Return to Queenstown: Part 1

Saturday 29th - Sunday 30th April 2017

I originally had decided to get an intercity bus to Queenstown, but luckily two other Au Pairs, Sabrina and Fabienne, were driving through Queenstown on the days I planned on travelling so I got a lift with them. It was so much nicer than getting the bus for sure! We stopped off at the clay cliffs in Omarama, they are pretty spectacular. I'm pretty sure you could go anywhere in New Zealand and have your mind blown by its sheer beauty.

After leaving Omarama, it was another few hours before we arrived in Queenstown. On the way there we passed the Kawarau bridge bungy... it looks higher than I remember it and I tried not to think about doing it on Tuesday!!

When we finally arrived in Queenstown it honestly felt like I was returning home. The mountains, lakes and streets all feel so familiar now and make me feel so happy! I checked in to Nomads hostel, it's on church street which is right in the centre of the town. We're in a 6 bed ensure with a balcony over looking mountains and Lake Wakatipu, so absolute luxury compared to some of the other hostels! Plus Kieran gets discount as he worked for Nomads so it was pretty cheap which is also a winner! I was pretty stoked to see Kieran, as it will be the first time I've seen any of my family since leaving for New Zealand. However, he was sound asleep when I got there! (Don't know why I was surprised!)

As I didn't want to disturb him, I went and had a wander around Queenstown, defamiliarising myself with everything that's there. I do love it here! After half an hour or so, Kieran messaged saying he head woken up, which, for both of us, only meant one thing... Fergburger!

It's pretty cold here in Queenstown, so we decided against sitting by the lake as previously planned and went back to the kitchen in Nomads to stay warm! As we walked in I noticed Kirstine! Both Kirstine and Lotte have one last night in Queenstown, so it worked out amazingly! It was so lovely to see them again, especially as I didn't think I would!

So after this we got a few bottle of wine to pre drink before heading out. Unfortunately, I peaked early... way early and got kicked out of the bar for being too drunk oops (sorry Nana and Popa). But still it was so worth it I had a great night!

Sunday however was another story, I was so hungover I only managed to make it out of bed twice to get food. Oops. 

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!

T.I.P Training.

Tuesday 4th September 2012

Today we had our first T.I.P training and, to be honest, I don't  think our trainers know that most of us have little to no teaching experience! My experience has basically consisted of volunteering at brownies and 'mentoring' in a few classes at school. Not really enough to dive straight in! We are going to be what's known as 'facilitators', which is basically an assistant to the main trainers, to 22-40 year old CC English school teachers on the T.I.P training camp in a couple of weeks time. Slightly different to teaching 5-18 year olds like we had been told! 

We had orientation in the morning , which was basically a load of boring speeches which I only filtered in various bits of information which could possibly be useful. To get our 'motivation' a trainer named Stephen 'taught' us the macarena, but, not surprisingly, we all already knew it so it just turned into one crazy group dance! 

Our first task was to teach the trainers an English song; Josh was picked to teach them but we all joined in to help him! We chose head, shoulders, knees and toes as it was the easiest choice! After this, the trainers taught us how to teach it properly, apparently we weren't good enough. Not that we were surprised. After this we taught them hangman and duck, duck goose. 

Then, we were taught the Chinese version of 'Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?' which unfortunately included forfeits if you were caught with the cookie. Luckily I didn't lose, the Chinese seem to have an obsession with public humiliation and making us sing and dance. We couldn't very well refuse, we were getting paid after all! We then had a brief word before having KFC again for lunch. We definitely regret complaining about having the same Chinese meals for lunch everyday... this was turning into super size me! Especially for poor Georgia who was having it for breakfast and dinner as well! 

I then went with Georgia and Natasha, one of our mentors, to the hospital to get her stitches out. Her head is fine now, just a bit sore now and again but thats understandable! They put some sort of liquid on it that made it look like it was bleeding again. I'm definitely sure everyone wants to see a tasty picture of that... although it doesn't look as bad in the photo as it did in real life!

Then we went to a shop to get our photos taken 'professionally', as we are applying for a temporary residence permit and it needs to be taken to the police station along with my passport. Georgia and I got there before everyone else, so we had our photos taken before everyone else could come along and see how hideous they were! The photographer edited out our nice tans, making us look very white.

When we got back to the cc experiment centre, we split up into two teams, the fruit (Emma, Ollie, Ben, Dan, Josh and James) and the animals (Georgia, Alex, Hamish, Sam, Matt and I) to play team games. First Sam and Hamish played password; where one person has to guess the word and the other has to give them verbal clues, but are given a list of words they are not allowed to use. Then Alex and Matt played a similar game but they had to guess English sayings, but I don't think they were, as Sam had never even heard of them and thats saying something as he is the group genius! 

Unfortunately, they didn't have a game for Georgia and I, so we were nominated for being a facilitator by presenting the everyday procedure as follows:

1.Greeting

2.Tell the teachers what the ABC's are (Attack your limitations, Build your confidence and Commit yourself) 

3.Ask them to say the English only chant

4.Announce the c.i.c rules

5.Daily announcements

6.Results

7.English only updates

8.Encourage them to keep speaking english and not mandarin

Despite James obviously giving a better performance, the trainers gave me and Georgia more points! We then had a short break with some beverages and well sort after WiFi access.

The teachers then decided to mix things up a bit and swap the teams around. I was with Sam, Ollie and Josh. Each team had a character with a list of qualities and were asked to act them out. Our team got Sophie, a rich girl who was looking to Marry a suitable bachelor. We decided on Ollie as Sophie and I was Sophie's best friend. The other two teams had Ethan and Derek and had to win Sophie's affection. Ollie was given team points for best actor and I was given team points for best actress! SO in other words we were the least terrible. Seriously its like being on drama camp or something. But I didn't even care as my team won! Naturally, there had to be a forfeit, and it was for the other team to give us a massage. The forfeit was for the fruit to give the animals a massage... this didn't happen.

Ollie getting into character.