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.

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!