the end of summer was here! Thankfully not though, due to the typhoon Kalmaegi, which has passed through Hong Kong in the last few days the weather has been a little bit more Scottish than normal - thankfully no horizontal rain though! Today, normal service was resumed and it's hot, hot, hot again...i've got used to sweating everytime I move outwith 10 ft of an air conditioner.

In other news, i'm definitely on the verge of developing a soya milk obsession. Normal cows milk is quite expensive here (and really hard to get in large quantities). In contrast, soya milk is very popular here (but they add A LOT) of sugar - so i'm definitely not buying it from the restaurants. In cafe next door to my flat though has a really good gelatinous soya milk thing, there's a different topping everytime - i'm in love with it. Tonight's topping was  mango, passionfruit, some sort of little bean in a chocolate type sauce and peanuts - it was awesome.

G x

p.s. i think i've drunk too much soya milk for one day...

The big day...

So whilst the 18th is almost over in this country, I can only imagine it's a very different story at home.

It really surprised me today when TWO of my classes asked me about the referendum - I didn't think they would have heard about it all the way over here in China.  It turns out that the events in our little country have made the national news over here - so much so that my kids, (who don't get access to the internet during the week)  know all about it. One of them knew all the prediction stats and everything. Saying that though, one of my kids at 10am this morning asked what the result was...I had to tell him that sunny Scotland was still asleep at that time, but that i'd keep him posted.

To be honest though, the thing that impressed me the most is that they remembered (from my lesson 3 weeks ago) that i'm Scottish - there's hope yet that at least some of the stuff I tell them sticks and doesn't just go in one ear and out the other!

G x

Happy National Teacher's Day!

So today is National Teacher’s Day here in China.  As far as I can tell this just means that pupils give presents to their favourite teachers and say ‘Happy Teacher’s Day’ – good to see the concept is simple and straight forward.  I’m not sure how big a deal it is but it looked like there were about 10 ex-pupils on campus giving one of their old teachers some pretty swanky gifts – teachers in the UK are obviously missing a trick here.

I decided not to get my hopes up that I would receive any priceless jewels from my students – it is only week two, people recognising me as a bona-fide teacher and wishing me “Happy Teacher’s Day, Teacher” was enough for me. Saying that though I did get a gift, which was a lovely surprise – A jar of stars!  This very sweet pupil has spent her holiday weekend folding A LOT of strips of paper into tiny little, perfectly shaped, origami stars and filling a jar with them – I love how beautiful and colourful it is. I think she was pretty concerned I wasn’t going to like it and has made me promise to take it home with me – that’s a big promise to make when there’s a luggage weight limit at stake! 

I know that statement makes me sound ungrateful but I’m genuinely blown away by the fact she decided to spend all that time crafting this gift for me when I’d only taught her once and I hadn’t even had a one-on-one conversation with her….

After I wrote this part of the post, I got two more lovely gifts from my following two classes. I got a little pot plant from one accompanied by lovely note and a doodle drawing of me (it was quite good). My last class of the afternoon gave me a carnation and a card. How sweet is all of that after only having taught them once! I was also after a little pot plant, so after a week they obviously have me sussed!

My Teacher's Day gift haul - I was impressed!

The lovely note attached to my plant

Today the teacher’s celebrate Teacher’s Day by having a meeting this afternoon. I think (and hope) it’s different from usual meetings, from what I’ve been told there’s more singing and dancing performances (from both teachers and pupils) than your everyday bog-standard meeting.  Sadly though it doesn’t look like Tom and I will be going because the internet man is booked then to come and fix our internet – this time internet trumps culture (I’m a little upset about that to be honest – Teacher’s Day only comes once a year!)

In other news the corruption of Chinese imaginations is going better today – they are getting into the swing of dreaming of the perfect school (what a relief).  Yesterday definitely taught me that giving students examples of what you want them to do is the key to success (and not getting a reputation for being a boring teacher).

G x

Ps. So I missed out on the teacher’s day meeting AND the internet man fixed Tom’s internet but not mine – I’m not impressed!

Not such a strong start

So this week’s teaching didn’t start out so well.  When I was planning my lesson I seemed to forget that I am teaching High School children who don’t have a choice but to come to class and not adults doing a degree in advanced English – I was far too ambitious!  It all started so well when the pupils clapped when I walked into the room; obviously last week’s lesson had left a good impression…this week’s probably not so much.  I’m definitely going to have to fight to fix the fun reputation that oral English classes have.  In a bid not to treat my students like idiots - and try and push them a little bit to use more English - I massively overshot the mark, to the point where I was running out of English words they understood to try to explain what I meant.  Not the best way to start back after the long weekend.  So by lesson number 3 the lesson had changed tact dramatically, and definitely for the better – by the time I’ve created some examples of what I want them to do we will be cooking on gas.

One thing that has struck me about Chinese pupils is that they don’t seem to understand the concept of using their imagination and dreaming things up. This was something I thought they would be dying to do after their full days of strict lessons and studying - clearly I was wrong.  Maybe it’s a lost in translation thing, but when I was at school if we were told to dream up something crazy we would take the task and run wild with it.  Here they just re-produce what they already know, whether that be an invention that already exists e.g. iphone or regurgitating their school timetable instead of dreaming up their ideal, perfect one (like i’m going to try and get them to do this week)…

Time will tell if I can corrupt the imaginations of Chinese school children or not.

G x

A holiday, already!

So this weekend just passed was mid-autumn festival. This is a national holiday and celebrated with family, friends and food – like most things in China.  It is customary at this time of year to give moon-cakes to people you know as a gift.  I can’t decide how to describe a mooncake and no-one seems to be able to tell me how they are made and/or what they are made from.  They are about 4-5cm in diameter and VERY heavy for their size. They have quite a dense texture and their fillings vary from savoury to sweet - my mentor gave me one with egg and lotus inside it.  It was nice but I’m glad I wasn’t inundated with them – they are heavy going so I definitely would have had to give them away.

So in honour of this festival we got Monday and Tuesday morning off from school – a 3 and a half day weekend is a good way to be introduced to a new job!

As a result of the mini holiday, our shiny new metro cards have been used to death (well almost). After dinner and a catch up with the other ELAs on Friday night (they had got very concerned that we hadn’t been collected from the train station since they hadn’t heard from us all week since we had no internet), we spent the rest of the weekend familiarising ourselves with our new home city.

Saturday

Saturday morning started out with an ‘English breakfast’ for those that were hung-over. From this awful culinary experience I’ve learnt just to embrace local cuisine and don’t even attempt something that is trying to be western – it only ends in disappointment and a much smaller bank balance.  I think kung-po chicken will satisfy anyone’s need for fried food better than a dodgy cooked breakfast in this country. 

I thought this sign was nice and colourful

After the disappointing start on the food front, we left the confines of Foshan for the neighbouring city of Guangzhou – the third largest city in China!  We nosied in past the home of some of the other ELAs – I think we’ve all been pretty lucky on the accommodation front, and then went exploring. We walked through some rugged streets and past, what I would call, authentic China – no glass skyscrapers here! The Pearl River runs through the centre of Guangzhou so we decided to make that our destination because it looks quite pretty at night when it’s all lit up. Our day basically consisted of walking around and seeing what treasures our new home city contains – there are plenty to discover.  We didn’t tick anything off the tourist trail, except seeing the canton tower (second highest building in the world) but that was never the aim.  It seems to take a long time to walk anywhere here; the place is just so huge and the heat makes 1 hour feel like 3 – definitely some adjusting to do!  

China is definitely going to be a year full of firsts. This weekend’s first was finding a pet shop in a shopping mall. They had the cutest little mini rabbits – if common sense hadn’t kicked in I would definitely now be the proud owner of a cute little rabbit (the only thing that stopped me was knowing I’m only here for 10 months). I might just have to get a stuffed toy replica and pretend it’s real when I feel the need for a crazy moment.

(Another first was seeing a bra hanging on a telephone line and the matching knickers in the tree below – I would have loved to hang around to how she retrieved those!)

Saturday’s chilled out vibe continued with dinner consisting of fish balls from the 7Eleven (these were fish meat made into ball shapes) and some beer, eaten on the riverside – not so classy but just what we needed.

Some pictures of Guangzhou....

Canton Tower

Sunday

On Sunday, Tom and I decided to explore some of Foshan – we felt we hadn’t ventured further than our 5 minute walk to and from School all week.  We had seen ‘The financial hi-tech zone’ and ‘Qiandeng lake’ marked on the metro line map and decided these sounded like good places to start the adventure.

So, ‘the financial high tech zone’ will one day be very high tech, but currently it’s a building site.   We had a niggling feeling from the start that this would be the case but we wanted to check it out anyway, our dream careers may have been just outside the door – not surprisingly this wasn’t the case! The pavements and roads just end abruptly and there aren’t really any buildings to speak of yet – in a year’s time I’m sure that will be a very different story! Not surprisingly we found yet another shopping mall (we walked through it purely for the air conditioning).

After that we headed onto Qiandeng lake. We did ideally think we could walk there, since it was only the next metro stop on, but after walking in what we thought was the right direction and coming to a dead-end, we decided the metro was the wisest option (we aren’t fluent enough to get ourselves un-lost anywhere yet).  My vision of Qiandeng lake was that it would be the Chinese version of Central Park – maybe not surprisingly, I was wrong about that.  The lake and park that surrounds it is nice but it’s 100% man-made – no natural beauty here.  This really shouldn't have surprised me given that basically everything in Foshan appears to have appeared within the last 10 years. The lake is basically a giant boating pond but you can hire peddle-oes and spend the afternoon floating about which would be quite nice.  There are also bikes that accommodate 4 people, which would be fun with friends and families. It would be a good place to go to in the evening; it’s apparently quite pretty when it’s all lit up.

When a westerner goes anywhere in China, they turn into a tourist attraction – this weekend Tom and I were no exception. When we were sitting in Qiandeng park a family walked past all grinned and shouted ‘Hello’, we’ve got used to this sort of response to us and of course smiled and said ‘Ni Hao’ (Hello) back, we thought nothing more of it. Later on it was our turn to walk past them and as we did they waved us over. We weren’t sure what was about to happen. The family of six was sitting tucking into a giant piece of fruit and had beckoned us over to share it with us. I don’t even know how to describe how lovely and welcoming that gesture was, the fruit also hit the spot perfectly. Amazingly we managed to tell them, in Chinese, that we are English teachers (check us).  After that we were all a little stuck for conversation so we all just stood there grinning at each other and eating fruit – it was lovely.

The VERY natural Qiandeng Park. Note the round, smooth boulders on the rugged rocks...

Also when we were walking around this weekend we randomly had “your beautiful” shouted at us, which is unquestionably good for the ego; China is definitely the country to come to if you’re a westerner experiencing a crisis of confidence.

So by the end of the day we were quite pleased with ourselves. We had been befriended and fed by some locals, flattered by others, managed to recognise and match some Chinese characters to help us get about and even found Wallmart! Success!

For Sunday evening dinner we went to one of the fanciest restaurants on our little street – we felt VERY foreign. The pair of us walked into a massive room of lots of extended Chinese families all enjoying a feast and they sat us down right in the middle – the Chinese grandmother at the next table over was very intrigued, and we were slightly intimidated!  The food was fairly nice, we haven’t got a clue what we ate – but it took 45 minutes to get our food, anything over 5 minutes delivery time makes us impatient already, I think they did forget about us though…how dare they! ;-)

Monday

So like the weather on every proper holiday – today (Monday) it rained, with some thunder to boot! Despite this being our first sight of rain since we arrived in the area, rain and thunder storms are pretty commonplace here because of the humidity; we had a dry thunder the storm the other day, which I found pretty strange because normally when I hear thunder there’s driving rain and visible lightning to accompany it.

After the rain subsided it turned into (another) very hot, but beautiful day so we decided to do some more exploring.  We discovered that we are very close to the river (currently not sure the name, downside of not having either a map or the internet) so that was our starting point.  It’s no surprise that you’re not allowed to drink the water here if the murky green colour of the river is anything to go by, but the riverside itself is very pretty and very well kept.  

Tom!

Walking around the city, it is very evident that Foshan is a modern city which is in the throes of rapid development and growth – there are glass covered skyscrapers popping up everywhere – a slightly strange contrast to the older things it surrounds. There are also so many shopping malls here it’s verging on the ridiculous – they all look brand new and are all humongous – you have to walk a long way to find anything that doesn’t look like it’s been built from glass our outside the last 5(ish) years.  On that note, we walked much further than we realised and happily came across some older, more rugged streets full of people selling huge variety of goods from shops the size of garages – this was the kind of China I wanted to see (I’m fed up with glass buildings already). I was beginning to think all of this older more traditional China had been replaced. I didn’t take any photos here, I was too busy marveling at my surroundings and the people in them.

I did take this one picture though - I love the shape of these buildings

Overall it’s been a pretty good first weekend – and we didn’t have to start back at work until Tuesday afternoon which was just a bonus!

G x

Setting up home

Along with all the teaching and next week’s lesson preparation that has been going on this past week, we have also had to sort out various items and official paperwork to ensure we can get our working visas and become working residents in China. Monday night consisted of a continuation of deep cleaning our new homes – start as you mean to go on; I found a lot of sets of ear plugs under my bed…I’m not sure what that tells you about the neighbours! I’ve also learnt that the washing machine floods the entire bathroom when it drains the waste water – so being marooned after an innocent trip to the toilet is a very real possibility (it’s definitely a way to liven up toilet visits). 

Tuesday was our return visit to the police station to ensure that we were registered as foreign residents (I don’t want to get deported). It’s really strange going to the police station to do something that important and having absolutely no idea what is being said – your fate is well and truly in someone else’s hands, it’s a little disconcerting!

Wednesday was medical day. Despite having had a full mandatory medical before I left the country we had to have another done here to allow us to applying for our residents visas – that’s China for you. Saying that, I’m pretty glad I did have a medical in the UK before I left because after my Chinese medical experience I never want to have to use the hospital here!  Having spent the last four years learning all about the human body and medical samples, I probably noticed different things in the testing process to other people. 

This blood test was the first one where I have genuinely felt nervous about the process, it’s also the first fully silent blood test I’ve ever had – it’s a pretty surreal experience.  I had to stick my arm through a Perspex window and the nurse tied a piece of rubber tubing VERY tightly around my arm (that bit was bloody painful).  Iodine was used to sterilise my skin, I wasn’t surprised to see that China wasn’t using throw-away sterile wipes, before she stuck a needle into (what I deemed to be) the most bizarre choice of vein ever and then put my blood into tubes which she’d been manhandling a few seconds before – sterile they were not!

Next up was the ultrasound. Tom thought they were checking whether he was pregnant and I haven’t got a clue which organ she was looking for on my ribs – but according to my form all my organs are normal, China hasn’t ruined me yet! That’s another think I found stupidly entertaining – data protection does not exist in China! My mentor was merrily reading away at all my test results (it’s a good job I have nothing to hide) – after having the importance of data protection drilled into me for years I really wanted to grab it off her and never let it go, thankfully China-fied Gillian kicked in!

The ECG was definitely an experience. After my high-tech version in Aberdeen walking behind the curtain here felt like entering Frankenstein’s lab – Tom looked traumatised after his! I thought the little suckers they attached to me were going to leave my looking like I’d had some kind of cupping incident at the spa!

The urine sample we just had to abandon on the shelf, with a sheet of paper with our name on it underneath. Basically, to cut a long story short I’m a bit convinced they are going to turn round and tell me I have some horrific disease because they’ve messed up the samples!

After our medical we headed straight back to the school to start our teaching for the day, so like a sensible person I had brought breakfast – porridge! To say my mentor wasn’t impressed with my choice of breakfast was probably an understatement, her exact words were “Gillian, what is that smell?” (with a disgusted impression to accompany it). I wasn’t particularly offended, I didn’t rate her favourite breakfast, so we’ll have to agree to disagree there.

The rest of the week involved sorting out bank accounts metro cards and spending an hour and a half waiting in the phone shop to get sim cards for our phones. Not very thrilling but necessary.

G x

The real week 1

So despite the initial surprise about the immediate teaching start I think my first week of teaching went well.  In hindsight I’m glad we started immediately, it got any unfounded fear and nerves out of the way; it has also meant I’ve managed to start developing my daily routine pretty quickly – something that’s probably going to prove vital for settling in here.  We had naively hoped that we would get an observation week like most of the other ELAs who are in different schools in the city, however after their week of not doing much at school and then partying in the evenings they got pretty bored pretty quickly (and are now a little bit jealous of us already getting to know our students and being able to regale them with some of our students antics).

This year I’m going to be teaching Senior Grade 2, so the pupils are about 16-17 years old, and equivalent to S5 in Scottish Schools.  My main role here is to get the kids to speak English. They have 6 other English classes every week which mostly focus on being able to read, write and listen to English – but no-one properly emphasises the importance of being able to verbally use all the English that is drilled into them.  This is probably because English speaking is not part of their final year Gao Kao exam. This exam takes place in their final year at school (senior grade 3) and encompasses Maths, Chinese and English (reading, writing and listening), and has to be passed in order to entertain any hopes of going to university here. This means that their whole final year of school is geared towards preparation for this exam - so they don’t get timetabled for frivolous classes like oral English with the foreign teacher! To be honest this arrangement suits me down to the ground because with 19 different classes a week I more than my hands full (the Chinese teachers only teach 2 classes a day).  Each of my classes has between 45-60 pupils in them, which means I’m going to be interacting with a third of the school every week (about 1,200 pupils), that’s a lot of people to say hello to in the corridor!  I think the really difficult thing about teaching that many kids, in classes of that size, is going to be giving them all equal amounts of teacher time – I think I need to clone myself! Maybe some life-size photocopies of myself in the corners of the room would be suitably intimidating enough to get the terrors at the back of some of the classes to be quiet and listen to all the vital things I have to say (because obviously knowing all about Haggis is an important life skill!).

I’m very lucky at my school in respect to the fact that I don’t need to do reports on the kids, or set exams and homework (apparently getting them to do it is a mission for even then Chinese teachers!) I was pretty pleased when I was told I get free reign on the teaching content of all my classes.  They did give me the textbooks that the kids are using in their other English classes to help inspire me when the ideas begin to run dry (which will be inevitable at some point) and get some sort of idea about their current level, but otherwise all the class content is being dreamt up by moi.  To be honest I want to teach the kids things that they might actually use in real life if they are talking English, so things like quantum physics probably won’t pop up in the course content list! Over the week I’ve been making lists of the things the kids say and what their interests are in order to try and plan some lessons that will genuinely be of interest to them.  I’ve also been asking the kids if they have any subjects they want to cover – this question was consistently met with shocked silence at the prospect of even remotely having control over what they learn – I’m sure they will soon warm to the idea and I’ll end up inundated with ideas in the following weeks.

There were a few new and unexpected words I had to teach the kids this week.  I was genuinely surprised that they didn’t know the word ‘siblings’, I honestly just presumed that this word would have featured in the lesson on family that they must have surely had at some point, but none of my 19 classes had heard it before.  I also had to teach one of my classes what the word ‘feet’ meant – thank goodness I had a pair handy.  Standing at the front of a class of 60 students and pointing to one foot and saying “this is a foot” before pointing at them both simultaneously and saying “the plural for two foots is feet” – not something I expected this week.  I think the unexpected is all going to add to the enjoyment and charm of this year.

So for my first week of teaching I decided on a ‘getting to know your new teacher’ lesson. I haven’t had any internet this week to all the facts they had to guess about me were heavily based on the pictures on my laptop - this is what led to Haggis being my favourite western food all week (the only picture of food I had).  It was really interesting getting the students to guess facts about me and then seeing their response to the pictures afterwards.  I was getting them to guess what the name ‘Kintore’ meant, the answers ranged, from my pet dog/cat to my husband, son(!) and best friend – only one person managed to guess it’s my home village. The pictures of home did draw a lot of interest and I managed to drag some discussion out of them about how my home and their differed. I also had a nice picture of the family to show them all – this drew the statement of ‘what a beautiful family you have’ from one pupil and ‘your brother is so handsome’ from another. 

I was surprised how there was a few in each class who said they had brothers and sisters (or siblings) – I genuinely expected everyone to be an only child, yet another example of how wrong my misconceptions of china are! So my attempt at making Haggis sound appealing and highly nutritious were going well until one class know-it-all announced exactly what was made from! I was genuinely surprised that someone had heard of it but she said her personal English teacher had told her about it.  She was also adamant I was from Glasgow - I thought I was going to have to get the birth certificate out! 

I’ve really enjoyed my first week of teaching, even though, by the time class number 6 of the day came around on Wednesday afternoon my voice had definitely been stronger – I think I’m going to have to turn diva and impose a lunchtime speaking ban! It’s been really nice to see how everyone at the school has warmed to us, at the beginning of the week the pupils definitely didn’t know what to make of us, whereas by the end of the week they are running up to us just to say ‘Hello’ – I can see us turning every interaction into an English speaking exercise…

I was also pleasantly surprised when I was accosted on the stairs by one of the Chinese English teachers and asked how to pronounce some words she was teaching in her class – I’m more than happy to help everyone, as long as they return the favour when I start properly learning Mandarin.

G x

Finding out what i've let myself in for

So after our long day on the Saturday and a quick spot of late night cleaning, we were met at 8am to be taken to our new place of employment – Nanhai Experimental High School, the Affiliated School of South China University.  Firstly though, we were taken for an authentic Chinese breakfast – something I am in no hurry to have again – it was very rice heavy (like everything else here).  I really wish I’d taken a photo of it because I have no plans for round two and it might be pretty hard to describe – I’ll just have to try and sneak up on a local sometime when they are merrily digging in to breakfast a take a quick picture. OK, so break consisted of two dishes; the first dish tasted like rice which was transformed into rippled sheets and covered in soy sauce – this one wasn’t so bad but it’s pretty hard to keep hold of slippery rice sheets with chopsticks. The second dish on the other hand was, in my opinion, truly awful - 3 spoonfuls was my limit! The second dish was basically a giant dish of unflavoured, un-drained rice in lukewarm starchy water – call me a snob but sadly that’s not my idea of a tasty of nutritious breakfast!

After our disappointing first Foshan meal, we were taken on the 10 minute walk from our flats to the school.  The sheer numbers of staff who were happily smiling away whilst at work on a Sunday immediately told me that working in China was going to be different – I don’t think you would see teachers smiling on a Sunday in the UK if they had to be in work (but I could be wrong).  We were given a quick tour of the school complex; at the school there are about 3,500 pupils, and a lot of those would be boarders – so naturally the place in HUGE. The school has so many basketball nets I can’t even count them all (basketball is VERY popular here), there’s a 400m running track, badminton courts and a 50m swimming pool – and that’s just all the stuff outside – there’s a whole gym building we haven’t even investigated yet!  At the same time we were touring the school, the pupils were arriving fresh from their summer holidays ready to start school bright and early on the Monday.  I say fresh, the first graders had just finished a 5 day military camp.  Apparently this in supposed to instil discipline into them – time will soon tell.  So after our quick tour and mild panic that I was never going to be able to navigate the campus we were told that we started our teaching our new classes the next day – this put our minds into overdrive slightly trying to come up with ideas for lesson number 1.  However, before the teaching hats could be donned we had the police station to visit.  As foreigners, we had to register with the police ASAP when we arrived at our permanent address – there was a minor hitch in this plan though, the immigration department isn’t open on Sunday. So naturally we went to the supermarket instead to furnish our slightly sparse rooms. Before we left the school though we did acquire a kettle each, a basic necessity when you can’t drink the water straight from the tap, as well as a giant pack of toilet roll – it’s a wonderful feeling being in possession of a 10 pack of toilet roll when your down to your last paper hanky!

The school grounds

Taking advantage of the mini bus that was ferrying us about, we bought lots of bulky things (I bought a full length mirror - needs must), otherwise it would have meant taking this stuff on the bus; we just weren’t game for that!  A little noisy around the food isles also resulted in the most welcome find ever – Quaker’s porridge oats! Two of the 11 ELAs (English Learning Assistants aka unqualified teachers) in Foshan are Scottish, so we were pretty concerned about getting our porridge fix – thankfully the fears were unfounded.  After our awful Chinese breakfast, I’ve decided breakfast is the only meal of the day where I’m not planning on embracing local cuisine, and anyway a bowl of porridge is much more nutritious than a bowl of starchy white rice (it’s a good job they gave us microwaves!).

After our trip to the supermarket, it was time to start lesson planning – Thankfully this is where the TEFL training proved worth its weight in gold!  One of our trainers had given the idea of doing introductory ‘getting to know your new teacher’ lessons – and with no internet access this inspiration was invaluable.  So due to having no internet access my hobbies, interests and favourite things had to adapted to use the pictures I had access to. This meant that Haggis was my favourite western dish all week – which isn’t entirely untrue but trying to make Haggis sound nice can be a bit of a mission.

After a busy afternoon of lesson planning and room cleaning – it was definitely time to sample some of the many local eateries surrounding us. We plugged for the restaurant with the whole roast ducks hanging in the window – Tom is a bit of a duck fiend and I can see me turning into one as well.  Up until now we’d been spoilt in the fact that the menu of every place we had been too had pictures – this was no longer the case.  Currently our food vocabulary extends to being able to ask for rice, chicken and beer – vital things I know, but it doesn’t lead to much dietary variety.  Instead we managed to point at the picture of the duck on the wall and hoped for the best. It turns out I love the suspense of pointing at something and hoping for the best – and so far it’s resulted in pretty good food each time!  For the total sum of 15 Yuan (£1.50) we got soup, made with real duck stock (naturally), a big plate of duck breast meat, rice and some sort of green vegetable (it tasted a little like pak choi) and some complementary tea – we were pretty pleased with ourselves. 

After our feast we decided to do some exploring of the market across the street from us. We seem to have got pretty lucky, the mini supermarket and actual market will pretty much manage to provide us with everything we need for the year.  One of my aims for this year is to be able to fluently haggle for things at stalls and markets – so I’ll manage to get plenty of practice in here. The stalls in the market range from fish and meat, fruit and veg, and just about anything household.  On our way out of the market we walked past this lovely Chinese lady who was tucking into her meal of cooked fish (she works at the fish stall). Unexpectedly, she greeted us in English and then gestured for us to join her and share her food.  If we hadn’t been so full from her duck we would have taken her up on the offer but I think picking at her food due to her lack of appetite would have been more offensive than politely refusing.  So simultaneously we had to make the universal sign for being stuffed and pointing across the road at the duck restaurant – I really hope we didn’t offend her, she was still smiling when we left.  I think us pointing and cooing over her pet guinea, who was merrily nibbling away at some corn husks helped the situation – we did clarify if it was food or friend first though!

The view of Foshan from my flat window

I think it’s pretty fair to say I slept soundly that night and luckily the very hard mattresses that the Chinese all use are in favour of my love of a firm bed.

G x

(New) homeward bound

So the two weeks in Beijing are over, this meant it was time for the long journey south to Foshan, in Guangdong Province.  There were no exceptionally big goodbyes happening between us all – purely because of some of our very early check-out times. We left the hotel at 6am (some unlucky people had 4.30am departures) in order to get to the train station (one of many in Beijing) for our 10.30am departure.  To say we arrived sharp is an understatement – we were sitting in the departure room, having gone through ticket and passport checks, by 8.30am.  So after sitting in the station for a while, watching the world go by, - and blocking the aisles with all our worldly possessions- it was finally time to have our first proper go at Chinese style queuing.  As a whole queues here tend to be more of a (slightly) orderly bunch than single or double file line. So it basically turned into a few minutes of dodging feet, bags, people and insane amounts of food, as we made our way towards the platform entrance. 

Originally we thought we were going to be on the slow train which would have taken us 25 hours to get from Beijing to Guangzhou, so in comparison the 10 hour high speed train was a pretty bearable option.  I think it’s purely because we don’t have anything like it (yet) in the UK, but the prospect of going on a train, which looks as sleek and fancy as the high speed trains do, it’s quite an exciting option.  Inside is pretty cool, most of the 18 carriages were taken up with second class seating (that’s where we were), but all the seats are like reclining plane seats so it’s pretty comfortable.  The 1st class carriages have a bit more space and more luxurious seating while business class get sleeping pods – there was one wee kid crashed out in one (we were pretty jealous). Also the train conductors are dressed like glamourous air hostesses – so the whole thing just feels like a giant plane where you can see the scenery instead of the clouds.

When I say we saw the scenery, it took a good few hours for the smog to clear to let us actually see more than 100m from the train windows.  I just presumed that the smog cloud was confined to the areas directly above the cities – but it seems not (which is a little bit alarming), but then I’m not a meteorologist so what do I know! Once the smog did clear it was lovely to be able to see the passing landscape – which even in China changes pretty quickly when you are travelling at 300km/hr. After sitting down for a few hours we began to feel the need to walk around the train to prevent numb bums and boredom setting in. It surprised us all to see that we were the only non-Chinese people on the entire train – and to be honest I think it surprised them to see us, being foreign around here attracts a fair amount of interest (something I’ve got used to pretty quickly).  It was good that there was 11 of us on the train, (and that we were all sitting together) because it meant we got to entertain each other and share our various picnic treats. I managed to get landed mass catering cheese and biscuits (they weren’t even mine). The little boy that said ‘Hello’ to us every time he regularly walked down the carriage was very intrigued (he wasn’t keen to try one though!).  The carriages all had screens that showed the station names, our speed and also the outside temperature throughout our journey. The constantly increasing temperature at every station definitely peaked our interest and resulted in us all jumping out of the carriage onto the platform at every stop, marvelling at how hot it was, taking a group selfie (because naturally that’s what you do) and then jumping back on the train again. By the time we got to Guangzhou at 8pm the temperature was reading about 39^oC!

When we finally arrived at our station Tom and I weren’t entirely convinced we were going to be picked up because we hadn’t heard from our school mentor in over 6 weeks – despite us sending a number of emails (we were getting a bit worried that they had forgotten about us). When we got down to the arrivals section and everyone’s mentors, except ours, were there for the pick-up the panic did step up a notch! I genuinely started thinking of places we could find to camp out in in the station. Thankfully we managed to borrow a phone and call our mentor – it turns out she was there, just in the wrong section!  It’s a good job she did arrive because Guangzhou South train station is so cavernous it’s like an airport (Beijing was pretty similar in the sheer size of the place) – we wouldn’t have had a clue where to start looking for anything or anyone.

So our long day of travelling was finally over by 10pm, after a 40 minute drive from Guangzhou to our new homes in the Nanhai district of Foshan.  Thankfully there is a lift to my flat on the 8^th floor of the building – that would truly have finished me off!  I didn’t have any idea what to expect when it came to my accommodation – I deliberately hadn’t thought about it – so I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived (despite the fact that a lot of deep cleaning was required). Our mentor, (her name is Cindy) did offer for someone to come and clean the room for me, but who on earth was going to do that after 10pm on a Saturday night, and goodness only knows what the standard would be like, so I pretty quickly said I’d do it myself – this meant I was quickly handed a rubbishy old brush and pan and bid goodnight….

G x

Week 2 in Beijing

So these posts, like the next few to follow, are very overdue. This is because the internet has been VERY temperamental recently – TIC! Right now i'm desk surfing at work because I don't have a desk to call my own - I've been promised one very soon. This means that poor Tom has lost half of his desk to me this week - what a trooper. So we are now in Foshan in our new (and permanent school) but more of that later - first I have tales of the second week in Beijing to regale...

After finishing and passing our TEFL exam in the first week (the rumour is that no-one got below 80% - those years of uni studying have been good for something!), our second week involved both being a pupil and a teacher. Our mornings were taken up with learning 'survival Chinese' and in our afternoons we were teaching REAL Chinese pupils. I really enjoyed the Chinese lessons, even though the language is really tricky and I probably sounded like I was speaking martian. It has definitely provided me with the motivation to start getting lessons as soon as I can. I also learnt that the Chinese equivalent of my name is Lian Yang - Lian meaning lotus flower and Yang being a Chinese surname.

My Chinese name

Our afternoons were spent in the Yangzhen No. 1 High School; apparently it is one of the top high schools in Beijing - even though it was even further out of the city than we were in Shunyi. In the UK the area would have been definitely be classed as a Shire.  Saying that though, it was really nice to get on a bus and see some countryside. We passed a bridge with the Olympic rings from 2008 still on it. It was surprising how many residual items from the Olympics were still in use and evident in the city; there were sun brollies and stretchy barriers all over the place with ‘Beijing Olympics 2008’ written all over them – it was refreshing to see that these things hadn’t just been thrown out because of the logos on them.

The pupils we were teaching at Yangzhen were doing an intensive 10 day - including the weekends - English class; so as well as giving up their weekends they were also spending their summer holidays in school...by rights they should have hated us!  I really enjoyed the practice teaching sessions and I was very glad we had them – they definitely prepared me for having to plan and teach my real pupils in Foshan. In hindsight though, we were spoilt by the standard and the caliber of the students; they have hoodwinked me into thinking that all Chinese pupils have an exceptional grasp of the English language – I’m quickly finding out that’s not the case.

It was lovely - after my last class on the Thursday afternoon - one of the girls presented me with some origami roses she had made. They are beautiful (they survived the journey to Foshan), and I tried to get her to teach me how to make them – that didn’t go so well.  This wasn’t because she was a bad teacher, but because it was much harder and more time-consuming than I expected.  I genuinely thought it was going to be a case of make an origami fortune teller, add a few extra folds and viola; you have an origami rose – definitely not true! After 15 minutes of relentless paper folding I think I managed half of the required folding, sadly we never got to finish because we had to start the next lesson. So happily I went home with 3 beautiful colour coordinated paper roses (and a piece of folded paper).

 Yangzhen No.1 High School - you can't deny it looks fancy

The kids from our practice class. The girl holding the paper flowers is the one who made them for me.

The beautiful origami flowers

After our week of teaching we decided to celebrate.  We all went to what had become our regular haunt for food, Baba’s, and then went out afterwards. The plans were slightly delayed though by the onslaught of a Beijing thunder storm.  I now know that the perfect attire for a thunderstorm is a knee length skirt and sandals – great for when you have to navigate through a newly developed street river 1.5ft deep!  Some people went out during the full blown storm – the lightning definitely put me off that idea – so we stayed and drank beer with the locals until it finished. Obviously, more beer is the wisest choice when you’re stuck in a thunderstorm.

Since Friday was our last day in Beijing, I decided to explore the area we had been staying in a little bit – I felt like I didn’t know where I’d been living for two weeks.  It was nice just to walk around and see what all the locals were up to.  Shunyi is nothing special but it was nice to explore a little.

 Some Shunyi Pictures...

 These taxi bikes were everywhere

 I admired this lady's ingenuity in regards to her choice of seating

On the Friday evening, we had a little TEFL graduation ceremony – it was nice to see everyone get their certificates but there were an awful lot of speeches for such a minor affair… Friday night wasn't wild, or mine wasn't anyway – it consisted of packing and dancing round the hotel room with my roomie to some 90’s classics - When in China!

G x