Popped upto shanghai

I popped up to shanghai to meet with a company about possibly doing some work with them, and they seem very open to it so i will hopefully move to shanghai and start work in an IT company there after the summer if I can, it seems a great opportunity and a really good company, I hope it works out!

De to this I had to go to shanghai a few times and going just for a meeting seemed a waste so I did some exploring at the same time, I found a new hotel with a chandelier in every room, no matter how small, at a reasonable 20gbppn, and it's near jingan temple, right in the middle of shanghai, very nice. I stayed a few times and had a good time, there are lots of bars and restaurants around there and good metro access and train station access, a great place!

I took the train from shanghai hongqiao station, a huge airport size train station that defys photography and really must be seen to be believed, it's huge! 

Luckily the new job leaves time to shoot out of china for a holiday, I was planning on Taiwan, or maybe Korea, but then I saw cheap flights to Japan and I have a few friends there now! 

First I taught an intensive 8 day kids class, every day 8am to 2pm, then on my visas last day fly to Okinawa for a few days, then fly to the mainland and sort my visa out for china, then fly back to start work, ideally with time to find a flat in shanghai somewhere in between! 

English competition

Chris was asked to be a judge in an english competition in ningbo for three days, and he accepted, but there was only one space, no problem, good for him, earn some extra money!

I was then called a few days later by the university asking if I could be a judge for an english competition on the same weekend, I accepted as a favor to the dean of may faculty and was driven over for an induction, and some very tasty chicken soup in a small teapot, then i heard that the next day chris also had an induction where they told him they would put him up in a hotel in the city center, a five star hotel, and then look after him for the few days, the my job told me the same, even in the same hotel! 

We found out we were in the same hotel, going to the same school for the same competition, just for different majors completely unrelated, the ningbo university name gives us prestige as being judges representing our university, haha! 

I went over to the hotel, the Howard Johnson, stayed Friday night and then worked Saturday and went home Saturday evening, a good arrangement and nicer than Chris's 3 day stint!

I got some time in the pool on the Friday night, a treat as I don't get the chance to swim much here, then went to work, with slightly chlorine tinted eyes! 

The school was very expensive and very pretty, their library looked like a copy of the White House! They had the same problem though as all chinese school libraries in that there were no books inside!

Chris was a judge but it turns out I was asked to read the questions for the contestants, not too difficult, they were all preprepared for me, but still a tiring days work! The 3000rmb pay, 300gbp made it much more acceptable for a days work!

The judges were lovely people from around china and I ate with them and relaxed with them in the infrequent breaks, however the competition was interesting because several teams complained of racism against minorities, especially the xinjiang team, and instead of simply ignoring it they positively discriminated to place them slightly up from bottom in the next half despite their mediocre performance! In the afternoon after that of course every team complained and second guessed the judges! Madness!

All in all a nice if busy day, and a bit of extra pocket money and a free hotel room!

Ningbo industry museum

Me and Mina were bored in the flat so cycled to a nearby museum we had heard of but never visited, turned out to be a history of the industry of ningbo, a huge mostly empty building paid for by rich ningbo people who wanted their name and place in the museum, a bit of chinese self congratulation as it were... 

The building itself was very cool, and featured the Useful and informative general desk. 

There were some interesting places and a few neat signs including some local proverbs of interest, after wandering around the, admittedly free museum, for a while we went to the local large tesco and bought some tasty food as well! 

As for the proverb, well, it's lucky I have pictures! 

Gaokao over!

Well done to all my students who finished their gaokao! One of my students posted this picture of a part of the books he had to effectively learn cover to cover to be at all competitive in this series of exams, which then decides the rest of their life... It's tough being a chinese high school student!

Taste of home

I found a marks and Spencer's in ningbo! It's not that big, and mostly clothes, but did find champagne and biscuits, which made a nice afternoon treat! Tasty!

The picture is back grounded by my new TV, the old one broke in unfortunate circumstances when it was known that rubbish old style TVs that break are replaced by shiny HD flat screens, the world is full of coincidences! 

Wenzhou to see Elaine

Elaine came back for a visit to wenzhou so I took the chance to jump on a train and see her, had a great time visiting old haunts and eating food I had missed, the pumpkin soup with cheese was especially tasty, took some pictures with Elaine's camera, especially playing with the tilt shift mode, very cool! Before heading back in the evening to ningbo. 

Also managed to find time to pop into the school and wish the students good luck and say hi, they seemed happy to see me which was great, they are all growing so fast! And took some pictures with them too!

The train back was so empty, the view up through 16 large carriages was very cool! 

Teaching New Zealand manners

Teaching manners went well with more than 10 classes all without major problems, I got to see a huge range of schools and students and learnt and practiced lots of chinese.

It wasn't all work though as the picture of my arm wrestling with a student in the break shows, but apparently they remembered a good amount of what I talked about too in follow up classes, great stuff!

There is also a photo of one of the nicer (and more expensive) schools I visited.

Later on after they kept saying that driving me to the schools and listening while I taught was too tiring I mentioned I had a chinese license and so they got me a car and away I went driving myself to the schools to teach, they still came along for the ride however negating any real time saving on their behalf!

Rare sight!

My first (and in two and a half years only) sighting if a campervan in china! And it's for hire! Just think parents, this could be you!, 

Catch up time

Sorry for the posting delay, end of term rush but I will try to fix it now, prepare for a rather more rushed and photo centered catch up of the last two months or so!

A night at the opera

I haven't written in a while, it's been busy at the end of term and it's got crazy hot and not that much has happened!

One nice thing was, in a typical chinese fashion, the teachers got a text asking if we were free the next night, I replied maybe, and in the morning they sent us a notice saying there was a chinese opera on in the evening if we wanted to go? 

I hadn't been to a chinese opera but had seen them on tv, not really singing, random noises and odd bells seems to characterize the typical beijing opera performance. I was hesitant but agreed with the two guarantees A it was free and B I could leave a find a bar if it was THAT bad, or at worst a taxi home! 

We got the bus down with several of the other teachers in lauding several students to make up the numbers and went to the huge beautiful opera house in ningbo, a massive building sitting on the river, very beautiful. The tickets face value was over 60gbp, but they were of course sent to the university for free as a sign of respect, of course nobody in the uni wants to go but that looks bad so they sent the foreign teachers who will go to anything if its free, everybody wins! 

We got in and sat down in row 5, very near the front, although a little to one side! Then it started, and it wasn't a beijing opera at all, it was a chinese story in modern operatic style but in chinese language, very cool! Of course as even chinese people don't understand chinese music without the lyrics there were giant LED boards at each side with the lyrics displaying, almost a giant KTV! 

The story was of the origin of one of ningbo's tailor societies, with a central love story thrown in, but quite watchable and good practice for my chinese, I had a dictionary on my ipad constantly translating the odd character and trying to keep up with what was going on! Emem, an American teacher without any chinese and me struggled along and did ok, the Japanese teachers could read the lyrics with ease so they understood and the rest of the group were chinese, but good fun! The costumes and the singing were good enough to make up for missing a few plot twists here and there! 

It was also thankfully only two and a half hours, not the many hour epic of some beijing operas, all in all a good night! And very cheap! A shame chris was teaching and couldn't go...

Metro trip

We had a teacher trip to metro, the big german supermarket, and so stocked up the wine fridge and bought £15 worth of steak, which when expertly cut up by chris, and with fat cut back a bit, made 8 steaks of varying sizes, very tasty! 

Steak and beers!

Rob had his house to himself for the first time since his 2 year old was born and so invited us over to celebrate. We sat on the balcony of his 10th floor balcony protected from the rain and drank beers and cooked steaks on his Balcony BBQ. 

It was the first good steak I have had in china, the meat came from Inner Mongolia and was cooked by a Canadian but it was very tasty!

We stayed till late and helped him to empty his alcohol stocks too, much to my regret the next day!