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! 

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!