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!

Hebin Park, Fishing and Spiderman.

Sunday 2nd September 2012

Had a nice lie in today for a change! Lory was still at her music lesson when I eventually got up, so I chilled in bed until my chum knocked on my door to give me her phone, to which Lory told me she was going shopping and would be back later than expected. Chum and I have a paralinguistic communication thing going on; by pointing and smiling or frowning we were able to vaguely understand each other. I had a jam sandwich for breakfast, and I honestly have never appreciated a Jam sandwich that much in my whole life.

When Lory got back, she showed me a program on her computer that plays English films obviously with mandarin subtitles, so I watched the notebook! It was so nice to just sit down and chill out, watching something I actually understand!

Chum had some friends over for lunch, two ladies and two boys, who were about 7 and 10. Lunch was super delicious! I was falling in love with GuiYang's cuisine, although I was pretty horrendous at using chopsticks at this point. It provided everyone with entertainment though!

After lunch we went to Hebin Park, which is surrounded by luscious green trees. Lory told me that they don't have pandas in GuiYang, so sad, I really wanted to see a panda! I really don't know why I expected to see pandas in the wild in China, as I know they are an endangered species and China is absolutely massive!

The best thing about Hebin park is that there are fairground rides there. We went on bumper cars, a cycling monorail and a haunted house. Lory didn't want to go in the haunted house, so I went in with my chum. We properly bonded through that experience. Although, I didn't find it that scary as I had no idea what was being said! We had to sit down around a table and put headphones on. At one point it felt like someone was breathing down your neck. That was horrible, other than that it wasn't too bad!

We then made our way round to the back of the park, to where there are a few decent sized ponds where you could pay for a fishing rod and bait and go fishing. I caught the biggest, ugliest fish, which I named Hagrid much to Lory's amusement. If you catch a fish, then you get to keep to which is pretty cool. It would've been ridiculous for me to keep Hagrid, so I donated him to one of the boys who seemed to have a fascination with him.

We then went to the amusements area of Hebin park, where you had to buy tokens to go on any of the games. We played air hockey, a basketball game and a racing game amongst others. It was good fun!

On our way back, we past a stand that sold all kinds of things, and the boys got some bubbles. These were pretty cool bubbles as it is designed as a whistle, so when you blow bubbles you make a squeaky noise as well! Despite the language barrier between the boys and I, we were still able to play games with each other, which Lory's help with the translation of course.

We then went to a massive department store, which had a huge cinema at the top. We watched the Amazing Spiderman and, to my delight, it was in English with mandarin subtitles. I'd never watched a superhero movie but, surprisingly, I really enjoyed it!

We then went to KFC for dinner, they were going out of their way to get me food as close to English food as they could possibly get, bless. I'm not overly keen on KFC but I daren't say that as they are trying so hard to make me as comfortable as possible.

When we got home, Lory tried to teach me a Chinese card game. At first I thought it was similar to rummy, but then she brought in things like a 'Boom' and I was completely lost! She found it quite hard to explain to me in English, so I decided to show her snap as that's an easy game that you can't get wrong... can you? Well I managed to teach it to her completely wrong. I forgot to say you can't look at your cards! Silly me. It's ok though, in case you were worrying, I totally blagged it by calling it easy snap, and re-taught her snap calling it hard snap! It's worrying that I want to be a teacher. 

I really did feel like I bonded well with my chamily today, even if chad was nowhere to be seen! 

Meeting the Host Families.

Saturday 1st September 2012

After we checked out of our hotels this morning, we went straight to the CC English school experiment centre branch for our 'Welcoming Ceremony'. This ceremony was filmed and played on GuiYang TV... some of us even had interviews! I wasn't one of the chosen ones though. I lost count of the copious amounts of speeches, basically all saying how everyone is really grateful for us to be here and it will be such a beneficial experience for both the school and the twelve of us.

After the speeches, it was time for the 'entertainment' section. The first half consisted of Chinese entertainment. A young Chinese girl performed a Chinese minority dance, not that we were told which minority it was. She had dressed up in traditional clothing, and shoes with little bells on. It was very sweet. I would also like to note that she was a lot better at dancing than I could ever hope to be.

Unfortunately, after the dance had finished, it was our turn to give entertainment. None of us were prepared for this. None of us enjoy giving a performance. None of us if I'm being brutally honest can sing particularly well. Yet, we were told we had to sing a song associated with England. We had no idea what to do, so eventually we just decided on Hey Jude as it seemed like an easy choice! Luckily, the music in the background was quite loud so our voices were over powered! 

To make matters worse, Mr Smith was giving us a look as if to say that we weren't being entertaining enough and we needed to up the game. Georgia and I took this to heart and starting waving our arms and jumping. Everyone else just stood still. We must've looked ridiculous. 

After the entertainment, it was time to meet the host families.Thankfully, the family I was to go home with were really nice! Lory is 12 years old and she goes to CC English school, it was just her and her parents. We took to referring to the parents as 'Chum' and 'Chad' as it was a lot easier to say than their Chinese names I still don't know how to pronounce their names let alone spell them. Lory was the only one in the family who spoke English, so that proved to be very awkward when it came to communication! Luckily she was more than happy to translate.

We then all left pretty abruptly, which left no time to say goodbye really and then took a taxi back to their apartment via Dico's. For those of you who don't know what Dico's is, it's very similar to KFC only spicier. Luckily, they have a picture menu so I just had to hope for the best and order something that looked relatively edible.

Their apartment was on the 6th floor, and there was no lift so it was a it of a work out to get there. It was much nicer than I expected it to be! It was very spacious and had a merge of modern and traditional Chinese decorations. Here are some photos of the apartment, although I've just realised they do not do it justice at all, and the quality is pretty awful so I do apologise!

  

Dining area, living area, my bedroom and the view from my bedroom respectively.

Pretty much as soon as I got all my stuff sorted, and had the tour of the apartment I was asked if I wanted a rest, so I thought why not. That's when it really hit me. I was on my own. I could barely communicate with my 'chamily' and I had no way of contacting the others, let alone my real family and friends back home. They didn't have wifi, so I couldn't use iMessage or FaceTime on my iPad and we hadn't sorted out our sim cards yet so we couldn't even text each there.

This evening, my host family were having a party for a family friend and some of his friends as they had got into a prestigious college. The restaurant was absolutely packed. Lory and I bonded by playing I spy and Where's Wally on my chum's iPhone. It is so weird sitting in a room where everyone is speaking a different language to you, it was almost alienating. The food was incredible though. It was like a banquet. I had so many duck pancakes and also quite a few local GuiYang dishes that were amazing.

We then went to Walmart, which happened to be across the road from the fancy restaurant we went to. They took me around the imported food areas and also literally got me anything I looked at or said that I thought I liked. They were completely going out my way to make me feel comfortable. It's so sweet, and I was completely grateful for everything they did.