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
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