Thrown in the Deep End.

Wednesday 12th September 2012

Today we had to take a test to see if we could make it onto CIC Camp as a facilitator. I don't really know when it changed from TIP to CIC! Georgia and I figured we could blag it, and just used our designated practice time to have a little chat  and explore the experiment centre instead.

In the afternoon, we had the test. We basically had to pick one thing to facilitate as a pair. Georgia and I decided to do 'blow wind blow' as I had facilitated it before, and it is easy to do! 

After everyone had finished, we found out that eight of us will be going on camp, whilst the other four stay behind in the city. The four not going on CIC camp this time round were Emma, Alex, Ollie and Dan. Emma and Alex were completely relieved, Dan was completely nonchalant, and Ollie was rather annoyed. I still don't know why Ollie wasn't picked, as he was one of the more confident members of the group, and he was good at 'facilitating',. 

Most of us then went to a steak house in the shopping centre with the aquarium.  It worked out to be the equivalent of £5.80 for a decent cut of steak and chips! Normally, I would go for my steak to be medium rare - medium. They didn't give us a choice here. It came out rare. At first, I wasn't too sure, don't really like the look of blood on my food, but now I have tasted it, I have never gone back!

We decided to go to Walmart for some last minute bits before going back to the apartment. We were in there for quite a while, so long that we must have coincided with closing time as the lights started to go off. We panicked and ran outside! 

Thursday 13th September 2012

This morning Georgia and I went to the market to go shopping. I thought we went to the same place as last time, but we must have come in at a different angle and we ended up in a completely different place, this time with a load more clothes stalls! This was definitely more up our street. We didn't buy anything, as we were just trying to navigate our way around the market, and pinpoint areas of interest.

After leaving the market, we went to CC Experience Centre to find we actually need to go straight to the Qinyin branch. Communication isn't CC English school's strong part. After we got there, we were told to have a rest before going into classes, and this time we were not to be in partners, we were flying solo!

Thinking it would be like the other classes we have been in, I felt quite confident that it would be good. However, when I got into the class I just got told I would be leading  the class. I can't speak mandarin. How on earth was I suppose to teach children when I can't speak their native language! Thankfully, I managed to blag it, by starting with a game, and then using the textbook activities to guide me along. Improvisation was key!

We then had another rest before going into another classroom. Luckily, this teacher was way more prepared and she had already planned out her lesson for me to teach. I familiarised myself with their routine before going into the classroom, and this made me feel a lot more comfortable in a teacher's role. 

We had a 'traditional Chinese tea', I'm pretty sure they just call everything 'traditional' to make it more appealing to us. This was a lot more appetising than KFC. Although, you have to watch out for some of the more spicier dishes! They are definitely more generous with spice in China than they are in England!

In my final class of the day, I actually did what we had been told we were going to be doing before we came to China. I assisted the teacher. The only thing she made me do by myself was teach head, shoulders knees and toes. All the students were really responsive to me, despite the fact they could only speak limited English and I couldn't speak any Chinese/ I love how excited they all get when we go into a classroom with them. It's so weird to think that most of the students in that classroom as never met a 'westerner' in real life before.

Ollie also hijacked my iPad at some point today. I'm ending this on one of his delightful selfies. Enjoy. 

Moving Out and Moving In.

Monday 10th September 2012

This morning I awoke to a note from Lory: 

                                                                                        

I've just realised that I have not mentioned that today was the day we were all going to move into an apartment together! We were all absolutely buzzing with excitement.  However, I really felt like I would miss my host family. They have been ridiculously kind and helpful and have welcomed me, a complete stranger, into their home and treated me like part of their family. I could never thank them enough for how they treated me. I was extremely lucky!

This little guy lives in the block of apartments my chamily live in.
He's such a cutie.

My chum took me to CC English School experiment centre branch at 10am and we said our farewells, and had an extremely awkward hug. Everyone apart from Dan and Hamish were already there.

Whilst we were waiting, Georgia was a bit peckish and decided to have a yoghurt that she happened to have in her bag. The yoghurts in GuiYang were pouches that you really need to drink with a straw as it was quite awkward to consume them otherwise! As she had never had a yoghurt in this packaging before, we were unsure on how to open it. Georgia just decided to go for it and ripped it apart. Unfortunately, it exploded all over the floor, on her legs on on Ben's bag! Not the best start to the day Georgia!

We thought that the apartment would be quite a while away, and when we were told we would be walking bare in mind we had all our luggage with us, none of us were particularly happy with it. However, it turned out that the apartment was literally just up the street, less than a ten minute walk! 

The problem we faced now was climbing the eight flights of stairs. With all our luggage. It was rather heavy. I couldn't make it. I gave up on the fifth floor and one of the CC English teachers Terry, carried up for me thank goodness! I'm so unfit, it's ridiculous.

View from our lounge.

When we walked into the apartment, it seemed absolutely amazing! But, after a closer inspection, we found that it was extremely dirty and to top it all off, there were only five rooms, which meant there were only ten beds. There were twelves of us. Apparently CC English school though that it would be perfectly ok to solve this issue by putting a double bed up on the landing. What?

Lounge.

Dining area/ Ping Pong table

Girls' bathroom

Kitchen

Downstairs bathroom

Upstairs bathroom

I can't seem to find photos of our rooms anywhere... If I find them I'll put them here!

We decided that the fairest way to decide who gets what room, was to put a number on each of the bedroom doors, get into pairs then pick a number out of the hat, the pair with nothing on their paper had to deal with the landing bed.

Georgia and I ended up with a pretty decent room thank goodness! I don't know what I would have done if I had to sleep on the landing... a girl needs her privacy! We had a blare room with a big double bed right in the centre. There was a TV, a nice chunky one that we just couldn't get to work, a lockable door, air conditioning and... the best bit... it was the en suite room! We also had a guest in our room. Meet 'Hans':

I would now like to dedicate this spot of my blog to Dan and Ollie. They were the unfortunate pair that had to sleep on the double bed on the landing. Despite the fact that it was way less than ideal, they barely complained at all about it, and didn't once ask to swap. Thanks guys! 

Natasha and Terry, the CC English School teachers assisting us today, then took us to another Walmart, basically so we could have a choice between the two. It was about the same size as the other one, and was right next to a shopping centre which had a massive aquarium tank just casually in the middle. Pretty sweet. We ended up spending 1,640 RMB about £164 on cleaning supplies amongst other housewares to attempt to shift the filth from the apartment. As there was way too much to carry, a couple of the others got a taxi back down to the house with the stuff, whilst the rest of us walked back.

After the others had dropped the cleaning stuff back at the apartment, we all got taxis to a restaurant called Pizza Fun. It was an all you can eat restaurant that specialised in Pizza's and other western dishes! This was super exciting to us all, although it was nowhere near as nice as the food back home.

When we got back it was time to tackle the apartment. We all designated areas for pairs, Emma and I got the girls bathroom then just cracked on! We bleached every inch of that place and got it spick and span. We were so proud of our achievement. I don't think I have worked that hard cleaning anything ever... and I used to work as a cleaner!

After we had all finished, we were all knackered and hungry. There was no food in the place. This required another trip to Walmart and, sadly, a trip up and down the eight flights of stairs again! But, as it was desperate times, we soldiered through! Afterwards, everyone except Emma, Georgia, Dan and I went to a bar for some drinks. We couldn't make it, we were exhausted. This also meant that we could have undisturbed wifi time! Georgia and I ended up face timing the gorgeous Gabby as she was getting things sorted before she started uni! Missed her loads whilst we were out in China... Hi Gabby!

After a while we went to bed, just about got to sleep before the others came back and a few of them barged in our room. This was not ideal. We were not impressed. Hopefully, this wasn't  going to be a regular occurrence.

Tuesday 11th September 2012

 Our first night in the new apartment wasn't as bad as expected. Sure, there isn't a 'mattress' on our bed and we sleep on 'wooden boards' but its ok... at least we have two quilts underneath us? Georgia and I share the bed, as its a double bed, luckily, we have separate quilts which makes it way less claustrophobic and more bearable long term!

Today, despite the fact that the girls didn't need to be up until 10 to go shopping, the whole house was rudely awoken by Hamish banging the frying pans together. We were not amused. He was. Thankfully, the boys left at 8, which gave us a couple of extra hours sleep!

Natasha took us to a shopping centre full of really expensive brands well out our price range , and we browsed a bit, drooling over the luxurious items before going to another shopping centre not too far away. The best thing about this shopping centre was that it had a H & M! This was the first shop we had seen so far that we can find in England, it made us ridiculously over excited!

Is that a model?

We went to a restaurant for lunch, and had an amazing meal. Beijing duck and rice! It was so good.  We browsed a bit more before making our way back to our apartment, where we found the boys back already!

We mutually decided to do group meals, and put money into the 'kitty' to get ingredients. James volunteered to make carbonara as the first meal, and we were all up for this! Unfortunately, it took him just under four hours and didn't taste overly great when he had finished. He had used yoghurt instead of milk. In his defence  the milk and yoghurt containers look exactly the same!

Back To Qian Ling Park.

Sunday 9th September 2012

Today was a chamily day. This morning we went to Qian Ling Park again. It is breathtakingly beautiful. We got a lift half way to the park with BD's, one of the boys, dad. Seven of us were crammed into is five person car. Really legit. I felt so safe...

 Sam and his mother met us outside the park, and then we paid, well Chum paid for me, the equivalent of 50p. It is definitely worth that! After being in the park for less than ten minutes, some random old man came up to me and started speaking to me in fluent English. I was bombarded with questions, and he presented me with a music sheet. He wanted me to sing in front of at least fifty people. This was not going to happen. Unfortunately he was not taking no for an answer, and he started getting a bit angry with me. I didn't know what to do! Luckily, at this point my chum saw my distress and told him where to stick it! Well she said something in Chinese that made him leave me alone!

From left to right:
Lory, BD, me, Sam, Linda

We then had another trauma; I stubbed my toe. Well, I didn't realise I stubbed my toe, I just happened to see it was bleeding! I asked Lory of her mum happened to bring any plasters with her it really wouldn't stop bleeding, to which everybody started acting like I needed my toe amputating! They bandaged me up with tissues, which did nothing, but it's the thought that counts right? I was just worried that the monkeys might be feral and the scent of my blood will trigger a group attack! I'm not even joking, that was a genuine concern of mine. 

We managed to find an area where they had a few rides, like in Hebin Park. We went on the bumper cars again. I was driving, and Lory was holding on for dear life. I don't think she could handle my extreme speed...

We carried on walking up the path and eventually we spotted some monkeys! It was so weird to see them in the wild, just like we see squirrels running around Bournemouth Gardens. Crazy! Loads of people were feeding them, you can buy little packets of nuts for about 10p from various stalls dotted about the park. One old lady had bought a bottle of water and fed a monkey like it was a baby!

We then continued up some steps where we found to casual camels just chilling at the top. China is very random. You could pay to sit on them and have a photo, but they looked flea ridden and just generally ill, so I didn't want to get close enough to touch!

Lory then asked me if I wanted to feed the birds. I thought why not and let him do it! I felt like the lady from Mary Poppins! The birds were landing on my hands and even my head! It was such a weird experience, but pretty cool! Loads of random people took photos of me, it was weird I felt like a celebrity! A couple of people even made me have photos with their children! Apparently it's good luck for a child to have a photo with a westerner or something... 

We then continued up the mountain to a temple, there were so many Buddhas, it was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take any photos in the temple area, but I took some before and after I went in! At the back of the temple, there is a wall where you close your eyes and have to stick your hand out in front of you and try and touch the metal circle in the middle. If you manage it then apparently you have good luck for the rest of your life! After a few tries, I managed it! Yay!

That's the wall I was chatting about.

 

We then went to Dicos for lunch, before going home for a nice two hour rest. Not that I needed it! Lory set me up a 'QQ' account, which is China's equivalent of twitter and Facebook. It is all in Chinese, but it's retry similar to twitter, so I could just guess what I had to press!

We then went to the cinema to see Batman, obviously my chamily are fond of superhero movies! Lory bought popcorn, and it was genuinely the nicest tasting popcorn I have ever had in my life.

Chad then came and joined us I hadn't seen him since the welcome ceremony day!, and he took us down a really dodgy looking street, where Lory told us we were getting food. There were a lot of super dodgy looking street food stalls, that I felt like you could get food poisoning from just looking at them. Thankfully, we went into little restaurant, so tucked out of the way you would miss it unless you knew it was there! 

In this restaurant, you basically picked the meat and the vegetables you want, and they bring it all out in separate bowls. You then have a cooker in the middle of the table and use chopsticks to put in what you fancy and you cook it up yourself! It was a lot nicer than I've made it sound.

First Day In The Classroom.

Saturday 8th September 2012

We had to get to CC English school earlier today, so, after a late night and early start, I'm knackered. We were in the same groups as yesterday, and we went to a different branch of CC English school, but this time we were actually in classes with the students. About time, this is what we were told we would be doing every day!

We were split up into partners as soon as we got there, so I went with Georgia. The first class we went in was grade 10. At CC English school, they split the children up with ability rather than age, so grade 10 had a mixture of students aged between 8 and 11. The teaching environment is completely different to that of an English classroom, the teachers can literally say whatever they want! She introduced one of the students to us as 'fat' and another as 'small eyes'! To make matters worse, when the student she referred to as 'small eyes' came over to talk to us, she put her hands on his eyes and gently pulled them open and said "Open your eyes Tony, open them!". Georgia and I couldn't stop laughing, no matter how hard we tried. Good job Tony could take the banter!

Three of the girls did a dance for us, apparently they had been practicing it for weeks to show us! Bless. Obviously, Georgia and I were then required to do a dance for the class, and the teacher picked 'Baby' by Justin Bieber. Seriously, I had no idea how obsessed the Chinese were with Justin Bieber until I went out there, they play his music constantly!

Our next class was full of slightly younger children and they 'taught' us a tongue twister in Chinese. It was ridiculously hard, and every time we attempted saying it, they all laughed at us. Obviously our pronunciation was not quite as spot on as we hoped.  One little girl latched on to me, and followed me literally wherever I went. She was really sweet but her breath smelt so bad! It was so hard to speak to her without gagging bless her!

Afterwards, surprise, surprise, we had to teach them an English song. We went for 'Head Shoulders Knees and Toes'  as it is by far the easiest song to teach. We weren't so good at hitting the high notes though. 

For lunch we had Pizza Hut pizza. Actual pizza from Pizza Hut. This was literally one of the best things that could've happened to us. I'm not particularly partial to cheese, but I do love a good pizza. They even brought a Hawaiian pizza. We were in heaven. It tasted exactly the same as English pizza. Thank goodness.

We then had two more classes, where we did a similar sort of structure. We started off by introducing ourselves: saying our names, where we come from and what we like. The students then asked us questions, some of them only have a basic understanding of English, so we got asked the same questions repeatedly, but some of the questions were really well thought out! We then played some games and then finished off with a dance. Apparently the teachers from our previous classes had been discussing how good at dancing we were in the lunch break. I don't know who they were looking at because Georgia and I are horrendous at dancing! We had to improvise quite a bit, so we cracked out some vintage 80s moves!

My chamily then came and picked me up, and we went out for dinner with the two families who came to Hebin Park with us. Lory also brought her friend, Linda, along for the trip. Luckily, for me, Linda spoke English too, so I could actually have a conversation with them, rather than sitting there in silence! The restaurant we went to was another all you can eat, I do love those places. We played a few card games before tucking in! 


When we got back to my chamily's house, we played a few more card games before having another meal about two hours later. Honestly, they seem to eat constantly! Not that I'm complaining!

Salad Jam.

Friday 7th September 2012

Today we split up into two groups to go to two different branches of the CC English school. Alex, Georgia, Emma, Josh, Ben and I went to a branch that was about 30 minutes away, but it felt like we went to a completely different city! The taxi driver was mental. There were no seat belts. We thought we were going to die.

Luckily we didn't! When we finally got to the branch, we were told to sit down and the teachers performed for us. This made a nice change, normally we're the performing monkeys. We split up into three teams, Emma and I took lead of team two. Firstly, we had to do a performance to the other teams. Inspired by yesterday's training, we decided to sing 'You are my sunshine' fully completed with the appropriate actions.

The next challenge was a bubble blowing competition. Unfortunately, Emma was not partial to the particular flavour of gum and started gagging. She pushed through it though, where others wouldn't. Such a saviour. However, when she was nearly sick after trying to blow a bubble, we all made an executive decision to allow her to forfeit. Poor Emma.
              
                                             

Next up was the scavenger hunt. We were told to buy a variety of things, including apples, pepsi, tomatoes and 'salad jam'. Salad Jam. What even is that. Emma and I eventually deciphered that it was in fact salad cream. I guess that's similar? ish. We were well in the lead, storming through walmart to get as much stuff as we possibly could. We then went to Dico's to get the rest of the items on the list from there. However, ruining my competitive spirit, they decided to play it cool and start taking selfies with Emma and I! Anyone would think we are celebrities! By the time we made it to Dico's, the other teams had managed to get all their items first!

When we got back, we were to have a cooking competition making dumplings and a sale. Making the dumplings was pretty fun luckily the dough was ready made for us, but Emma and I weren't overly good at it! The Chinese members of our team mixed together the meat and herbs and spices, and then we had to use chopsticks to pick up some of the mixture into the dough circles. I wasn't great at that. We then had to fold the dough over the mixture and press our thumbs down to make a semi-circle shape. I felt that that shape was to mainstream for me so I decided to make mine into different shapes. They didn't look particularly great. They tasted amazing though! I couldn't handle too much of the spicy sauce though... too hot!

Next up came the salad. The teachers seemed to think that a 'traditional English salad' consisted of fruit we had melon, apple and tomatoes with salad jam. We were told to teach our group how to make it. We totally blagged it by saying that all they had to do was chop up  the fruit then mix it in with the salad jam. It looked revolting. It tasted surprisingly better than expected, but still not great.

                                         

We then played a game, that I have tried to describe and I keep having to delete it as it doesn't make sense. So yeah we played that, and then we had to do a role play. More acting. Each team was given a different scene to act out. We were told act out our group taking an exam and thinking we had done terribly, but it turns out we all passed. This was one of the less weird scenarios believe it or not. Obviously, being natural actresses, Emma and I received the most points for our team.

We then told everybody that Alex was really good at singing and she wanted to be a famous singer when she's older. This lead to everybody in the room chanting her name until she got up onto stage and sang a bit of Stacey's Mom and Never Say Never. 

We all got together and had a little dance after this, they taught us some dance moves, we taught them so dance moves. It really was beautiful. Oh wait....

We got back to CC Experiment centre half an hour late. Lory, my chum and their friends were waiting for me, and they took me straight to a restaurant, where you pick and choose what you want at each station and then scan a special card which I presume was prepaid. It was a pretty good system, and it meant we got our food ultra quick was a bonus!

I had no idea what any of the food was, so I just trusted Lory and let her go crazy choosing food for me, whilst I hoped that some of it was edible. I tried a traditional GuiYang dish, ready made si wa wa, which looked pretty good. Unfortunately, when I bit into it I found that it had fish in it. It was way to fishy for my likings, especially without tomato ketchup. I could barely stomach it, but I chewed as quick as I could to get it over and done with, and politely declined when they asked if I wanted more.The best part about this restaurant was the ice cream. Hands down. They had so many flavours. It was overly exciting.

When we got back, I showed the chamily my iPad, and we amused ourselves on Photo Booth:

                                           

  

                                             

                                               
   




 

From Left to Right:
Chum, Lory, Me, Sam, Sams mum.

I then got a text from Emma asking if anyone was free to go for a karaoke evening with her family. After a few calls and messages between our chisters and chums, we eventually decided to go! Georgia came along for the ride as well, as her host family lives just over the road. I presumed it would just be a karaoke bar, but when we got there it turned out that at KTV it is all private karaoke rooms. It was amazing. They had different lights so you could turn it into a mini disco. Then came the snacks. So many snacks. Some of it was weird tofu things, but I managed to find some sweets which I was happy about! At first we were worried it would be all majorly Chinese artists we wouldn't know, but they had absolutely heaps of western artists! 


Georgia and I kicked it off with a bit of Justin Bieber. We were probably the word singers in the room so we felt like we could set the standard low to make everyone else feel confident. We're so kind and generous like that you see. 

We were there for about three hours, and it was such a fun evening. All of the host families, Emma, Georgia and I had such a good time. I wish we have KTV in England!