I have a lot to cover. Nothing really that big has happened since we last talked but there have been a few small and fun stories which I will now share with you. I currently have the day off as after a hard weekend of party, I have lost my voice...... I'll get back to that later though. Read on.
So a few days after our last talk, Georgina and I went to Dushanzi which is a small and lovely city about 20 minutes from Kuitun. We went to look around this private school as they've been asking for us to work there. We sat in on some classes with 4 year olds singing and dancing to English songs (so cute!) and then just as we were about to leave, Rebbecca (the woman in charge of that school) trundled up to us with a dog bouncing along behind her. He was a sort of 'Lassie' breed and very handsome but looked mad. She then thrust the lead into our hands and put food and bowls at our feet and we realised he was now ours to look after. His name is YuYu and we were very happy to have him at the beginning as we missed our dogs at home. However he was terrified of stairs and the dark and very flinch-y and barked all the time...... So we weren't sure if it was the right decision.. Getting a dog on our gap year in China.
Anyway the boys from Fukang (Jony and Jamie) came to visit us the weekend after. We were excited to show them the delights of Kuitun but on saturday evening Tessa was very ill and by sunday, Georgina and I were also very ill. When I say this, it was a race to the bathroom to attack the toilet in all sorts of ways. The boys walked YuYu and fetched us some drinks and then decided it would be best to leave, cutting their visit sort. That sunday I decided to post some letters before my illness got worse (Tessa was a day ahead of us and was much worse, so I was living in fear.....) Anyway I had letters to Chris, family and friends waiting to be sent so I thought I better send them. But after sitting in a busy and stuffy post office with the Chinese shouting over me (posting letters here is really rather exhausting as it is) I decided to leave it until I was feeling better. I had Rosie with me to help with the process and we started the walk back to her car but I felt like I was going to faint or something.. So I took a walk outside the post office while she was waiting in her car.. I sat on some stairs outside a small shop and threw up a lot of things. The shop lady came running out to tell me off for doing so just by her shop and was trying to get me to move (the Chinese are so caring) and I moved my head to utter a 'due bu qi' (sorry) to her but as I opened my mouth, I only threw up some more. It's a graphic story but was really pretty comical. I didn't enjoy it at the time however.... Anyway Georgina was rushed to hospital by her school that week and was put on a drip (the answer to anything here) and after about 5 or 6 hours she returned feeling much better. Sadly Tessa and I weren't offered such luxury so had the next week off with food poisoning...
After going back to school for a couple of days the following week, we found out that we had the thursday, friday and following monday off due to Eid - a Muslim holiday. Not the whole of China got this off but we did as there are a vast amount of Muslims in this area. I spent the long weekend adding the finishing touches to my UCAS application and I sent it off applying to study Chinese and International Relations at Nottingham Trent University. I love this uni so much. I'd like to start learning another language on top of Chinese and French, something different, and NTU offers Arabic courses. So that's just perfect really isn't it! So I am very excited.
Also that weekend was the weekend just before Halloween and on the monday, Tessa, Georgina and I were invited to a Halloween party in Dushanzi. Now seeing as hardly any of the Chinese know what Halloween even is, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We took a taxi to where we were told to meet and saw Rebbecca. She then gave us funny, colourful afro wigs to wear and told us what we needed to do. We looked around and saw hundreds of small cute kids all dressed up. We had witches and pirates and fairies and pumpkins - the lot! All of the teachers were dressed as pumpkins and it was just a brilliant sight to see. Also it was their first
Halloween and they were all so excited! We began by teaching all of the kids how to say 'Trick or Treat' and then we all marched off to KFC..... bit odd I guess. I think they were trying to find the most western place as Halloween is a western holiday and KFC is the best they could think of! Anyway once we got to KFC, some of the staff pulled Georgina and Tessa behind the counter so that they could serve the kids little party bags full of chips, a lolly and a KFC voucher. So they handed me and an American teacher these to hand to the children after they said 'trick or treat' to us. It was pretty strange actually... After KFC, we moved on to a bakery where a similar process happened but with bits of cakes and bread instead of chips. After all the food fun and slightly strange Chinese versions of
Trick or Treating, we headed to a car park to play games with the kids and
have a costume contest. We got to be the judges which was brilliant. We were told to pick the funniest,
scariest, best home-made and cutest costumes in each class (some of them were really very cute!). After a cold, long wait while they all played their games, they day was over and all of the
teachers were invited to a hot pot banquet for dinner which warmed us up nicely! There was quite a lot of banter at the table which was nice as everyone spoke good English and had a Western sense of humour which was really nice
to be around for a change!
Then I went back to school and taught an almost full week! Rare. So that went well.... I had a fun lesson on Halloween which involved telling the kids all about the holiday and why we have it and then playing 'board slap'. This involved there being drawings of Halloween characters on the board and there being a person from each team up at the front. It's then a race to see who can slap the picture quickly after me saying it. It's a very fun game and the kids all love it! Sadly not many of my drawings survived after it being played a few times with different classes..... Then to 'wrap' up the end of the lesson (you'll see why that's so hilarious soon) I bring out lots of toilet roll and tell them to make each other into mummies. This was very popular too caused much excitement. What a fun lesson.
The following monday however I woke up with a horrible neck cramp. It was one of those things where you can't move your head in any way at all or it would cause such horrible pain.... I had this on Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday, Melany (my leader at my school) took me to hospital...... I was poked and prodded and scream a fair bit there and they said that I could either have some pills for 60 kuai or an injection in my neck for 60 kuai. We both screamed in horror of the idea of the inject and the price and she rushed me out to go to the 'private doctor'. Now in Britain hospitals are fairly nice but going private is utter luxury.. I found that in China, that is not the case. We walked into what looked like a small horrible house which had a door which lead to squatty potty covered in things I'd like not to describe and I just felt like I was going to die. I asked Melany if she knows the man and she reassured me with saying that when she was little, she was brought here and now she has a son, she brings him here. So he was obviously a trusted man who's been going for a while! He gave me a lovely neck massage and laughed when we said the hospital suggested an injection. He gave me 2 mixtures of 7 pills to take with a 3 hour gap between them and when I woke up in the morning, it was much better. However I got that day off too to 'rest'. The Chinese love a bit of rest.
So! I've missed a lot of school recently....... However the lessons I have taught have been fun. The best lesson I've taught so far goes as follows...
I begin by asking how they are and chatting a bit.. Then we recap last lesson. Then I draw and compass on the board and get them to label it. Then we work on pronouncing them all brilliantly. Then we move on to 'up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards'. Then I get them to shout out the Chinese of all the words and they write them up on the board. Then I introduce the clapping game where in pairs, one person says any of these words and the other claps in that direction. Then they swap so the other person gets to clap.. THEN we play simon says which is lots of fun. It takes a while to explain the rules and I usually ask someone who looks like they understand to translate it into Chinese so they all get it.. Anyway, this game is lots of fun. I've found that they all learn best when they are standing up and need to do something with their bodies........ Anyway we play this for a while and then when they've got these directions well enough, I introduce NE NW SE and SW on the compass.. We then play a more complicated and challenging simon says which is lots of fun. By this point, I've usually just got 15 minutes left....... I then rub out everything and tell them that I want to make a map of Kuitun on the board so they need to shout out things like 'cinema' or 'bank'. So we do this, creating a birds eye view of a city.... Then I give them useful phrases for asking and giving directions and let them direct me around the city for a bit.. Then I get 2 people to come up where one person asks and the other person gives directions. They then choose 2 more people to do the same and this happens until the bell goes. Done.
It's a really fun lesson and gets them all thinking and involved which is good!
Now. Last week has been a roller coaster of emotions. Tessa and I were very homesick and generally depressed at life at the beginning of the week.. This time of the year is known as the hardest as the weather gets colder and nothing is new and exciting any more, everything is just annoying and different...... But on thursday, our desk officer (Jonny) from Coll came to do his yearly round of visiting, bringing a new desk officer called Dave. We were all taken out that evening to a huge, posh banquet where there about 20 people of high importance. We had our helpers and headteachers from each school, the minister of education, the man who fixes our shower and other very important people.... There were many toasts that night where people 'gambeeeey'ed each other.. This is the Chinese for 'down it!!!!!' so if this is said to you, then you have to down a shot of Baijiu. There were LOTS of toasts.... And sadly, lots of 'gambey's...... Long story short, we all got very drunk. The food was really lovely though. My favourite was basically a tomato soup. I positioned the lazy susan so that the soup was in front of me constantly and I'm pretty sure I had the whole pot to myself. Very happy with that.
After the meal, we stayed with Jonny and Dave and took them to meet Jasper at the other end of the city. Once we arrived, Jasper covered them in hugs and gave the men free beer and us girls a pitcher of our favourite Jasper cocktail (it's lemony and not really sure what else...). He then brought threw these test tubes with coloured liquid inside each..... Jasper said how they are very strong and after 60-70% Baijiu, we were expecting the worst. Soooo we had a few of these, made our way to the 'friend' table where only the best get to sit and were given many more free drinks....... I don't know how much we drank in the end but we had a very drunken and fun night with Jasper and his friends and our bosses (ha). Lots of things happened and lots of photos were taken but I have been told by Jonny and Dave not to publish these in fear!
The following morning was painful for everybody except me (victory - but only because I threw up all of the alcohol into my bin in the middle of the night...). We were taken out for lunch at this amazing and beautiful Uighur restaurant. The walls were made of wooden carvings and everything was just utterly lovely. I can't explain it. So nice. ALSO we had a very nice meal! Uighur food is really very nice we think.. We had dumplings in soup, kebabs (lovely) and pollo. Pollo is a very traditional Uighur dish with rice and mutton and usually something sweet like raisins. Anyway, Tessa and I had a peak at the menu and saw that pollo was only 20 kuai which is pretty good! Because the restaurant is so beautiful, we were expecting it to be much more expensive. So yes, we will definitely be going back there soon!
The boys and I then went to my school where we had a meeting with the head and important school people where we discussed things that we'd like to change or ways to help me. It was very fruitful! They then sat in on a lesson of mine. I was doing the direction lesson that I talked you through earlier and they said at the end that they were very impressed and that I was a natural teacher. They seemed very surprised! They actually said how they didn't expect people to be that good at teaching even in a couple more months.. So. I was pretty chuffed with that!
That evening, we were taken to a Kazak restaurant where the table was sunk into the ground and you sat around it in a sort of hole on colourful cushions - very cool. In that meal there was a sort of potato, carrot and beef stew which was very popular on a cold night! We didn't drink as much that night but really enjoyed it. Half way through the meal, we looked across the table and the minister of education was passed out with his head in his food. So funny. Apparently it's usually the most powerful and high up people who end up passed out as most of the toasts are directed at them!
After this meal, we treated Jonny, Dave and their translator (Ricky, he was so lovely) and took them to our local ice cream place. I had a card which gave us 100 kuai worth of ice cream for free so we used that well. We basically ordered every flavour they had and we covered it all in sprinkles and sauces and had a merry time. Ricky comes from Yili (9 hours to the west, 15 minutes further west and you'll be out of China!) and speaks English well. He was a lot of fun and through the night was teaching us Chinese tongue twisters! There was one about 8 warriors on horses running down the north side of a hill or something but the Chinese equivalent is something like 'ba bing bong bue, bung ba peo pong...' etc.. Sadly that's where I forget it.... Anyway when you say it fast, it is so difficult! But very funny.
After the ice cream, we all had to say our goodbyes as the boys were leaving to the next project early the morning after... It was sad to see them go. It was really lovely having some friends around again and they really cheered us up from the mood we were in before they arrived.
We had a full weekend planned to sustain the good mood. Georgina decided to stay home and take on extra hours of work for more money, but Tessa and I travelled to Fukang to see Jony and Jamie and the Bagang girls came down too. So we were all together again! It had been a while that the people from each Xinjiang project had been together and it was really nice. Jony cooked us AMAZING food - lemon chicken, beef in a black bean sauce, ribs in goodness, beans and a broccoli dish. So good. Jony really is a good cook... We are planning on spending Christmas day in Fukang due to their amazing hosting skills! After the meal, they got out the alcohol and drinking happened again... We got through about 3 bottles of vodka, half a bottle of gin, a thing with a real snake in it (no idea..) and various other things..... Hannah and Alice had created a drinking game before hand and we played this for hours. It involved taking cards which said things like 'finish your drink' or 'take a shot' or 'lick the person on your right's foot' or 'talk in parstletongue for 5 minutes' and lots of funny, weird things! It was a good night. And again, very very drunk.
The morning after Jony cooked us up an English treat. We had toast, jam, butter, beans, bacon, yogurt and honey and fruit all on offer and we were possibly the happiest we could be. We had to leave shortly after sadly as the journey for me and Tessa is pretty long... We left at 3 and got back to Kuitun at 10! We were planning to be back at 7 but it was much longer for some reason... We are getting very used to long bus journeys though so it wasn't too bad.. As soon as we arrived back, we went straight to Jasper's where we met Georgina who's birthday it was! We gave her a very nice angry bird hand warmer thing (which is needed now it's started to get much colder) and we celebrated her day with cake and not much alcohol for us.....
Now that was yesterday! I woke up this morning with no voice. When we were in Fukang we all were saying how we had sore throats and something may have been passed around the group.... But now I have another day off as I really can't teach a spoken English class when the English teacher can't speak!
I will 'take my rest' and do useful things today. I do plan on sending Christmas pressies home to my family soon so I could make a start on that process....
Anyway. That has been all that's happened within the last month!
We are currently planning our winter travelling and are very excited! Also, we just have this week of normal lessons to teach before starting our Christmas lessons so everything is going to feel very festive soon which is very exciting.
So I will update again soon when I have enough to say, much love to all!
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PS. We got rid of the dog (he's back with his actual owners who do love him) and have a kitten now.
