Anshun City. Part One.

Friday 14th September 2012

Today we all thought we were going on holiday to Anshun city to see Huangguoshu waterfall, the largest waterfall in China. 

We all awoke early to get to the train station, we were just given an address to show the taxi drivers and hope for the best. Trying to communicate with the taxi drivers is hilarious. They just chat away to us in Chinese and we're like uhhhh we don't speak your language? I wish we did though, it would've made our lives a lot easier!

The train ride took about an hour, and the seats weren't as uncomfortable as we thought they would be! We then arrived in Anshun, and were greeted by Humphrey, a CC English school teacher. We presumed that we would have these two days off, but as soon as we got there we were taken straight to another branch of CC English school. There seems to be a never ending amount of them!

Thankfully, we were in pairs again today, so I went with Georgia. Our first class were absolutely adorable. They can't have been very old as they didn't know much English, but they weren't as young as the kindergarteners. Naturally, as we are performing monkeys, Georgia had to sing 'Someone Like You' and I had to sing 'Baby'. We were told this, we didn't request this. As we're top friends, we decided to just sing them both together to ease the embarrassment. We ran out of dance moves by the time we got to 'Baby'. We proper went for the high notes in 'Someone Like you' though, and they seemed to think that we were actually good! God knows what they were listening to because I was hurting my ears with my own voice! They were probably just humouring us.

We then went for a little walk around the city. Anshun is a very pretty city in comparison to GuiYang my photo definitely doesn't portray that, but trust me it was! The buildings were not as modern, which brought about a more traditional community feel about the place. Eventually we ended up at a small all you can eat restaurant. We sat on little plastic stools and all crammed around one tiny table. 

 When we got back to the school, we all went into the main hall, which was relatively big, and split up into six groups, two of us to a team of about four. However, to get into the groups, we had to line up on stage and do a dance to which the students then had to pick who they wanted in their team. Thankfully I was one of the first few to be picked, probably because of my blonde hair, and Ollie then followed me onto team two. 

We then had a series of challenges to complete as a group. This included painting a chinese script, doing origami, attempting some sort of knitting thing and making an outfit out of bin liners and other random items we were given. This was highly amusing. After each activity we were given a score, and at the end the group with the lowest score had to do a forfeit. This happened to be Emma and Dan's group, and they did a lovely rendition of the Cupid Shuffle, this was now our go to song for forfeits. 

After we had finished the challenges, we gathered up our stuff and went to leave. However, before we could leave the hall, we were bombarded with the students asking for photos and autographs. I literally felt famous. It was so weird.

We then all scrambled into taxi's to get to our hotel, naturally Georgia and I were sharing a room again. interestingly, the ensuite was made from glass, with the bottom half frosted. So if anyone walks in while you're sitting on the toilet, then they can see you as demonstrated by Georgia in the photo below, I'm sure she will appreciate this. Delightful. We then dumped our stuff in our hotel room, then jumped back in the taxi's to go and get dinner. We hadn't eaten for ages. Starving didn't cover it.

We were told we were going to a DIY BBQ restaurant for dinner, so we let visions of hamburgers and hot dogs make up for the lack of food for the day. Unfortunately, we were disappointed once again by the lack of western influence on the restaurant. There were fridges full of different meats and vegetables which you put on your plate and then took back to your table, which had personal sized fryers on them. Oh, I forgot to mention, you had one pair of tongs to share between both he raw meat and vegetables. As most of us didn't particularly fancy the high risk of food poisoning, so we politely made our excuses, saying we weren't hungry and we wanted to have a walk around the city. 

Thankfully they let us go, and we managed to find a dico's. I have never been so thankful for chicken nuggets and chips in my life. We then met the others, and Humphrey gave us a tour of the local market we were hoping they would have a few good fake stalls. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything there that we couldn't get in GuiYang. The worst part of this little trip was that it was in one of the poorest parts of Anshun, and there were a lot of homeless beggars. It really hit home how lucky we actually are, and how ungrateful we were about dinner! 

We then said goodbye to Humphrey and went back to our hotel. As it was still relatively early, Georgia, James, Josh and I decided to explore the city a little more. We went for a long walk and ended up at a lake with a ginormous golden dragon boat there. It was incredible. Yep, my photo captures its beauty perfectly. This is what you get for taking photos on your iPod touch. 

At this point James was bored, and this never ends well for anyone involved. He thought it would be funny if he played football with a cup. This ended up with James misjudging how well he tied his shoelaces and a shoe in the lake. It was hilarious. Luckily he managed to fish it out the lake.  

Dat grammar tho.

Tour of GuiYang.

Monday 3rd September 2012

Today we were due to go on a tour of Guiyang and had to be at the CC experiment centre by 10am, so I thought I would get up at 8am to make sure I wouldn't be late. However, when I got up to go to the bathroom, my chum sent me back to bed to go back to sleep for another hour... I was OK with this!

She then got me up at 9am and, as soon as I finished my breakfast, she pointed at the door to go, so I had to rush to get ready in just under a minute! We took the bus to the experiment centre, all the different places I had seen whilst in taxis started to join up in my mind, so I felt like I was getting better at navigating thank goodness! When we reached the bus stop we were getting off, Josh was there with his chum so I had a friendly face to enter CC with! 

We got given our sim cards when we reached the fourth floor so it was finally time to put my sexy new phone to use! After everyone else arrived, we went to a traditional chinese building where you can also watch them do arts and crafts, like fan making and painting. 

Then we went to get phones for the people who thought the sim cards would work in their english mobile phones but unfortunately didn't. The phone shop we went to was huge, and sold pretty much every mobile you could think of. Pretty much everyone stuck to the cheap basic phones though, as it was coming out of our own precious money!

Afterwards, we had KFC again and then went to a seriously dodgy looking market to try and get some cheap fake items, gotta love shopping in foreign countries! The place was a maze, we were taken around quite a few shops, but all the decent looking bags were well out of our price range. Being in that place made me very glad I opted to bring a bum bag with me. All my money and my phone was safely tucked away! 

We then went to the same shopping centre I went to yesterday with my chamily. Obviously I had to brag that they took me to the cinema. Half of us decided to stay behind in a tea shop, they didn't want to go shopping, and the other half of us decided to look around the shops. There were loads of shops, but they were mostly all brands we had never heard of and were about the same price as clothes are in England, so we were reluctant to spend any of our money on new clothes. However, we were more than happy to part with our money when we spied a Dairy Queen that sold Oreo ice cream. Definitely worth the money.

We then saw an advertisement for a 5D simulator. Most of us had been in a 5D simulator before so were particularly interested in what made this so spectacular that another 'D' needed to be added. This was still back in the part of the trip when we were naive and took everything literally. We had to pick a movie off of the sheet, there were a lot of different choices. I can't remember which scene we went for, but i remember that it was so bad, that it was actually quite funny. The thing that we were all sitting on moved around a bit, but other than that it was barely 3D let alone 5D! 

To make things even funnier, when we got out of the simulator which, by the way, left us on a cliffhanger despite the fact we had been in there for about 5 minutes, a man tried to sell us a live rooster! This was whilst we were still in the simulator's shop. The shopkeepers then decided to take a photo of us to put on their wall... hopefully we are still there now!

We then went to find everyone back at the tea shop, to which we found them all using the free WiFi. As soon as we realised this, we jumped on the band wagon and immediately started sky ping/ FaceTiming family and friends from back home. We were also introduced to bubble tea, which is basically different flavours of tea with black squidgy ball things in the bottom. I opted for a watermelon flavour and it was genuinely one of the nicest drinks I have ever tasted! Although I was rather unsure about the black balls, I was never sure whether the things we were given to eat were actually edible or not! James decided it would be funny to shoot them across the room at each other with our straws. This seemed absolutely hilarious until we were all told off by the CC English teachers we were with. Oopsie.

We then travelled back to the CC English experiment centre and, when we got there, my chum was the only charent there! I felt so loved! And unbelievably grateful that I didn't have to make my way around GuiYang on my own. We had a quick meeting about the T.I.P training for tomorrow, and we were also told that we will all be sharing one big twelve man apartment with WiFi. At this moment in time this was all we needed to hear. Our hopes were lifted at the thought of the team being reunited again!

Here are some photos of the day, none of them relate to a particular section so I thought I would just bung them all in one place! They are not in chronological order because Blogger is doing my actual head in... they need a better system to add photos into a blog!

      

Thanks for reading!

Beijing Day Three and the Train Journey to GuiYang.

Wednesday 29th August 2012

Going to sleep at 4am and waking up at 7am does not result in a particularly satisfying sleep, particularly when we still hadn't heard anything from Georgia. We had waited in the foyer for 3 hours, before deciding to go to sleep as, let's face it, we weren't helping her anymore sitting on the sofas then we would have done sleeping in our beds!

As soon as I woke up, I woke Emma up and then we rushed to Emma and Alex's hotel room to which, thankfully, we found Georgia! She was attempting to wash blood out of her 'I love BJ' top Note: BJ refers to Beijing... and her white shorts. She told us that she had to have four stitches in her head and two injections. She is also sporting a lovely bald patch on her head. Alex then produced a white mesh hat thing that was supposed to be put on Georgia's head to keep the dressing in place. It definitely lightened the tone of the injury as she looked absolutely hilarious in it! We can laugh about it now, but at the time we had to pretend it wasn't that bad to try and get her to wear it. She knew it was that bad. She barely wore it.

Anyway, now that we had found Georgia alive it was time to pack as it was our last day in Beijing. We had a quick breakfast, although Georgia didn't want much so we made it as brief as possible. Our cases were being taken separately down to Guiyang, as there wouldn't be enough room in our train carriages to take them. We all had to make sure they had a lock on them and then they were sent off. We were simply hoping that we would see them again!

Before we caught the train, we went to visit the Summer Palace. I couldn't tell you exactly what it was for, as I wasn't particularly listening to our tour guide it was quite difficult to understand him anyway. I think it is like a holiday retreat for the emperor's families? Anyway, if you really want to know what it is that bad you can google it!

The best way in which I can describe it, is that it is a massive lake with different islands and fancy buildings surrounded by mountains. As we didn't want to be late for our train, we only had about 30 minutes of free time so we didn't get to see much of it. It's so big you could easily waste a day looking at all the breathtakingly beautiful scenery. One of the most interesting things about it, that I can remember, is that the lake and all the mountains are man made! Those emperor's had it good!











We then went on a dragon-shaped boat to get from one of the islands to the other side of the Summer Palace Gardens. Once we got off, we went through some cages filled with bamboo. Because I'm absolutely hilarious(?), I thought I would point into one of the cages and say "Look, it's a panda!" Note: I didn't think anybody would believe me. This lead to the majority of our group looking into the cages to see if they could see the panda! I found this way too funny, particularly the look on their faces after they realised I was joking.

We then saw the stone and marble boat. Apparently it's very well-known, but none of us had ever heard of it! We also saw some turtles swimming around in the lake by the boat which was pretty neat.

Unsurprisingly, we went to another all you can eat for lunch. Luckily, this one had chunky chips! It was the most exciting thing any of us had seen in a long time, particularly as quite a few members of the group were mid-hangover.

Afterwards, we went to a convenience store to get food for our 36 hour train journey ahead of us. Between us we pretty much bought all of the shops:

• Plain/ beef/ chicken instant noodles 
• Oreos
• Crisps
• Water
• Coke

Amongst some other things. Basically, if we recognised it, we bought it! 

We then said goodbye to the coach, which also meant that we had to take all our stuff with us. In the shop, I was to busy worrying that I will be starving and parched that I didn't even think about the fact I had to carry all this stuff to the train, along with my case, my coat and that conical hat I bought at the Great Wall. Adding to this was the scorching hot sun baking us underneath all our layers. Uncomfortable was an understatement. 

Similarly to all the other buildings we had already seen in China, Beijing train station was huge and beautifully decorated on the inside. However, the inside became a mad rush of passport and visa checks pushing against the tide of people swarming the centre of the hall. I have never been somewhere so manic before in my life, it was worse than the tubes in Rome! Adding to this was the pungent smell of sweat and sewage making the wait for the train agonising.

Luckily, we were managed to be booked into what we were told was a 'VIP' room, meaning we were all able to sit down finally! I wouldn't have called it a VIP room though... it was mahoooosive and it seemed like pretty much everyone getting on our train was in there anyway! 

Trying to get on the train itself also proved a challenge in itself. I never thought I'd miss English railways! It was interesting to see that they don't raise the platforms, so we had to climb up step ladders to get on the train. Finally we made it to what we thought was our compartments.

Apparently nothing on this trip was going to go to plan. The tour guide had told us that he had sorted out the compartments so that we wouldn't have to share with anyone we didn't know.  There were four beds to each compartment, so that should have resulted in us having three compartments between the twelve of us. Wrong! Everyone else managed to get compartments together, but Emma and I ended up in a compartment two carriages down to share with two random Chinese people. We couldn't speak Chinese so we had no idea what anybody was saying to us! 

Meanwhile, in the compartment that James and Ben were in, only one of the other passengers had shown up to claim a bed. The tour guide asked him if he minded swapping, I guess he agreed as five minutes later Emma and I were moved into that compartment! It didn't look as if anyone else was going to show up so we thought we were ok. 

We said goodbye to our tour guide and he left us on our way down to the southern city of GuiYang, where we shall start working at the CC English School. Literally as soon as he left the train, some random Chinese man came and claimed one of our beds. With our translator gone, the only thing we could do was to ask Mr and Mrs Smith to see if they could do anything about it! Mr Smith only knew basic Mandarin, so he attempted to sort it out with the guard. Unfortunately, most probably because we couldn't communicate what we wanted to do, the random Chinese man had to stay in our room. James had to take one for the team and go and sleep on the floor of the boys' compartment!

Hi Emma!

We had been travelling along for about ten minutes, when Mr Smith came and informed us that they would be checking our tickets. Now, anyone that knows me can tell you that I constantly misplace things and then get all panicky about where I put it until I find it. This happened with my ticket. I checked my purse, bags, clothes, down the side of my bed, in the pillow cases... pretty much everywhere I could! I genuinely thought I had lost it. My heart sank. If I couldn't find it then I would be kicked off the train. That was a scary thought. I even went back to the other compartment with Emma to see if it had fallen out there! Unfortunately, it hadn't so we just looked like prize idiots trying to explain to strangers why we needed to go into their cabin. To make this even more embarrassing, when we got back to our compartment I double checked my purse, and it was tucked behind one of my cards. My brain never ceases to astound me. I had tipped all the contents of my purse onto my bed, yet I could not see it. Annoying is an understatement.

I don't know if it was the jet lag or the relief of finally being able to rest, but somehow I managed to sleep for 15 hours from 7pm! Thankfully, that meant that about half the journey was over. Also, according to Emma who for once in her life didn't sleep as well as me, random Chinese man left and was replaced twice in the night. Unfortunately, random Chinese man #3 had a hacking cough. At least once every fifteen minutes he had a coughing fit that left me genuinely worried that I would catch swine flu. One of the worst things about it was that he spat his phlegm into a metal bowl left by his bed. This is one of the worst habits that the Chinese have. If any of you go to China and happen to hear someone coughing up a juicy bit of phlegm make sure you know which direction it's coming from pronto to avoid being hit!

The worst bit about the train ride was the toilets. Hands down. There were two toilets; one at the end of each carriage. One was a hole, the other a 'normal' toilet. Another tip to anyone travelling to China would be to avoid 'normal' toilets at all cost! It appeared that nobody knew how to use these toilets, so they weed all over the seat, leading it to drip on the floor. I learnt this the hard way, as my joggers fell in a nice puddle of someones urine. Delightful. Luckily this was after I had had a sleep, so I just got changed into my other clothes!

We passed the last 10 or so hours watching 21 Jump Street and reading until we finally reached GuiYang.

Our welcome to this strange, new city was incredible. Two teachers from CC English School, Terry and Natasha X, along with some others were waiting just outside the train station holding a massive banner welcoming us to GuiYang, and gave us lei's. After such a long journey, it was so lovely to finally feel welcome in a place that is thousands of miles
from home. 

Apologies for the awful quality, it was the only photo I had of the banner!