English Competition!

Got a call from eamon as I prepared for my class asking if we could judge an english competition! I accepted and on Chris's behalf too, haha.

We taught our daily class, I taught one of my best classes, class 8, and then we had a couple of hours to relax before the competition!

We ended up in a conference room with 30 students and a few other teachers and one by one the students came up to talk about a random topic they have prepared over the last few days. IT was very hit and miss but Chris and I used 40-90 as our range of marks, so as not to discourage anyway. Half way through we looked at the chinese teachers and they had all scored between 78 and 90! crazy! 
In the second half they were given a a topic with only a few minutes to prepare, and this time we marked out of 20, to try and get in the same ballpark!

Some kids were awesome, some better than others but all really good kids! 

Afterwards Eamon gave us £10 each for our troubles which we wern't expecting, and they were all very grateful for our help. We have to be up early tomorrow to teach so I will leave it there! Tomorrow is a difficult day, teach -break teach -break teach-break teach-break then later on our primary aged tutor class! but hopefully a bit more cash in the bank! 

Weekend

Wandered into town to do some shopping yesterday and went past our previous furthest limit and carried on walking out of town as far as we could be bothered to go, the weather was lovely, slightly hot in a jumper, would be fine walking in a Tshirt, obviously all the Chinese are still in coats and jackets....

We found the bus station and a few more interesting shops, but Chris started to feel really bad so we started for home, I diverted en route to pick up a few things and as I got to my door I found two grade 3 students standing outside, apparently they texted asking to come over and when I didn't reply they came anyway! I let them in as Chris was fast asleep and then chatted for 40 minutes or so before another knock, 5 of my grade one students had turned up, apparently I have agreed to meet them too under similar circumstances! I let them in and the grade 3s got a bit childish saying they were more important and talking over the grade ones, but i like my grade ones as they are my students so I stood up for them!

Then another knock on the door and Zack (another grade 3) arrived a day early to use our computers, i let him in too.

A little while later yet another knock and Bella had turned up another grade one student! 

A few of the grade ones actually started doing homework at the back of my room before some wandered off, then the grade threes left, leaving bella and her friends!

I woke Chris up with the thought of food and Chris and I and 4 of the grade ones went out to find some food, before we really knew what was going on Bella had grabbed a taxi and bundled us all inside and we went off across town to peoples park.

Outside the park were a few hundred people dancing but bella led us straight through the middle (and got us a few hundred stares in the process).

We saw the park and had a quick look around before going to a restaurant where you choose all the foods you want, they cook them and bring them to the table, and you eat them off skewers, uncooked kebab buffet maybe? haha.

After we had all eaten we went to the nearby bookshop and spent a while looking at all the books, found some really cool old books and even a few english ones, I bought Animal Farm in English and a chinese world map, and also found a map of the local area! Excellent! 

Bought a few more things in a local shop before leaving the other students who live in town behind and bella helping us get a taxi back to the school.

This morning I woke to knocking on the door, Zack from yesterday was back for more downloading and talking, he had read my fromers guide to china and pointed all the incorrect dates in the history of china from memory, amazing! and discussed a few points that were simplifications that he was a little upset about, but he is a nice kid.

The amount they study is crazy, 7-22:00 every weekday, then a test every saturday morning, they get the afternoon off then sunday morning off then a class on sunday afternoon before back into it on monday. I have no idea how they keep this up! And in Grade 3 they work even harder doing extra study until midnight most nights then still up at 6 for class!

Today is lovely and warm, opened all the windows and cleaned a bit, Chris has decided to do his English corner but I am going abstain and keep trying to design tomorrows class, but I just don't know which was to go, It will take some time to get used to making my mind up and just dragging the students along with me without worrying if they are actually interested. Chris doesn't have that problem....

Last HK

HK6

HK6

HK5

shanghai park

HK3

more HK

Chris and Terresa,

crazy fog!,

famous star ferry company

Hong Kong Photos!

my room in HK,

The view from my window,

first view of HK harbour

End of the first week!

Phew! That was the most work I have ever done for £100! It was fun and not too bad, but that was only the introduction lesson, I need to come up with a plan for next week now, I'm thinking a map of the UK and I can talk about the UK as opposed to England etc, talk a little about the Monarchy and the royal wedding coming up, and maybe talk about animals and find some crazy new animals for them that they don't know, and then next week play a game using the animals that they learnt this week? Thats the vague plan at the moment anyway!

Yesterday Chris was feeling a little under the weather with a sore throat from talking too much, my last class on friday has loads of students from the winter camp in and so I asked Bella to come with us to translate! Took Chris to the onsite doctor and he got seen immediately with absolutely no privacy at all, haha, but for a sore throat thats ok, he was checked over and given 5 different kind of pills, pushed out of their wrappers and wrapped up in origami daily doses and all this cost an extortionate 15RMB, £1.50. No point putting that to insurance!

Will try and upload a few HK photos now too, I know Chris has done some already too! 

pricey haircut!

Still slogging through the lessons, just 5 more to go for this week! Then Chris was asked by his students to run an english corner this weekend, on sunday! I dodged doing any of the tutoring classes we are going to do and moved them to a weeknight (extra cash for us!) and chris manages to loose a day off again! But only he said yes, so I can just hide. The problem is that it is just a chance to chat in English, but my classes are like that, the students can ask me anything! ah well, we will see.

Had some more students asking for every form of contact details I have again today, crazy kids! two even asked for a hug as I left! madness! 

After our classes Chris asked Eamon to take us for a long overdue haircut. We went around the corner and Eamon translated, Chris got something kind of similar to his usual, I dont really have a usual but got something vaguely passable, it looked quite good until the hairdressed started using a hairdryer to puff it up in the latest chinese fashion. I got home and washed it again and all that came out and it looks mostly normal again now.

When we came to pay it was 20RMB. For both of us. This works out at less than £2! and that was a wash, head massage, rinse, cut and rinse for us both! And a good half hour each of their time. A bargain!

Working hard or...no just working hard!

Got back from shenzhen ok in the end, A long day of traveling. The bus to the airport left at 8, then the flight, then the bus to hangzhou, then we tried to buy the train tickets but the agency met us at the station and threw us into a massive queue for a taxi to the south bus station to get the bus to lingxi, then in lingxi I watched as we drove in and worked out which way to walk to get home, luckily! It still means we had to travel from 8am until 10pm!

Spent sunday relaxing and getting over the long day before and then monday straight into the fire of teaching! We have our full schedule now and have the full 22 lessons each, more than 1000 students each that we see once a week! 

Had the third day of teaching today and it is very hard work, but when it goes well is rewarding too, the kids so far have all been really nice, I just hope I can think of enough lessons for them all! We finally got given a rough outline of their listening exam topics so we can try to cover them all in a bit of detail hopefully, but I will leave planning that until the weekend I think! The other teachers all seem shocked by the number of our lessons, which is kind of funny.
Also on Monday they had a welcome back lecture with 1000 students outside our window lined up in the square, then yesterday another when they all brought seats, and today they all started running around our building for some reason, crazy!

So far the strange questions have been:

How old am I? guesses from 18 to 45!!

Do you have a girlfriend, from every class!

'Do you have baby?' wtf!?!!?

Do you own more than one coat? (no i do not)

Can you use chopsticks. (yes I can) 

Today I also got surrounded by around 20 students in the corridor all asking for my MSN/qq/phone number/email address!  

Have loads of photos from HK but I think Chris threw some up as well, I will take a look and then post some! 

Hello to anyone still reading this! 

FW: Pictures from Hong Kong

We had to go to Hong Kong to sort out our Visas, but due to a mess up by our agency
we had to spend an extra day there. Not bad getting to see the city again after such a long
time. Also this time it was no where near as hot and although there was fog, it was still very
enjoyable! 

Thought you might like these Pics Dad...

Walking along the Water Front in Kowloom, Hong Kong and came across their film strip boulevard to rival LA....
 

Around Our School...

Just a couple of Pictures of our school and whats around it, from the train station to the Allotments. Also
the sunrise the otherday over our town.

Long day, hk to....shenzhen?

Had a little lie in before checking out of our crazy awesome hotel. We picked up a couple of cakes for breakfast and sat in Kowloon park with the taichi people for a relaxing morning with birdsong in the background.
We watched 4 middle aged asian women taking photographs before they saw us and demanded we get in their photos with them!

Avoiding the chaos we had a few hours to kill before visa collection but as we wandered around Kowloon we saw a lot of Police blocking a road. When we got closer we saw that someone had been hit by a lorry, pretty messy.

We had seen the main road and so decided to disappear into the back streets riddled with tailors, Indian restaurants and hundreds of hawkers trying to get you into aforementioned tailors or restaurants, if they can't sell you watches, girls or anything in between.

We decided on a lunchtime kebab and it was great, just like cafe noir in oxford! All the English signs and white tourists and many foreign locals and all the things designed to make Hong Kong feel like home for foreigners work and make it very safe and relaxing but a little boring and easy compared to china. I think I could imagine living for good here in fact, if I could find a job with the crazy expensive wage you would need!

We got the star ferry again over to hk island and walked to the visa office, meeting Todd in the queue.
Picked up my visawith no problem after smuggling in my food and made a conservative plan to be on the airport bus by 6 for a 9pm flight from shenzhen.

We all fancied heading to see if we could see the sea and so took a tram for 2hkd to the end of the line for a small view to the sea and across the bay.
Took the bus back to central station for 5 to find the bus station with time to spare.
We looked round and round asking many people where this bus stop was before eventually finding out that the stop here was drop off only! A helpful metro girl pointed us towards wan chai metro further down the line. We got there and eventually found the counter for the bus at half 6 only to be told we couldn't possibly get the bus in time and we would have to taxi it.
Jumping in a taxi we fought through the rush hour traffic to get to shenzhen port, we then had to queue to leave Hong Kong then queue to enter china and the guy on checking spent ages checking every last detail of our passport and visa!
We ran out and found a huge queue for a taxi!
Made it through that queue and found another taxi who drove at breakneck speed to the airport undertaking on corners and forcing buses off the road. We jumped out and ran through the terminal towards check in.

Made it to the gate 15 minutes before the flight, too late!  We tried to blag our way on but no luck.
Calling the agency they basically dropped us in it, no help with hotels, flights or paying for it! All respect for Helenconsulting now lost, they messed up the directions, gave us no notice, changed plans half way through, and then when we get stuck in customs abandon us. If the school hadn't been so great to us I would jump ship to another school who asked zero recently, but I do like the school. Considering I haven't actually signed a contract yet I wonder.... if I could cut them out .... haha.

We asked at the gate and a flight tomorrow is 90pounds , ouch! And we still needed a hotel for tonight!

Lucklily Todd had been here before and knew a great hostel, and now my phone works again I could Google it and reserve 3 beds.
The time at this point was gone 10 and the metro and bus had stopped so we had to get a taxi for another 70rmb.

The hostel when we made it was awesome! So clean, and they gave us a private triple for the price of 3 hostel beds.

Finally got our head down, sort out the rest in the morning!

Hz to hk!!

Up early and so tired, Claire calls us a taxi to the bus stop nearby in wulin square and we wait around for the bus and the other teacher an American called Teressa.
I gave her a call to see a woman nearby answer, a 30ish black woman with a massive bag.
We introduce ourselves and help her to catch the bus, she is definitely not a seasoned traveller!
Checking OK but notice that the flight is actually to shenzhen in china (the home of electronics!!) And knot Hong Kong.
We land in shenzhen and buy a bus ticket to hk. It stops first at the port and we all have to get off and go through immigration getting lots of new stamps in the process. Back on the bus which has sneaked round while we went through an on to Hong Kong!
I even see a sign for lan kwai fong a famous market here but also the name of an awesome Chinese in oxford, will have to go there!! And send a picture to my old work!

We arrived in kawloon, the mainland part of hk and get a taxi down nathan road (awesome!) To ourhotel.

Hk is crazy in that everything is built upwards. 20stories down each side of the street and the ground is a few shops, then a resteraunt maybe, the 3rs floor may be a hairdressers and then another reateraunt above that and then hotels or flats above that, or both! Crazy!
We eventually find a small lift behind a load of small shops and take it to the 11th floor to find the tiny chun king hotel.
This is a tiny 7 bedroom hotel faking a Quater of a floor number 737 nathan road, it was booked by the agency but never designed for foreigners, no English and small but quaint on suite rooms,  and OK priced for a private room in hk.
Chris and I love it and manage eventually to check in. No room key you just ask the owner to lock and unlock the door for you and we pay in advance, which he seems to require! The rooms have Covington around the ceiling with a sky mural, and are just awesome and quirky!
Teressa on the other hand hates it. She wants a western hotel with wifi and room service and English. Chris and I then jump in a taxi with her to a place we thought was our hotel, chin king mansions down nathan road at number 40. We look at a room and is a small serviceable single with en suite and seems OK, but not a patch on ours!
She is still not happy and we retire to Starbucks for her to search online.
While she searches we notice we were stood under a holiday inn! We go and get a quote of 1600hkd for 2 night, 80a night, pretty pricey (especially when we have to pay all our fees and get reimbursed next month by our company! Chris and I are close to tthe wire, I am using my inheritance to float us both until I can pay itback in when we get the money back)
Also there is a Max for the visa trip the agency will pay of 200pounds so a pricey hotel is not a good idea!

Teressa won't pay that price and gets more moody and upset rather than sorting it out and choosing where to go, even if it is less than ideal, gotta sleep somewhere!!

Unfortunately neither of my phones work here so I can't call the aagency so in the end we give her a few options and leave her to it having done the best we can!

We called the agency and found out the forms had been delayed so Todd the other teacher had to get an even later flight so we can't do an visa things today and so we will be forced to stay another day in hk and push everythingg back! Awesome!

Chris and I walk around kawloon and see the hk sky line over the bay, the sea mist means you can't even see the tops of the towers on the other side of the river-width bay!
We walk all the way up nathan road and stop in at our hostel in early evening to rest our feet. Then a little lie down, then the last few nights catch up and I wake up to Chris and Todd at my door at 9pm.
Todd is an older guy, american, 50 years old and a traveller and really nice.
He gives us the forms we need and we chat and trade stories. We make a plan to meet near the visa place tomorrow as he fancies another cheaper hostel and he leaves. He still has teressas form as without a phone or internet we have no way to contact her! Hopefully we will catch up tomorrow in the visa place.

Chris and I walk out past the goldfish market, hundreds of fish in small bags for sale, goldfish, catfish, turtles etc etc! And find a small cheap local resteraunt for some great local food before stumbling back to the hotel and bed ready for an early start tomorrow!

Hk is much more western and also English friendly than china, it seems great but with so much English help and so many foreigners it really looses a lot of its charm. I licensing the only foreigners in lingxi ans this just feels like London on steroids, not a crazy amazing adventure! Still cool though!

Medical day!

Didn't get to sleep until 1 and then all too soon my alarm went off to wake me up at 5.30 to get showered and ready to meet the car at 6.40 taking us to wenzhou for the medical.

Standing outside in the cold we waited until 6.50 then called Jenny to ask why there was no car. She got straight on it and it turned up shortly after with an obviously just women up driver.
We drove the hour to wenzhou and the driver pulled into a big carpark and spoke to a security guard, wrong hospital, the driver carried on around for another few minutes before hopping out when the car was at lights to ask a traffic warden, then another random person, but eventually we found it!

We were rushed in and filled out a form, multiple choice mostly with English questions but Chinese answers, the driver filled out most of it but spoke no English so I have no idea what he chose!

Next we are taken to a window in the wall with a queue of people waiting to give blood, I wait my turn and get done but Chris is less than fond of needles, we leave it for now and year upstairs to a row of 7 small rooms with queues in the door and this for all the tests, I have an ecg, xray, eye test (when I cant read the alphabet), ultrasound, and few other checks all with people waiting and watching you, and near wide open windows, and none of the doctors spoke English so either they or the driver just poked and pushed until you did what was needed.
Went back downstairs and managed to get some blood from Chris and pay for 35pound fee. The problem is that we need to be in Hangzhou for that night yet the results don't come out until 4pm.
We are whisked off to buy a bus ticket for that evening to Hangzhou and manage to speak to a new woman at the agency called Claire who seems to be the best of the bunch and sorts us a hotel room and a pickup from the bus depot for that night.
We get dropped back at the medical centre and have 5 hours to kill so get some pizza in sensuous and sit in a posh comfy coffee shop people watching and reading with some Chinese tea for a couple of hours.

We walked back and got our results and decided to try to walk to the bus station, one interesting and fruitless hour later we give up and just get a taxi, we were still miles away it turns out!

The bus leaves at 6 and gets to Hangzhou for 10 and we are met and taken to our hotel near the company office.

In the hotel we are given our itinery for the next few days.
By this time it is half 11 and we haven't eaten, we also then see we have to catch a bus at 5am to the airport for a 7am flight to hongkong.
We are supposed to travel with 2 other teachers but the agency have messed up and not got a form we need for the visa! They pull one teacher off our flight onto a later one and arrange for him to catch up with us in hk.
The plan is to spend the day handing in the visa tomorrow, to sleep one night, to pick it up in the morning and come straight back to Hangzhou the next day.

We eventually sleep at 1am but set our alarm for 4... another long day!

Travelling again!

Was quite worried the last few days as teaching has been looming now for a while. 

Today was the first day of term and we were expecting our schedule yesterday, well nothing came yesterday, this morning we were up bright and early but still no contact, I texted Eamon and heard nothing.

Checked my email to see that late last night Joanna from our agency had emailed to say we should eat any breakfast as we need to get a medical first thing this morning before heading off to Hongkong later today! Called Joanna straight away and she was going to talk with the school and we would probably end up getting the medical tomorrow instead of today now, a small blessing I guess. 

Got a call at around 12 saying Chris and I needed to teach our classes this afternoon, I will be teaching Grade one, and Chris Grade two, 22 classes across two schools, around 1000 students each! one class each per week. crazy! 

The Chinese teachers, even the busiest seem to teach around 16 lessons a week!

I was pretty nervous about my lesson but went in and blagged through it, talked about myself and tried to get them to talk too, the talked using the correct tense, about themselves and others, seems I need to find what I can teach them! 

Got out of the lesson and found our schedule, and our desks in a large communal office! and then discovered that a car would be taking us to the medical leaving at 6.40 tomorrow, and then we have to hang around in wenzhou until the results, then get a bus to hangzhou, then a flight to hong kong! Also the driver to the medical doesn't speak english and the medical forms will be in chinese only, the doctor probably won't speak any english and then we need to get the results too.... madness!

 The agency also mumbled something about us paying for the flights but bugger that, it says in our contract they have to and so they are, I can't afford it really anyway so sod them! 

Shouldn't really blog anymore as I need to grab some sleep before the crazy early start, also the last few days had a bit of stomach pain, not sure if it is the change in diet or what but it is not a huge issue yet, not gonna mention it in the medical! will see what I can do!

Updates from HK if i can!

Tianjin 3

Tianjin 2

Tianjin

Travelling back!

Woke up and looked out the window to find snow in Tianjin! Typical! The day I need to travel away! 

They seemed much better prepared here than in Hangzhou and had gritters out on the roads, and people paid to cycle around with grit bags and grit the paths too, a tough job! 

Found a taxi to the airport and hung around for an hour and a half, went to checkin and was told that my booking didn't exist! Turns out Ctrip had buggered it up and booked it for a different day! I called them up and was told it was also non refundable and I should have checked my ticket more carefully earlier, (lesson learnt!)

Anyway I asked for the next available flight hoping I would get back in time for the new term, luckily there was a flight at 17.10 instead of the 13.10 I was expecting, at £78 instead of the £50 I had already paid!  Ouch! But it did get my home in time to make my connecting train tomorrow morning and so I went for it, just getting a train would have been tricky, and it is an all night mission, and not much cheaper I expect, and so I just went for it! 

Waited in the airport for 5 more hours and got my flight back to hangzhou! The flight was fine, confused a random chinese woman by being polite as we met a door and let her go through first, haha, they really don't expect that here.

Got the bus back and luckily got talking to the person next to me as a woman stood up and announced my stop, If I hadn't got talking I would have stayed on forever!

Walked into the hostel to be greeted with 'oh its you again' haha, got to love a hostel that remembers your face! Same one as before and checked in no problem.

Wandered around a bit and then caught up with emails, going for a coffee and breakfast tomorrow before the train with another friend from hangzhou then back to Cangnan in time for lunch! 

Last day in Tianjin

I realised I had taken no pictures on my camera and although my phone is ok i wanted to correct that, so today I went out and photographed downtown, the river, the fishermen, the soviet era bits (hopefully I've caught that on film), and the park with the random ice ski slope thing! 

Will try to upload the pics when I'm back. 

I'm not sure how to get the grainyness out of my photos? A lot of night photos, fireworks or night scenes, come out very grainy even if they are not blurry, even with low ISO settings and long exposures, any tips anyone??

Surreal sports day!

After getting back I decided to move hotel as I found one that seems much nicer, private room etc, for not much more, also in a much nicer district! And I have a window now!

Today I slept late and then decided to go back to the big park I saw yesterday for some sport! In this random park you can skate on the lake or even go skiing! A chance too good to pass up! After paying my 8 pounds they lend you some skiis and point you towards an improvised lift to the top of a fair slope, and with no assistance or instruction let you ski, slide, fall or roll to the bottom!
Luckily I managed ok and managed to stay upright and facing the right way all the way down. Very fun!
Then had my photo taken by a random Guy with his friend!

Did some more sightseeing and random mooching around. China feels very safe, even in random back streets I have had no hassle and never felt put upon more than the stares that follow you everywhere here.

In my wandering I found a few internet cafes, well more like interneet warehouses, multi floors of maybe 50 people per floor all with hig screens and high graphics! Madness! Way better than my PC back home, damn I felt jealous! Haha.

Going to take aa load of pictures tomorrow as I haven't fancied carrying my camera on my random walks and haven't brought a bag, got a camera phone pics though!

I can't believe its not Russia!

Did some super touristy things today, visited culture street, and ancient culture street, which both seemed to be filled with people selling random crap in fake old style streets! Guess not much has changed culturally since ancient times!

Walked along a frozen river and then walked right accross the frozen river! Something I have never done before!

As I walk around more and see ice fishing along with weird old Communist era buildings and that dilapidated look from far east Soviet Russia it feels more and more similar to an old Russian city. Especially as the people even look more Russian up here!

Made it to Tianjin!

Landed in Tianjin at half past midnight and walked straight through non existant security, didn't see a person between the plane and the taxi rank!
After some discussion I persuaded a taxi driver to take me to the hostel.
We drove for 20 minutes until we got to a big overpass near a big building site where the driver made obvious montions that he had no idea where to go from here.
I gave up and called the hostel to ask where it was but found the hostel spoke no English either! In the end I just handed the phone to the taxi driver and let them talk, turns out that the hotel was a hundred meters down a side street next to the road building, my driver drove straight down the wrong way and made general get the hell out motions until I stumbled into the hostel after 1am.

This hostel was another very Chinese hostel similar only to the one in Hangzhou! Basic facilities, a little dirty, but still very cheap! 8 pounds for a private room.

The private room has no window but apart from that was ok, fell asleep almost striaght away.

In the morning I headed into the town center and found out just how big this place is! Gave up on the bus and took the taxi, but taxis are less than a cup of coffee so its no problem!

After spending some time in the center of town and doing a few touristy things and a little window shopping I went back to the hostel. Walking around that area at night I found a river with people ice fishing! And a massive Ferris wheel! Cool!

After some morning Googling I found out that this Chinese town I'm in actually has a population of 13million people, a little bigger than I thought!

After a coffee and breakfast hunt I went to a massive park nearby with more ice and snow, will definitely mark that for a visit! also saw the Olympic stadium and a few other touristy things!

ok ok, enough of the fireworks I hear you cry!

New years photos

yuck

to the guy I can hear through the wall hacking up and spitting...I hate you

Waiting at the airport....

Spent the day drinking coffee and reading around Hangzhou and the west lake in lovely 18degree warmth! Didn't need a coat! It was lovely, then left a good 5 hours to sort a bus and get the airport before my flight as I wasn't sure where anything was but it turned out to be easy, found the bus, got there in half an hour instead of the predicted half and a half and am stupidly early for my flight now! its 7pm and its not until nearly 10, another hour or so and I will try to checkin, fun times! 

Last night I stupidly fell asleep 9-10 so of course couldn't then sleep until 12, but the guy in the bunk below was bloody singing along to this mp3! I nearly killed him, crazy guy! He was still there from last time, a seriously long term stay in a shared dorm! 

Arrive in Tianjin at midnight and then have the fun of trying to get to my hostel, ah well! I would upload the photos but the airport wifi is awfully slow, 56k shared among 500 people, not so fun!

Cangnan to hangzhou...again

Up at half 7 to head to hangzhou but didnt sleep until half 3 so a pretty painful start.
Walked the mile to the station in a gorgeous sunny morning through the debris from the fireworks and was amazed at how quiet it was, the two main roada that are usually 3 lanes each way of solid traffic had the occasional car or taxi and the usually bustling station was unusually peaceful.
Caught the train and slept the first hour before everyone piled on at the same stop as last time. Was then next to a couple and a todler and the todler was fascinated by me for the next 2 hours, i tried to teach it some english but no luck!
They then left and were replaced by 2 middle aged women who brough out a big bag of small fruit with seeds which they piled in front of themselves and proceeded to eat spitting the seeds into the train sick bags. Yuk!
From the train i booked a ticket back for the 10th from here to cangnan but the last train leaves at 16.40, my flight lands at 15.00. I booked anyway and went to my hostel where i discovered it is actually 30km to the airport, a good 40mins, and since in china you check into your train a good 20mins early i figured i wouldnt make it so went back and got a refund on my ticket.
Suddenly felt so tired so retreated to my hostel to read and doze until bed time, its going to be a long day tomorrow!

The sky was on fire....

New years eve we went and did some shopping, stocked up on noodles and beef jerky as if the end was nigh! Retreated back to the flat for a bit of relaxed gaming and beer.
All day we had heard the occasional firework or 5 minute banger chain but by around 6 it was dark and the fireworks were getting really out of hand, the view from our balcony showed that right outside someone was letting off continual fireworks, sheer madness.
At quarter to midnight we decided to head to the roof to see what was going on and we let ourselves out just in time. No sooner had we got there when everyone started the countdown and the sky exploded around us.
Looking in a 360degree arc around the flat we tried to count the number of fireworks and lost count at 35 with many more left.
There were some fireworks 20 or 30 meters from our rooftop exploding at the height as us, some set off from the next tower exploding overhead, a very impressive set from the nearby hotels and lots more just set off by people in the street. As soon as one lot stopped you could see behind it to another lot continuing further behind and still more in the distance. This is not counting the rockets flying sideways down the road, and people throwing huge packs of bangers out from apartment windows into the street. It was without doubt the best, most prolific and most insane fireworks display i had ever seen! I am so glad we stayed in cangnan to see it!

The caos continued late into the night and then first thing in the morning another massive barrage of noise to welcome the first day of the new year.

Being in the flat with fireworks from all sides i felt like we were in a warzone with explosions all around, when you could just hear the noise and see the flashes off buildings it was very surreal!

Off traveling in the morning with an early start so best catch what sleep i can. Amazing photos to follow as soon as i get time on a pc!

happy new year!

Happy Chinese New Years! 

2011, The year of the rabbit!

Any ideas??

Any ideas welcome for what to do with the 31 'new year cakes'. If you want send me postage and I will ship it out to you, 2 weeks in transit guaranteed not to adversely affect the taste!

Enjoying the downtime

The last few days have been pretty quiet, mostly just relaxing in the flat and enjoying having nothing to do, a state I think that will become pretty rare when term starts again! 
We have found out it looks like we will be teaching 4 classes a day roughly! ouch! but I think we can reuse our teaching plans for the other classes so that should be ok, and if we can get them watching films etc in english then that is pretty cool.

The day before yesterday we had to go and register with the police as residents, I was a little worried about that as we don't actually have a residency visa, just a 90 day tourist visa that is slippping away fast! Luckily it is up to the agency to sort out sometime for us to go to hongkong to change it! 

Eamon helped us grab a taxi outside the school that already had a random girl in, and then we got in as well and shared a taxi ride across town to the district police station, bit weird for her I think.

Arriving at the police station we walked into find around 15 people milling around behind the desk from 16-60 half in casual clothes and most of them smoking, the place was like a drug den, and probably was. After some discussion it turned out the guy we needed was in a meeting and they didn't know when he would finish, but we could wait in the corner on a bench if we wanted.... we declined. 
Across the road was a small shop that had a couple of pool tables outside the shop, quite a common thing in china for a local corner shop but a bit crazy when every other shop has them, anyway we decided to play some pool. The table was proper sized and we had a good game, then Eamon stepped in and he is not so good but it was still fun, I ended up potting the black in a different pocket from the one I designated and so forfeited the game, oops! 

Heading back in we found that the person may have gone home that organises the residency, they let us go through anyway and once through the back door the police station opened up into a courtyard surrounded by dorm like rooms 5 stories high, a bit of a maze. We had been given a lead that it may be in room 402 and then left with a free run around the police station, a bit odd, we walked up through dirty corridors filled with cigarette stubs and rubbish until we saw 401, the door with the sign ripped off must be 402 we reasoned, the door was labelled ''didict squad room', not a promising start. 

Opening the door we found 10 people standing around smoking and talking, Eamon asked and they said no it was the correct place, but the person who does it wasn't here, but we can wait 2 minutes and they should be back, 10 minutes later, no person. We asked again, 2 more minutes, 10 minutes later, no person. Just as we had given up a young policewoman in uniform arrived, apparently she has drawn the short straw and had to deal with us. 

She wrote down all our info, and pulled our passport photos down from the computer (when it was scanned at the airport! a bit scary....) and entered all our residency information, when it got to the visa she mentioned about our visa length but said it was no problem and from what I understood if we had a job and did well, then the visa could be sorted out, from what I understand the school principal is a powerful and well known local figure, perhaps he has some clout with the police as well as Eamon did mention his name... madness! I would prefer to get in the usual way, especially if it means a paid trip to Hongkong!  As we left the policewoman spoke with Eamon again outside before giving us all a wave and a laugh at my awful chinese. Eamon is still single so we will try to use the millions of stares we get for being the only white guys in town to find him a girlfriend! haha.

We sorted our things and then ate some local food, before walking the mile or so back to the school. Chris still has real problems eating noodles here, they come in a big bowl to share and you have to lift out your portion into a small bowl, a bit of an art that I am only just starting to get! 

When we got home we found that the living room heater has broken. AGAIN! and since everyone is off it wont get fixed until the new term, the room is freezing without it! madness! 

Yesterday we were relaxing playing some games and we heard a knock on the door, a bit odd since nobody is here, we answered it to find 5 men who came in and introduced themselves as the 2 principles, the owner of the school, and an english teacher to translate. Lots of hand shaking and translated small talk followed whilst they gave us our 'new years lucky money' £50 each, (the second of these!) and also a big bag of 'new year cake'.

New years cake is a big polystyrene box with 16 small shrink wrapped cakes in. 

New year cake from local fish, the teacher happily explained! Chris immediately jumped up to get plates to give everyone some, but the headteacher declined saying they must get on, I had been told about this by my students and also told Chris to drop it! 

They also left us two crates of canned cold tea in various flavours.

After they had gone Chris fancied some cake and so opened one up, the whole room instantly stank of fish and after a close smell which almost made me actually sick, I declined. Chris however likes fish so gave it a taste, he chewed for several seconds before spitting it into the bin and chucking the rest of the cake away before rinsing out his mouth with anything he could find. A lesson learnt, AVOID NEW YEARS CAKE! The tea however is very nice, some flavours perhaps more so than others, but on the whole lovely.

For the last few days a constant barrage of fireworks has gone off all night and all day to the point where we are starting to really resent fireworks now! A shame considering how novel they are in the UK! too much of a good thing I guess.... 
Got some more cool pictures though of them exploding just over the block of flats behind us! 

Today I am going to buy some food to take with me travelling as apparently nothing is open for the next few days and so getting anything is pretty tricky, and I am a little worried about the buses to the airport not running, I may have to get a taxi instead, if I can find one of them either! luckily on the way out I have a whole day to get to the airport as my flight isn't until the evening, the problem is getting a taxi at the other end, as I land at midnight, I also hope my hostel is ok with a 1am checkin! 

I treated myself to a private room for £8 a night so I won't wake anyone, but in the last one the checkin desk was closed at night, I emailed them to check it was ok! 

From what I understand travelling now is like trying to travel on a three day long Christmas! It may be quite interesting, as long as I make it up to Tianjin ok I don't mind too much getting back!

Chris has woken up (finally...1pm!) and has a cold, I'm just trying to pack and sort my stuff to take, the headteacher seemed quite surprised that we were not travelling together but I think I could use the break after 3 weeks together! 

will try to phone blog whilst I travel,

All the best

ahaha how stupid!

Since we moved in we have been using power adapters for everything from the UK, yesterday Chris forgot and tried to plug straight into the wall without the adapter....and it worked! 

The plugs (in our flat at least) and seemingly out and about sometimes as well have a design the accepts US, UK, and any other sort of input! Much easier to plug in everything now!