Some lovely early Christmas gifts from my students, a foot warmer, a picture that a girl drew for me and a cup and card from another girl. Lovely!
Wednesday 21 December 2011
Foreigner Christmas Party!
Foreigners united... Or not!
The school was asked by the wenzhou city government if their 'foreign experts' as we claim to be, would like to go to a Christmas meal in wenzhou with a load of other foreign 'experts'.
We accepted but heard no more information than the day and that the school would send a car to pick us up.
On the day chris and I dressed it a shirt but still jeans and trainers went out in the afternoon and met the driver who came with us to wenzhou last time, and we know fairly well.
We arrived at the wenzhou Shangri la hotel, definitely one of the nicest and most expensive wenzhou hotels and as soon as a man held the car door open for me I knew I should have worn a tie. As soon as we were led into the spacious and art covered reception and registration area along with 300 or so other guests I then knew I should have worn a suit. But then I dont have a suit so I guess who cares! At least we were comfortable!
Elaine came along as our minder and friend and after some general milling around and meeting some people from other tables, surprisingly also all English teachers, we took our seats. On our seats was of course our complimentary gift of a glassware set for the kitchen, of which we of course have two... A random choice but a free Christmas present nonetheless!
At our table were us three from our school, 3 from dd dragon, one of which we knew already, and three from a school in rui an, another city near to ours! Along with the wenzhou education bureau head for our area.
The rui an guy and I got chatting (in Chinese) and he invitied us to go with him to climb a mountain and see rui an sometime. A very nice man, his English teacher was from the phillipines and her English was a little...limited, and she was very quiet.
Before the show got started the major of wenzhou went to each table to thank us for coming along with various other important people, so we got to cheers with them, also friendly people, before they shot off.
The meal itself was served with the usual eclectic mix of random music and dance shunted back to back with street dance following an orchestra, followed by a flute solo followed by a kindergarden performance followed by a pianist, games, a raffle and other craziness.
The food was ok, a little fish heavy and not the best but the roast duck was especially meaty and tasty.
After the meal and a few glasses of wine, in the traditional Chinese custom, everyone left, no straggling dance going on for hours just a start, a middle, and an end. The driver took us home ready to teach the first class again tomorrow!
Not bad for a free dinner though, and nice to see a really posh hotel!
We accepted but heard no more information than the day and that the school would send a car to pick us up.
On the day chris and I dressed it a shirt but still jeans and trainers went out in the afternoon and met the driver who came with us to wenzhou last time, and we know fairly well.
We arrived at the wenzhou Shangri la hotel, definitely one of the nicest and most expensive wenzhou hotels and as soon as a man held the car door open for me I knew I should have worn a tie. As soon as we were led into the spacious and art covered reception and registration area along with 300 or so other guests I then knew I should have worn a suit. But then I dont have a suit so I guess who cares! At least we were comfortable!
Elaine came along as our minder and friend and after some general milling around and meeting some people from other tables, surprisingly also all English teachers, we took our seats. On our seats was of course our complimentary gift of a glassware set for the kitchen, of which we of course have two... A random choice but a free Christmas present nonetheless!
At our table were us three from our school, 3 from dd dragon, one of which we knew already, and three from a school in rui an, another city near to ours! Along with the wenzhou education bureau head for our area.
The rui an guy and I got chatting (in Chinese) and he invitied us to go with him to climb a mountain and see rui an sometime. A very nice man, his English teacher was from the phillipines and her English was a little...limited, and she was very quiet.
Before the show got started the major of wenzhou went to each table to thank us for coming along with various other important people, so we got to cheers with them, also friendly people, before they shot off.
The meal itself was served with the usual eclectic mix of random music and dance shunted back to back with street dance following an orchestra, followed by a flute solo followed by a kindergarden performance followed by a pianist, games, a raffle and other craziness.
The food was ok, a little fish heavy and not the best but the roast duck was especially meaty and tasty.
After the meal and a few glasses of wine, in the traditional Chinese custom, everyone left, no straggling dance going on for hours just a start, a middle, and an end. The driver took us home ready to teach the first class again tomorrow!
Not bad for a free dinner though, and nice to see a really posh hotel!
The big tree!
Shang Dan kuai le! (merry Christmas)
This week is the run up to Christmas! We have our advent calendars and are teaching our Christmas lessons including a clip of a mr bean Christmas, which I am getting sick of, and a Christmas carol, which chris is quickly getting sick of!
We spent monday night putting up and decorating our Christmas tree that we bought on the internet but thought it was a little small at 1.5m. We showed and Elaine and she agreed and yesterday arrived with a new tree asking us to move ours to the office and put hers up in our house.
Hers is a giant at over 2meters tall and with many decorations to match we spent another evening decorating a Christmas tree, this time with Elaines help!
This afternoon I carried our little tree all across campus full decorated causing several classes worth of students to press their faces to the window to see, much to the dismay of their teachers! I had to do the move during lesson time though to ensure the tree arrived unmolested and is now setup in my office facing out through the big window. Hopefully enough so students will see it but not so people can mess with it! Although I wouldn't be surprised to find it gone, to a students classroom or a teachers house!
Pictures of the baby tree and its transport attached! Pictures of the big tree to follow!
We spent monday night putting up and decorating our Christmas tree that we bought on the internet but thought it was a little small at 1.5m. We showed and Elaine and she agreed and yesterday arrived with a new tree asking us to move ours to the office and put hers up in our house.
Hers is a giant at over 2meters tall and with many decorations to match we spent another evening decorating a Christmas tree, this time with Elaines help!
This afternoon I carried our little tree all across campus full decorated causing several classes worth of students to press their faces to the window to see, much to the dismay of their teachers! I had to do the move during lesson time though to ensure the tree arrived unmolested and is now setup in my office facing out through the big window. Hopefully enough so students will see it but not so people can mess with it! Although I wouldn't be surprised to find it gone, to a students classroom or a teachers house!
Pictures of the baby tree and its transport attached! Pictures of the big tree to follow!
Tuesday 13 December 2011
A most welcome parcel!
Got a parcel through today from England, a most welcome parcel! The first feel of Christmas! and the first chocolate since I arrived, thanks mum!
Sunday 4 December 2011
Guangzhou again!
I spent a cool week there seeing the sights and wandering around, did some shopping and bought a shirt, shoes, a jacket, so many things, and found a cool clothes market where most of the stuff is designed to sell in bulk and lots of people in suits are buying loads of things for shops all around the world, its amazing and very cool! I was used as a standin model in a small shop as they hadn't had met a young friendly foreigner before and wanted to see how the clothes looked on white skin! very funny!
Went to the university district and wish I had come to university here for a masters, so cool! Its a massive campus, the size of a small town! with 8 different universities and shared areas with huge accommodation areas too, simply amazing!
Since I've been here before I didn't bother with too many touristy things, mainly shopping and exploring random back streets, also walked from the hostel out of town to a cool market street I didn't see last time, full of fake clothes! While I was there I went to a crazy little restaurant with an electric hotplate and some raw meat, but hey it was different and kind of tasty... I went to wash my hands and got directed to go through a small door, then up a tiny flight of stairs which looking down had 4 shop dummies creepily staring up at me, through a hongkong esque back ally warren with parts of several old shops, parts of an old housing project and all sorts of odd things! picture of creepy dolls included!
There was a serious rainstorm on one of the days and in the evening went out onto the balcony and relaxed with rain pouring down and watched the cars and people driving by, it wasn't cold there and I was still in shorts and T-shirt the whole time, so the rain was a welcome break!
Took some amazing pictures from the plane, on the way out for the first time someone had cleaned the window from the outside! wished I had my camera with me!
Remember remember the 5th of november....
We decided to celebrate bonfire night in China english style! Chris bought some fireworks and we invited some of the other english teachers from the school and some of the teachers from ddlong to come and watch them and have a roof top bbq and roof top fireworks!
We started setting up the bbq and some tasty prepared food and the teachers turned up, then we had a nice meal and a few beers before the ddlong teachers turned up.
Then Chris went to set off the fireworks and they were very cool, but very short lived! and very noisy, tracy, one of the teachers kids was very scared of them!
All in all a good night, great fun setting off fireworks from the top of the building and a little revenge for all the times they have set fireworks off at us!
I also realised that using the firelighting gel you can write things in flaming words, and its much easier to write with than a flammable liquid! very useful stuff! and very cool!
The last of the bacon with a triple yoked egg!
And a gift from Elaine, a huge box of Pomelos! They are ripe now so everywhere has hundreds of them, and everyone is eating them everywhere, and Elaine bought some back for me! haha, crazy! But very tasty!
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