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.

Our First Day in GuiYang.

Friday 31st August 2012

Today we had a nice leisurely start to the morning. This was largely to do with the lack of breakfast. We were told that breakfast would be between 7am and 9am in a room downstairs so, as we were getting picked up at 9am, Georgia and I decided to go down to breakfast at around 8. We went downstairs and could not find this 'breakfast room' anywhere. A couple of the others came down and they couldn't find it either. Nobody else in the hotel could speak English. So this wasn't ideal! Luckily, we still had some nibbly bits left over from our train journey, so we had some of that before getting ready for our first day in GuiYang. 

For those of you who don't know, GuiYang is the capital city of the province Guizhou, and is located in southern China. If you want to know more about GuiYang, I found the website http://www.chinahighlights.com/guiyang/ particularly helpful.

The first thing we did on our tour of GuiYang was a tour around the experiment centre branch of CC English School. I didn't really know what to expect from the school, as it is a school simply for learning English, and the students come in after school and on the weekends. The school we went to was based on the third floor in a building across the road from Zhucheng Square. We all bundled into the lift, baring in mind that someone always has to push the button to keep the doors open or you will get trapped between the doors.

The first thing we saw when we got p into CC English school, was a massive poster with each of our year 12 - and in some cases year 9 - photos on it. I think it was an advertisement for host families. How delightful. I'm the one with the roots.

After having a look around the school, we went down a floor to a restaurant. We were all given menu's and had to basically guess what we wanted through the pictures, with a little bit of guidance from the CC English school teachers we were with. They recommended we had some 'ice cream'. This was back in the days when we were naïve and we took all the Chinese translations literally. When it came out, it was more of a milkshake rather than an ice cream, and the flavour was rather peculiar. It tasted a bit like rose soap, not overly appetising, but it was one of the flavours that although you're sure you're not overly keen on it, it's addictive to keep eating it. I ended up having spicy noodles for lunch and I was very thankful that I actually enjoyed them! 

View from the restaurant.

We then went to another CC English school branch to have a meeting to sign our contracts, and discuss the sorts of things we will be doing during our stay in GuiYang. We had snacks on the table, and a few of us went to go and try the grapes, thinking they were the same as the grapes in England. These grapes however, have ginormous pips in them, and, once we had committed to putting them in our mouths, we had no idea what to do with the pips. It was rather awkward. Luckily, I found some tissues in my bag, so we could discreetly dispose of them. It's so weird how the littlest of things seem like such big issues at the time, but to anyone else reading this it probably doesn't even seem like it matters!

We were also given our itinerary for the next three weeks:

September 2nd Family day
September 3rd One day tour in GuiYang city; tips for living in GuiYang: survival, Chinese, city, transport, food etc.
September 4th T.I.P training
September 5th A visit to Jinianta and Xinhua branches of CC English school
September 6th T.I.P training
September 7th School activities in Yanan and Jinyang branch
September 8th School activities
September 9th Family day
September 10th Visit to Qinyan ancient town
September 11th T.I.P training
September 12th Visit to Museum and Weiqing branches
September 13th T.I.P training
September 14th End of host family stay, move into new accommodation
September 15th Visit to Anshun city with overnight stay
September 16th Visit to Huangguoshu waterfall and return to GuiYang
September 17th Free day
September 18th Launch of T.I.P training program for teaching staff and check in to accommodation on training site
September 19th T.I.P training for teachers
September 20th T.I.P training for teachers
September 21st Free day
September 22nd School activities
September 23rd School activities

So it felt like we were going to be super busy! The idea of staying with host families was absolutely petrifying, especially as we would all be separated. But, it was only for about two weeks which made it less daunting.

We then went back to the hotel to have a 'rest', this grew to be a common theme throughout our stay in China, and then we went to an all you can eat restaurant. I was getting worried, we hadn't been to one for a while. The restaurant was really pretty, with fountains and a koi pond greeting you. The food here was less exciting as the all you can eat's in Beijing, there was a lot more fish and everything seemed to be a lot spicier. There was a whole fish on the table, that none of us fancied picking at with our chopsticks so, naturally, Ollie turned it into 'Mackerel Kay' and provided us with the entertainment for the evening. 

This was the first time we tried the fried sweet dough and the most delicious sauce. It tastes quite similar to condensed milk. We were all hooked, and gutted there was only enough for two each!

After we had finished eating, we made our way to Walmart in Zhucheng square. It's pretty cool how futuristic it all looks. The Walmart was underground, which was pretty cool and it was massive. 

The main reason for going to Walmart was so that we could get a mobile to stay in contact with each other. They had a lot of imported phones, that were at least double the price they were back home, God knows why, pretty sure everything is made in China. Eventually, we found the cheaper phones, but boy were we in luck. We found flip up phones that had light up flowers and fairies on the front as well as a mirror. Georgia and I fell in love.

The photo doesn't quite do it justice.

As tomorrow was the days we were going to host families and not living with each other for a while, we naturally spent our last hours together at the hotel attempting to get a good internet signal. That was a challenge in itself when we were all trying to FaceTime or Skype our friends and families back home. Eventually, we found that the hallway was the best place to get a good signal, so a few of us congregated around the stairs with our various gadgets. 

Apparently we were causing a scene, as a few people in their rooms came out to gawp at the 'English friends'. Some of them were worried about us sitting on the floor apparently it was too dirty for us to sit on, so they went to get us plastic bags to sit on! One girl in particular stayed and chatted with us for a while, as apparently any sort of communication with a native English speaker can greatly improve their English. Well, we were there to help! She grew rather fond of Alex, whom she believed looked like 'Bella from Twilight'. Obviously, we found this hilarious, so we egged her on saying she actually was Kristen Stewart, but she couldn't tell anyone as she didn't want the paparazzi to come. It was hard to see whether she believed us, or was just playing along, but she wanted a picture with Alex, and asked for her autograph aswell! 

Making friends