Saturday, 30 April 2011
A few photos
A couple of photos of the crazy Xiamen metro replacement BTR bus
thing....
Update on Cangnan
tests in EVERYTHING, including P.E! they have to get so many balls over
the net in ping pong, so many baskets in a minute in basket ball, even a
minute to do so many dance moves in dance class! crazy!
In their middle school they had to get a certain score in P.E to make it
into this school, no matter what their scholarly prowess, no wonder the
kids are so busy!
On Tuesday there was a choir competition in the school but we had to
tutor the young children and so could only get there for the end, but it
was still quite interesting. The students that spoke to us were
desperate for us to come back on the wednesday for an individual singing
competition.
The wednesday we went back and some of our students came over and spent
the whole time with us, explaining the songs and what was happening.
There were around 20 acts, singers male and female, some dancing acts,
and some classical chinese instruments too, overall they were really
good, I took some pictures but without a telephoto lens and with the
problems from before with noise the photos were not great. I found the
best results from using the largest aperture and fixing an average
shutter speed, since the people were brightly lit they came out ok, just
with a lot of noise, but at least I am learning!
Friday we were again called to Wenzhou to collect our passports, the car
was not available so we had to get the bus this time. Eamon went with us
to help and we got there ok, we took our receipts to the counter and
were promptly told we were STILL MISSING A FORM!!!! ARGH!
Eamon made some rushed phone calls and ran off to find a fax machine and
came back with the correct form and the £40 to pay for the permit and
after another short wait we finally had our passports back with our
residency permit. We are now finally official residents of China and
with this permit our visa is cancelled, and we can now officially live
and work here, and enter and leave the country as we wish! Cool! The
only problem being it expires in July but maybe we can get it
renewed....
On the way back from wenzhou it was the first day of the holiday and
after a crazy long wait for the bus we managed to get onto one, chris
and Eamon behind me and me on my own, a girl sat down next to me and we
got chatting, turns out she knows the other foreign teachers in lingxi
and seems cool, told me a lot of cool places to visit in China which was
great, unfortunately she has a great Canon camera and showing me the
pictures the 550d took much nicer pictures than my poor olympus, now I'm
wondering if buying new lenses for my camera is better than buying a new
camera! Damn her for letting me see a more expensive camera up close and
play with it! haha. Chris made friends with a girl next to him that
spoke awful english but was just back from the Chinese version of
britains got talent and got her number, haha, she did seem interested in
the tall mysterious foreigner dressed her to toe in white.
Arriving back at the flat we found the entrance to our building piled
high with purple chairs, Eamon showed us a room on the first floor which
is being kitted out with comfy chairs, a projector, a computer, a sofa,
and a small gym room with a running machine and an exercise bike just a
few floors below us for use by the teachers anytime apparently! that is
crazy but so awesome, they said we can use it for a party possibly....
though who we would invite I have no idea.
Later on we had a quick beer and as we were leaving our house Chris
needed to use the toilet so he ducked into the our recently found
relaxation room on the 1st floor.
Unfortunately for Chris we were on the second floor and since all the
halls are the same before I could say he anything he had walked straight
into the open door of the principal of the school! Stiffling my laughter
as Chris started trying to blag a flying visit to an important man that
speaks no English I tried to keep a straight face as he stammered
through a few pleasantries and we shook his hand and left, I managed to
keep in the laughter till we reached a safe distance!
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
More Chinglish mistakes
This week I have been doing 'three things on a desert island' with my class and today a girl decided she would take a cock with her, for the eggs....more than one misunderstanding there!
Monday, 25 April 2011
Xiamen Day 2
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Back to lingxi!
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Skinny shoes, Sun burn and hard beds.
Friday, 22 April 2011
Xiamen day 2
Day two in the peaceful seaside city of xiamen, home to a modest 3 million, making it rather small by Chinese standards.
Woke up feeling very happy and fresh in the comfy double bed in the gorgeous clean and well decorated room, the 4 poster bed with mosquiote net really gives ita nice style, it was a warm but not too hot day but so humid. It really is sub tropical now and the flora and fauna show this as well as the weather itself, palm trees and banana trees all around this province.
Showered and packed my stuff up and went down to meet Chris, as predicted he didn't sleep well on the hard mattress but as we moved our stuff over into the twin room the mattresses were much softer, but no gorgeous double bed, our one night of accidental luxury over we walker down to the bus station to head into xiamen.
We didn't see the hotel staff so we couldn't ask about bus numbers so we just jumped on the first one that looked promising, number 29, and paid our 10p flat rate fare.
After a few diversions the bus dropped us right near the ferry port out to gualin island, perfect, our first stop for the day. Before trying to cross to the island we though we would indulge Chris 's longing for blueberry muffins and my lack of coffee by popping into a Starbucks, a western convenience that lingxi is missing unfortunately. We all spied that they sold ground coffee and so Chris bought me a bag to take home as a gift, or maybe just to stop it continual moaning! Which was very nice.
The weather today was supposed to rain but it held off in the morning, unfortunately the sea fog didn't and so our views were a little more misty than we would have liked!
After coffee we got the free ferry out to the island (you pay 8rmb pp to come back however) and explored this slice of colonial past. This island was an exclusively English island, a refuge in past times from
The smelly rabbit warren on the mainland for the distinguished English gentleman and so you can see some amazing buildings and I got some great pictures I hope.
All around the island were old pillboxes, some in better repair than others looking out over the bay.
We ended up avoiding the crowds around the ferry landing and walking the couple of miles right around the island perimeter, we found most of the north to be free of people and apart from the occasional electric tour car we walked alone.
Some girls asked us to be in a photo with them and I of course obliged and then near the ferry dock an old couple asked me to pose with the wife for a photo with the young foreigners, I don't mind!
Completing our circuit we got the ferry back to xiamen proper and walked away from the sea into the interior. We found a small resteraunt with no English menu and ended up randomly choosing a Chinese surf and turf piella type dish in a clay pot, Chris was very happy but since I am not a huge fan of piella I was not so pleased, but it was OK!
Afterwards we wandered around and Chris did a little shopping, buying himself some trendy new trainers and taking in the local beautiful sights or sights of beautiful locals.
In the late afternoon we got on the bus back towards our hotel but then got off at a random stop that looked busy and full of tour groups.
As we approached the entrance to this place we hit a wall of people being stopped from entering an just as we started to think of finding a way around there was an explosion from the other side of the 7ft wall we were next to. Turns out a demolion crew were tearing something down. Whatever it was it made the whole crowd jump!
The place turned out to be a temple complex which we explored and then a mountain behind which we obviously had to climb. All the way up were Chinese characters painted on the rocks and at the top a few more pillbox lookout points. Crazy!
On the way down we took a wrong turn and ended up coming out through the monks private quarters and dorms, with their robes hanging up to dry next to their civilian clothes. We walked past a bemused guard more used to stopping tourists wandering in than asking us how we got in as we left and made our way back to the bus.
The journey back to the hotel was pretty uneventful and once we arrived they said that an old couple was checking in and so they needed the twin room for them, would we mind staying on in the double rooms a bit longer? Of course not so we have another night in seperate rooms and I am happy with the comfy 4 poster beds again! Chris not so much....
We got a shower and rested our feet for half an hour then walked to the same local food shop as last night, this time we tried the local dishes of chicken and mushrooms and spicy liver and peppers, it was tasty and nicely cheap! A good recommendation by the hotel there.
After the meal we went back to the pearl milk tea shop from yesterday and spoke to the same friendly waitress, much to her male friends annoyance.
I wanted to take some photos on the beach so I took my tripod down and did some long exposure playing and messed around with some different effects.
Then a light rain started and I'm now lying in my bed in the dark with windows open, its nicely warm and I can head the light rain on the roof, very relaxing!
Tomorrow back to lingxi I suppose, back to the madness and back to the frantic search for an idea for Monday.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Xiamen arrival
The train pulled into xiamen around 4 and we made our way out, the first thing we did was join a queue to buy our return ticket! Having successfully asked for a ticket for Saturday afternoon to Cangnan for two people in Chinese from memory i felt quite happy and so we decided to try to travel to the hotel first and that is when the fun started....
Xiamen is an old western trading port and one island used to be exclusively foreigners but now it seems to be mainly Chinese tourists and there is not the English signage you get in shajghai or Beijing. They tried to build a metro in xiamen a few years ago but the strong bus company put a stop to that and this resulted in a brt or bus rapid transit system basically just an elevated metro line but instead of trains they have a private road which these buses run on, and stop only at stations like a metro, very odd.
There is however no English map and since we had no real idea where we were going we just wandered onto the first bus that looked busy guessing that would lead towards the city centre!
Whilst on the bus I downloaded a low grade map on my phone and Chris then spotted we were heading the wrong way back towards the mainland!
Quickly jumping off and blagging our way through the gates to get to the bus going back the other way we started back towards the rough direction of our destination, past the station we started at!
Eventually we reached the sea and the end of the line where our instructions said to catch a bus to the hotel from, unfortunately there was no bus stop that we could see. We decided to hail a taxi and show him the road name and off he went, driving right past the buses we had been looking for! A little while later he dropped us near a tiny pedestrian road and gestured us down it, we walked down and through and eventually came out in a building site....no hotel there.
Next I used the GPS in my phone to try to route us to where I though the hostel to be which worked fine until we realised that the place I though it was actually was someones house a few hundred meters away on a different street!
At this point Chris called the hotel and after some discussion we walked into a gambling shop and handed them the phone to tell the hotel where we were. They spoke for a few minutes then an old guy wandered in too and joined in, eventually it was explained that we had to go back to the main road and getting frustrated with the young shop employees the older guy gestured for us to follow him and decided to just show us, very kind. I tried to speak a little Chinese but my strange accent coupled with the fact that he only learnt mandarin in later life made it tricky, he mainly uses the local dialect.
He showed us to a taxi and told it to take us to the right place and this time when the taxi pulled up (around 200 meters from our first drop off) there was a girl from the hotel with good English waiting for us.
The hotel is down a tiny back street alley but with some good directions we may have had a chance, without good directions though I am surprised we came so close! We actually walked right past the alley entrance but there aare no signs or suggestions anything is down there...
Once we checked in (using our passport photocopies) we realised why the hotel was a little more expensive and it was worth finding. Each room is clean and well furnished, the twin room we booked is only available tomorrow so tonight we have seperare doubles for the same twin price! Each landing has two rooms of it, an only three floors so it is a very small hotel but each landing is beautifully decorated with comfy chairs and tradional Chinese art and objects including an amazing old radio and other curios.
The girl offered to show us a good place to eat away from the expensive main road and led us into a maze of narrow alleys lined with shops and other random places before taking us into a local resteraunt. She helped us order and then left and I managed to order us a couple of beers to go with our meal.
After we had eaten we walked around the small streets which were gorgeous at night enjoying the cool but no cold weather. We stopped in a cafe for a pearl milk tea and spoke our little Chinese to the young waitress working there which was very friendly.
We eventually found the sea and walked along the beach back to our hotel and a reasonably early night. Up early tomorrow to see what xiamen has to offer, and hopefully visit the island and the town, I quite fancy swimming in the sea if I can but I am not sure if we will have time!
Im glad we came here even if travelling was a bit off a chore. Sitting on my bed it feels wonderfully hard and comfy bu i know chris will complain in th morning, hqrd asian beds destroy his back apparently! Goodnight!
Mid term test
Had two amusing moments this week, first a student in my class while playing the three questions game stood up and with a straight face said "he (pointing) is a bastard" of course using the literal translation then maybe that is valid but I did start laughing and have to explain her mistake to her.
Then in our evening class two girls in the animal lesson kept talking about their cock and how they were sure rooster was not a better word.
This week the students have their mid term tests, they don't count towards final grades but still the students are very nervous, they count towards parents evenings!
We decides with our long weekend to go to xiamen and so bought a train ticket (all in Chinese, awesome!) And then went back to pack, it was only just before our train we realised we had forgotten that the agency still have our passports! And to check into a hotel you need them!
We tracked down Jenny and she called the hotel and luckily managed to square it with them and now I am writing this hurtling towards xiamen at 248kmph!
Xiamen is supposed to be the cleanest city in china and has a strong collonial history, as well as being by the sea!
The weather here is really starting to get warm and so Chris is getting happier, I'm just getting tired at midday and need to siesta. Luckily the long lunch break allows this! Should have a few good posts the next few days and some cool photos i hope.
Wish the woman behind would stop eating damn durian though, that fruit really smells!
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Road closed!
No lights, no signs, no warnings, just a 2 foot high black on black brick wall to stop you driving on what used to be a busy road, quite a wake up call for the unaware I would imagine!
Friday, 15 April 2011
Another week!
Sunday, 10 April 2011
RE: Here Come the Drums, Here Come the Drums...
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
KTV photos and a mountain descent photo!
That feeling....
KTV BBQ
Saturday night two students invited us to go for a hotpot dinner and then go to KTV for the first time to sing! (KTV is chinese karaoke!).
After a death defying high speed bus ride centimeters from a long mountainside drop we arrived at a small temple in the mountains near rice paddies and a much more rural atmosphere. unfortunately as we arrived the rains came down hard, I chucked my coat on and kept taking photos but the students who seem to rely much more on umbrellas got quite wet and I worried they would cancel everything!
We waited for 15 minutes looking around the area before the rest of the students arrived and finally the teachers too. Jenny with her sister and sisters young daughter (around 5?)