Saturday 30 April 2011

A few photos

A photo of Chris posing with a purple sofa for the new break room.
A couple of photos of the crazy Xiamen metro replacement BTR bus
thing....

Update on Cangnan

I found out something weird here which is that the children here have
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

Teaching the younger kids last night we started to do birthdays and so brought the first kid up, we asked him what month he was born in, he looked confused, we asked again, we explained some more, eventually we found out he had forgotten, we brought another child up, we asked, they looked confused, they too had forgotten when their birthday was! Doh! Nearly half our class in the end had a birthday decided by us, haha.

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!

Pic unrelated, its us post haircut, Chris getting the short end of the stick...haha.

Monday 25 April 2011

Xiamen 7


Xiamen 6

boats in the harbour, 
Chris in the temple,
An old man outside the temple

Xiamen 5

A boat in the bay, a desert part of the bunker complex

Xiamen 4

Chris on the rocks, view out into the bay, and a massive horseshoe crab waiting for the pot!

Xiamen 3

Deserted buildings

Xiamen Day 2

Looking towards Guilin Island, 
Chris on board the ferry in his new T-shirt
A man trying to remove a sign, he just cut through the 6 points holding it to the wall and let it fall onto the waiting rope, typical bodged china style! 

Xiamen

1/. First sight of the sea! 
2/. My lovely room in Xiamen

Sunday 24 April 2011

Back to lingxi!

Woke up at 9 and text chris, at 9.30 I called him as I hadn't got a reply and woke him up apparently he had slept awfully on the hard bed and begged for half an hour more so I packed slowly and lounged around in my lovely bed. 

We went downstairs and checked out, as we checked out I had to give back their keys for the front doors and explain why their padlock key was not quite as I left it, when we got back last night I had tried to open the door but when I couldn't i twisted a little harder and accidentally bent the padlock key in the lock! luckily it still opened but was most definitely bent!
They were ok with that and still gave us our full key deposit which was good, and helped us by writing out the characters for train station in chinese, huo che xhen, fire car stop litally! 

We got a bus into the centre of town and I got talking to a girl from HK who was very friendly, she was actually from yangshou province, a place we would love to go, and so maybe she can show us around, or at least give us some tips when we go there for the summer! 
In the centre I got Chris breakfast to cheer him up from his awful nights sleep and then we wandered around for a while exploring xiamen, then we got on the BTR and I correctly told them where I wanted to go in chinese again! 

Around the station was a big Tesco and Wallmart, we went to both desperately stocking up on things that we can't find in our small town, we bought curry mix and thai flavourings and chris ended up buying a volleyball too before we headed to our train back. 

Waiting for the train they had a large room full of chairs, into this room designed to fit 50=100 people comfortably then crammed 400 or more people all smoking and drinking, eating strange and smelly food, but then...thats china!

Trained it back with no problems and walked back to our flat from the station, we are so lucky that our of the whole province for 50miles around we live less than a mile from the station with a direct route to the rest of china. The station was not even built last year, and there was no route to Xiamen then either, a very different experience for the teachers then compared to now, its a prefect place to travel the whole of the south! 

Chilled out today and then went shopping, then Chris taught his english corner, he walked into the lesson with a memory stick with a film, and found that the power was out for the whole building! doh! so ended up pulling a lesson our of his....ear, and running with it, but it seems to have worked!

Photos of Xiamen to come! 


Saturday 23 April 2011

Skinny shoes, Sun burn and hard beds.

Wow, what a trip the last three days have been. We decided at short notice to visit a place called Xia'men just south of Lingxi (about 2 hours on the train),
and has been mentioned many times to us as the holiday spot for Chinese people. I really liked the place, even with its quirkiness. A metro system that
has no metro and instead runs buses (you have to see it to believe it). A climbing wall with the front end of a jumbo jet parked in the way - you had to be there
to see and believe it (but take my word for it, it was quite bizzare). And of course the Chinese idea of tourism, which is not the usual pretty scenic views and
tranquil settings we dream of, but of lofty peaks that over look the industrial port and main stay of the Chinese economy and its might in shipping power.
All very strange, but all quite enjoyable. Nathan thinks it all a little pretentious, I think they're all just a bit confused. But at a serious session of playing the tourist,
I've successfully walked away with a nice bit of sun burn, a pair of Chinese shoes that are very skinny (but feel like slippers they're so light) and of course the usual
stiff back from the rock hard bed that was just a plank of wood, to straighten out the back and remove those kinks.....

Great fun was had and we will post some pictures for you shortly! A great place :)  but to many laowei's (foreigners - we prefer going local)!    




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!

The busy road outside our school seemed a bit quieter than usual and when walking to the shop yesterday we found out why! Over the time we have been here they have been doing road works on the road that runs perpendicular to the road outside our school and I guess finally they reached out section, they needed to close the road in order to resurface it (which was badly needed) and so they decided to block it off, literally, with a wall! 
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! 

Also some picture of me being silly with students, and a picture of Cady the student who showed us around Longan, bless her, she wants me to buy her a present in return for the presents she bought us....but what?? also a picture of Lilly playing ping pong, she's a really sweet kid! 

Today I got handed a letter from the post office in Chinese apparently asking me to go to the post office to collect a package, hopefully from the U.K., but why I have to go the post office I have no idea! nevermind!  

Bought some new speakers today, 2.1 with a nice sub so I can enjoy music again, thank god we live in an empty house, but only single glazed! poor neighbours!! 

Friday 15 April 2011

Another week!

Last weekend some of my students came over to hang out with us, which was cool, Bella and a few of the other guys from class one. We ended up hosting another beginner cooking class, and again the students way over salted some food, and then burnt some more food, but for most of them it is the first time they have ever cooked, and definitely the first time they have cooked without any mother telling them their every move, gotta let them make some mistakes to learn! 
As we finished our meal there was a knock on the door, I answered to see a male student at the door, he obviously didn't expect me and started stammering 'the otttttthhheeerrr teacherrrrrr' I told Chris he was there and eventually the student got the nerve to invite himself in, dragging a girl who was previously hiding behind the door in too!
I guess my group of 5 or so students hanging out may not have helped that.
My students told the new students (in chinese) that they were third years instead of first years, at first I thought this was a childish prank but actually it turns out that it was because there is a real superiority thing between the grades, and if they had said they were first years the second years would have taken over and put them in their place, but by saying they were third years they kept their status as more important. 
Chris's student after a while asked us all to sit down saying he was going to recite a poem, he then proceeded to recite a really long poem, in chinese, with actions and full body movements, it was a bit surreal really, and there was no translation! ah well, another day in china!

This week I decided to play true or false, give them three statements and get them to find which one is false, then get them to create their own three statements, pretty fun! It is always good to say "I drove a Ferrari" and "Chris knows how to fly a plane", always good for a laugh!

Wednesday night I went to sleep as normal, woke up at 2am with a sore throat, and then woke up on Thursday having lost my voice! I then proceeded to teach my classes for the rest of the week with barely any voice! Although some of my students liked the new gravelly voice sound, haha.
Now its friday night and I still can barely speak, but i don't want to go to the doctors as last time Chris got given 5 different meds, and they really wiped him out, i dont want that, I will just try to rest my voice over the weekend.


Next week wednesday to friday the students have tests so we have in theory been released from lessons, but I suspect that the school will pull some sneaky trick to make us work, probably teaching on the weekend knowing them! if they do I will probably just do a film lesson, haha.


All around the school I see teachers and visitors smoking, but today I saw two teachers stood in the entrance to one of the classrooms full of students sharing a quiet smoke, so crazy! such a different attitude to the U.K.!  


Sunday 10 April 2011

RE: Here Come the Drums, Here Come the Drums...

Wow, so its been 4 months already... It's raced by and the only thing i've noticed that's really missing out here is a free weekend! We seem always to be on the move
even if it's just writing our lesson plans for the following week... the chances to take a breather are few and far between. But hey, thats a good thing! Other wise i'd be
complaining to you that I am board :) - but it does mean I owe you an apology for not blogging in so long (oops, my bad).

On the sidelines I'm also still working on that literary master piece which is turning into a bit of a monster... I'm struggling to keep up with it as the ideas are coming think
and fast (it seems I turned that creativity tap on and well I think the twisty bit broke - what do you call that bit of the tap anyway? The tap twister? the lever? tap knob? anyways...), 
Nath's been a great source of inspiration to bounce ideas off of. But I need to get them written up on the PC as they're just in paper form and so only exist as a 
single copy... crazy and a bit dangerous :) 

I would be lying if I said I'm not missing friends and family, but the truth is that keeping in touch is going ok, if a little difficult at times. But the contact and chance to chat is all 
a great help... even if it's just to keep my English up and to keep up with whats going on in the world out side of China.... and the wave of
new friends made out here in China is just immense. We visited Longgang last weekend (a town about an hour away by car) and with an hour of being in the town, I'd already
bumped into and said hello to three of my students and Nathan had texts from his students asking him 'why he was in Longang?' and if he wanted to meet up! 

Crazy how the jungle drums seem to work here. An example of it was the other day... I visited the Doctors for something just to fix up a sore throat I had (as talking all day everyday can be
quite a strain on the old voice box), so I visited the local Doc at his 'clinic' which involved a stool that you sit on (you have to check this before you sit, as a definition of  stool varies quite 
considerably in China) which is positioned at the store front next to the street. Behind you of course is the obligatory patients which have been treated and are now fixed to an IV 
which the Chinese seem to think solves all problems (that or its cheaper than prescribing medicine). Of course though, in a town devoid of foreigners, a waijiao (foreign teacher) at the Doctors because he's ill is quite a novelty and attracts quite a crowd. Approximately 50 if I counted right. Locals and Students a like. Within minutes of leaving the hospital I had txt messages wishing
that i'd get better and to take my medication I had been given on time (?) - Nath puts it down to the Chinese being a nation of total hypochondriacs. And to be honest I have to agree.
The amount of times i've seen students guzzling down a skittles collection of multi-coloured pills astounds me. And when asked, they give a plethora of answers as to why and
what the pills do (often, half of them are Chinese medicine - and they're just taking the western equivalent to make sure it works - can you see the possible problems with this?) 
As a side note over doses seem to happen and if they don't  then my thoughts are that one of the two doesn't work.... 

That was my little insight into life in China for the week (gonna try and make sure I blog more often about something a little more random - whilst Nath keeps you
up to date on the day to day goings on!) 

Have a good week all! And look out for our next blog :) 

Questions to the usual address plz ;)

All my best

Chris    

Tuesday 5 April 2011

mountain 4

1/. A good photo chris took of me
2/. Bella and her friend
3/. the descent!

mountain 3


more mountain photos


Mountain Photos


show photos


Pictures from the show!

KTV photos and a mountain descent photo!

1/. Chris and Christian posing outside DO ME, a chinese fast food chain.
2/. Chen Chen and her friend, they could be sisters!
3/. Chris singing his little heart out.
4/. The line of umbrellas descending the mountain.

That feeling....

Do you know that feeling when you are in a taxi on a dual carriage way with no central reservation and the car in front overtakes a lorry just as you were about to overtake them, and instead of waiting you decide to overtake them on the lane reserved for oncoming traffic and just as you reach level with the car to your right another car overtakes you on your left effectively blocking all four dual carriage way lanes at high speed? I do! 

And this was in the middle of the day, and the roads had plenty of cars on! Chinese traffic = crazy!

KTV BBQ

Teaching on Saturday was difficult, 6 days of teaching started to take its toll! 

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!). 
We went to hua gua for hotpot and then met a group of students to go to sing. Chen chen and her friend, christian, oceana, rabbit, and a few of rabbits friends as well as shelly and porridge.
Chris and I got stuck in the Roxanne before moving onto linkin park etc etc and had a surprisingly good time, in a private room with a big TV and a few MICs, some beers and lots of laughing, not sure what the chinese thought but it was very fun!

The next morning we woke up early and met some of my students as they had offered to take us to a nearby mountain for the day!
The students told us that despite heavy rain we would still be going and a bus would arrive to pick us up shortly. 20 minutes later it was obvious that no bus was coming, it turned out that because of the tomb sweeping festival the buses were all booked and so would have to make our way to the bus station and get a public bus from there!
The teachers jumped in a car and left all the students to make their own way across town, negotiate and pay for a bus, and then to find the place we were going, pretty cool, no school trip in england would do that! Into the bus we packed a couple of BBQs and some charcoal, lots of food and went off towards the mountain.
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?)
We put the stuff together and started to carry all the stuff up the mountain, before long I had carried the child, the heaviest bags and parcels and still gone exploring with some students and disappearing down tiny cracks between the huge rocks. The heaviest box by far was the Mangos, partly because (as we didn't realise until we hit the top) they had been weighed down by some cement rubble in the bottom of the box! 

At the top we set up a BBQ and Chris got to use some of his skills at firelighting and was shocked by the chinese attitude of heaping charcoal on and continually throwing on meths until something lights, and all the students were left cooking over the small open bbqs, and much tasty and occasionally under cooked food was eaten by all! Luckily the chicken was all precooked!

The students were impressed with some juggling of oranges, i'm teaching Chris to juggle at the moment and so hopefully we can get some passing on the go too soon!

Walking back down the hill the path travelled through the stones and under them through some quite long and very small caves, nothing like disabled accessible but awesome fun, and some potentially excellent scrambling if the weather was drier, we have marked it as a place to come back to later!

In the evening we decided to do something nice for Jenny as she has been so helpful and drop off the photos of michelle her sisters daughter so that she could take them home. As we quickly uploaded them onto her PC she found out we hand not yet eaten at the crazy late time of 8pm and insisted on cooking us some noodles in home made chinese wine and some rice wrapped in a leaf. It was very tasty and they are both lovely people.

The next day I had been invited to go to visit longgan the next town across towards the sea, a similar size to Lingxi but the home of quite a few of my students, by the time I had told a few people I was going and word had gotten around we had countless invitations to visit various people! In the end I accepted one and made my general excuses to the rest. Spent a lovely day with Cady one of my students, she showed us around the town, did a little shopping and got some tasty coffee before she helped us grab a taxi back to our town! 

Today we were invited over to a students house for a meal cooked by her mother, it was tasty and the language gap wasn't too bad with me and chris speaking english, her chinese and two students to talk in both. Got to prepare for lessons now, will upload some photos too when I can!