Bullet Train

Now you can call me a "train spotting loser geek" all you like but one of the most exciting parts of Shanghai was the train ride to and from Shanghai Pudong Airport. The trip is made on the Magnetic Levitation train line and the train reaches top speeds of 431 Kmh (267 Kmh). It only takes 2 minutes to reach 350 Kmh and the whole journey from Longyan Station to the airport which is 30 kilometres only lasts 7 minutes.

The experience was quite fantastic and watching the speedo raise from 0 to 431 Kmh was quite exciting. As you reached the top speed the whole train started to shake and when you turned corners it was wiered as you were on an angle and thats stange when there isn't anything connecting you to the ground. Quite unerving.

I know that China is working on a high speed track connecting Beijing to Shanghai and Hong Kong but imagine if all trains in China (and the world) were this fast. It really would be fantastic. We could have gone from the Shiz to Beijing in Under an hour! Peterborough to Leeds would take less than half an hour! Superb!

I was going to place a video of the rise from 0 to 431Kmh but its a bit like watching paint dry so i've just put in a few photos instead.

Shanghai

So after five and a half months of emails, text messages and frustrating internet phones, Clare and I have fiinally been reunited. It was a great but nervous feeling meeting up with her in Shanghai airport and I could not wait to see her again. I really did appreciate the fact that she was flying half way across the wolrd to see me, when she could have just waited 2 weeks for me to get home.

Because of flying in on the 16th we were kind of stuck in Shanghai for a few days. Chinese New Year was on the 17th and transport in and out of Shanghai around was a nightmare. So we were staying until the 20th and then heading off to Chengdu by plane in search of pandas.

Chinese New Year was a strange one. I was expecting huge street parties with performers dressed up as dragons, live music and opera and a huge amount of people celebrating in the open. What we got was basically 48 hours of constant explosions as the whole of China seemed to be letting off fireworks and igniting fire crackers. Somewhat different to our New Year when we go out get drunk and celebrate with our mates. 95% of the Chinese stay in at home and watch the CCTV New Years Countdown and Variety show whilst enjoying a meal with their family. Spring Festival is so important as it may be the only time in the year that people return home to their family homes and so this overshadows the actual passing of new year for many people. Clare was quie lagged from her flight the previous day so we were not up for much any way but we eventually managed to find a restuarant (so much was closed due to New Year) and had a nice meal then came home and tried to sleep through all the explosions-most of which seemed to be coming from right outside of our window, as per normal in China!

On the other days we visited the old town of Shanghai and we saw a few temples and a nunnery- Clare was dissappointed that it was not like the one from "A Sound of Music" I think. The old town was hugely busy due to Spring Festival but it was interesting to walk through the old streets and see how amazingly different it was from the modern Shanghai that everyone pictures n their minds.

The weather we had during the days in Shanghai was not great and often you could not see the tops of the huge sky scrapers as they dissappeared behind a cloud of smog and fog, but at night the city looked amazing. On our last night we had a walk down the Bund and marvelled at the magnificent buidlings and the plethora of colours every where. We took the "Bund Experience" sight seeing tunnel to the other side and then went to the top of the 4th Tallest Building - The Jin Mao Tower 421 Meters Above Gorund Level-in the world in order to get a proper view of the surrounding area. It was fantastic but just as fantastic and twice as nauseating was the view from the top of the 86th floor in the adjacent hotel as you looked down the open stair way all the way to the bottom- my head spins just thinking of it now!

We also looked around the Shanghai museum-which was quite interesting but pretty like most other museums in China with an "amazing" collection of Jade, Porcelain and China- and spent time walking around the Peoples Square area. The only problem that we had was that the hostel that we stayed in was not really a hostel but more of a hotel. The rooms were fantastic but there was no bar and no communal area and even more of a problem was that it was some distance out of whre you really wanted to be so we had to catch loads of buses, taxis and tubes.

I think we both enjoyed our time in Shanghai, as I said above it would have been better if we were more central and had more people our age to go out with, but at the same time I think it was nice for Clare and I just to be able to catch up with one another again.

Next Place: Chengdu!

Chilling Lake Side

After the bright lights of big city Nanjing I made my way (by soft seater train no less) to Hangzhou, "the most beautiful city in China" the television advert would have you believe. Hostel was located right on the edge of the lake and was the first hostel so far where there was a majority of travellers rather than Chinese. In fact it was so good that I was even sharing my room with an english boy by the name of Chris. Couple this with the fact that we later met up with heather who I met in Suzhou, Jarrod (her aussie mate) and 2 English girls- Sophie and Bea- we ended up having quite a decent little group for meals,going out and drinking.

Whilst Hangzhou is beautiful there isn't a terrible lot to do there apart from looking at the lake, taking a boat trip on the lake, walking around the lake or hiring a bike to ride around the lake. Take the huge lake out of Hangzhou and it's pretty much the same as anyother Chinese city: temples, bell towers and pagodas. But with the weather being warm and sunny I was quite happy to spend my time relaxing by the lake and enjoying the fine scenary- and when I got bored I went on a fruitless quest to try and buy some shorts. The Chinese seemed to think I was made for suggesting such an idea in spring time.

The First day was spent on a boat trip of the West Lake. Once again I was lucky enough to make friends with a Chinese couple who didn't mind me tagging along with them in exchange for them getting to practice their English with me. After seeing what the lake had to offer and the various islands on the lake we visited the huge pagoda at the side of the lake. Now, whilst most pagodas in China have been rebuilt most of them try to hide this fact. Not this one. This had huge glass elevators and escalators running up and down the pagoda, had computer information points telling you the story of the pagoda and (like many things in China) had parts that were made of plastic! The fact that this pagoda was so unashamedly modern was quite refreshing and the fact that it was probably more commercialised than the Eifel Tower was better than it trying to be something that it wasn't.

The other days were spent relaxing by the lake and catching up with books and the interent. One day the Sophie, Bea and I hired bikes and rode around the whole lake. Which was good fun but at the same time frustrating as so much of the path around the lake was out of bounds to bikes. We got pretty frustrated as police man after police man told us off for cycling and we couldn't help but wonder why so many people recommended cycling this route if you couldn't actually cycle by the bloddy lake. Still it was enjoyable cycling in the sunshine and it was a fun way to spend a few hours.

The last night in Hangzhou (Valentines Night) the group of us all met up for a meal at a resturant the girls had seen on the Lake. We then went to a German Bar which was giving away free beer for Valentines for one whole hour. The bar brewed its own beer and had 2 or 3 different types coming in small, medium and large. Jarrod lead the way in the man states managing to pile away around1 every 10 minutes for the duration of the free period. I was next managing an impressive 4 large beers and I think Chris gave up at 3-but after those we will feeling quite hammered. We then headed onto SOS which is the main night club in Hangzhou and after that the night starts getting a bit shady, but I do remember Chris dissappearing for an awfully long time and then re-appearing just as we were all congregating to go home- wierd!

Next Stop Shanghai and time to meet up with Clare again!

Now in Nanjing

So on to Naning. The Birth place of the People's Republic of China after the People's liberation army ended the rule of the Republic of China in 1949 and also the setting for the Najing massacre where 0ver 300,000 Chinese were tortued were killed by the Japanese in 1937. I'd never really understood why the Chinese disliked the Japanese quite so much, I mean we get on with the German's alright nowadays, but after visiting Nanjing and reading about the history of the place and quite how terrible the Japanese were to the defence-less Chinese pepole and how the Japanese Government refuse to admit that they did anything wrong, I am started to understand a little more. BUT I still think it's shocking that people (including the young generations) can still hate a country for something that happened so long ago.

Travelling by bus turned out to be rather enjoyable. Id i'd known how good they were I would have stopped stressing about trains long ago and caught them instead. You have a massive seat with adjustable head rests and much more leg room than a train, you have air con over your head, there are no people standing up in the aisles or trying to take your seat everytime you stand up, and you can store all your luggage safely underneath the bus rather than precarioulsly over your own head.

The only down side of the bus was getting off. Getting off any method of transport in a new city is always frustrating as the usual flock of taxi vultures descend upon you, all trying to lure you into their tiny cars to rip you off; but Nanjing was particularly bad. As I stepped off the bus with my huge bags it just started raining- this being only the 4th or 5th instance of rain in my whole time in China. Therefore my need for a taxi was more urgent than if it was sunny. I went with one or two of the aformentioned "vultures" and just got annoyed with them as they lead me to their non-existent taxi's and then tried quoting me ridiculous prices (such as 100yuan) to take me on a journey that I knew could not be that far.

This is when the problems started. I tried showing a legitimate taxi driver the hostel address.But it was in Pinyin rather than signs and he reckoned he couldn't understand it so I tried phoning the hostel- number not recognised. I was in trouble. So I phoned the hostel in Suzhou and asked them to direct the taxi. I got in 3 and they all refused to take me; "wrong direction" "dinner time" "too busy" were their responses. At this point the rain was really coming down and I was getting majorly soaked and also majorly pissed off. After another 15 or so minutes I managed to get in another taxi, the 5th attempt, and this time I just told the driver to drive to get the metre up, when we had gone so far I rang the hostel and got them to direct her. It was too late by then for her to refuse and so finally I arrived-albeit it a little more stressed out than planned-at my hostel and the price of the taxi was only 18 yuan! Far better than the vultures reckoned!

The hostel was cool. Far more of a usual backpackers hostel than in Suzhou and it was set in the heart of the touristy Fuzimiao district. Due to the hostel being busy they could only offer me a 4 bed room-which I didn't mind as it had ensuite bathroom and for the first night I had the whole room to myself!

Whilst checking into the hostel I bumped into Chris-who I had met in Suzhou-and so we agreed to go out to dinner that night (when we refused to eat the ducks head we were served and then refused to pay a large percent of the bill) and then meet up to explore tomorrow. We went to the Heavenly Kingdom Museum, The Nanjing Massacre Memorial-which was shut, and also some Ming Tombs at Purple Hill. The Tombs were expensive and quite boring. I'd already been to some in Beijing at the Badaling Wall and unlike these in Beijing you could actually go down into the tombs-here you just had to stare at the mound from the outside. So I couldn't really see the point.

That evening I went out with Some friends of Nancy's from University. They took me out for a nice chinese meal and we agreed to meet up the next day so they could show me more of the sites of Nanjing. We visited Ji Ming Temple and also the Heavenly Kingdom Palace-which was huge and took a good 3 hours to look around and was home to a lot of interesting history on how the Republic of China was formed in Nanjingin 1947. They also managed to lend me another friends bike and took me on a quick tour of the citie's 3 university campuses-which are supposed to be among the best in China.

The rest of the time in Nanjing was spent exploring the huge city centre and deciding whether I would have preferred to have lived here or the shiz. In the end I think najing won-basically because of it's excellent metro and the warner cinema village. On the last night I bumped into a Chinese guy who had lived with an Englishman at University and been taught how to swear like a "true brit". So we enjoyed a good night out with plenty of drink and I marvelled at cockney swear words that I hadn't heard for a good 5 months. It all made getting up at 6am for the train the next morning quite difficult indeed!

Suzhou

So after spending three and a half days in Suzhou I'm moving on to Nanjing. Thought I'd take advantage of the hostels "basically free" internet to keep everyone updated.

I've really enjoyed my time in Suzhou. I think the great weather has helped- been able to walk around in T-Shirt Sleaves for the first time in ages and wish I'd brought shorts instead of thermal bottoms - but also the town is so green and clean that it has a real european feeling. Add to that the fact that it's a water town and has some beatufiul canals and scenary and you'll start to appreciate why I like the place.

Whilst I've been here I've done some pretty interesting things. Suzhou is famous for it's fine example of Chinese gardens. So I've taken in both "The Master of the Nets Garden" and "The Humble Administrators' Garden". Whislt there are a few others in the city, they are all quite similar so I think 2 is quite enough. I also went and walked around the Pan Ling Scenic Area and climbed the huge pagoda that they have there which gives a fine view of the city. The scenic area was very beautiful and was very interesting to walk around and look at.


The nights have been quite lonely as I've been the only westerner staying in my hostel really but the days have gone quickly as there is a lot to do. Another day I went to Tiger Hill which is a huge garden reserve with a pagoda at it's centre. I was impressed by the park but was annoyed as you couldn't go up the pagoda which would have given a great view of the city. I couldn't see the point of the park having this famous pagoda if you couldn't go up the bloody thing.

Yesterday I went to ZhaoZhang - about 1 hour on the bus - which is billed as "China's No.1 Old Water City". I managed to meet a nice chinese couple on the bus who directed me on how to walk to the old town from the bus stop and then didn't mind me walking with them around the place. It was about six pound to get in and none of us werer eally sure if it was worth it. It was great fun walking around the old town, exploring the old passages and walkways whilst taking in some refreshing clean air, but it was annoying that the whole place has been turned into shops and bars for Chinese Tourists. I think the scenary in Suzhou was equally as beautiful in places (and free to see) and wish that I had gone to Tong Li instead which is supposed to be a less touristy version of this place. But still, it was a enjoyable day and I enjoyed meeting some chinese people who were not trying to con me and came away with two new friends.;

So i'm going to catch the bus at about 3pm but being in China I need to turn up quite a bit early and battle for a ticket- wish me luck!

Next stop: Nanjing

Going Solo...

Today marks my first day of going it alone in China. Yesterday I left Dave in Beijing and hopped on the Z85 Overnight Train headed for Suzhou. The journey was reasonably uneventful- apart from a chinese man asking me to put my shoes back on because my feet smelt and spilling the contents of my pot noodle on myself.

The train was quite comfortable and despite only having a "hard" sleeper I had a good nights kip- there was even a western toilet on the train. The Journey was well timed as the train departed at 7.30pm so after a few hours of playing PSP I then watched the Royle Family and ate my pot noodle- well what was left of it. Then I read my book for an hour and went to sleep about 11pm.

The train arrived in Suzhou at about 7am. It's quite a scary feeling getting off a train by yourself in a city you don't know, and where you don't have a clue where your going. Leaving the train station all I had was the phone number and name of the hostel where I was staing at, but after a little initial confusion with the taxi we managed to find the hostel OK.

First impressions of Suzhou are good. My bed wasn't ready when I arrived so I headed out at 8.30am for a few hours to scope out the city and get some breakfast. It's a lot greener than anywwhere I have been in China before and whilst it may not live up completely to having the title "the Venice of China" the lakes running through the city are certainly beautiful.

I will spend 2/3 days here- maybe 3- then head onto Nanjing by bus.Where a friend of Nancy's will show me around I hope as my friend Matt (that I met in Beijing) is on his own vacation in Kunming. I think I will spend another 3 days in Nanjing before travelling by train to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is meant to be the "most beautiful city" in China so I'm looking forward to going there- think I spend 4 or 5 days there before moving on to Shanghai. In Shanghai I will meet Clare and we will spend CHinese New Year there before moving on to Chengdu on the 20th Februrary. In Chengdu we will go to a Panda sanctuary and visit the huge Buddha they have at Le Shan before going a Yangtze River cruise (if not too expesive). On the 25th we make the short flight back up to Shijiazhuang so I can show Clare where I have lived all this time and then the next day we will get the train to Beijing where we will go to the Great Wall and Temple of Heaven- as well as doing some shopping I expect. Hopefully in Beijing we can meet up with Dave and the other's for one last goodbye.

Then it's time for me to come home!

So Long Shijiazhuang!

For my last "official" night in the Shiz we organised a little shindig just for the no.42 teachers. We ate out at our favourite Lamb restuarant down the street and then had a house party in Brocks apartment.

The evening got a little messsy. No Trip to the Lamb Restuarant is complete without countless complimentary shots of Bijou from the locals and this occaisiona was no different. The only change was that Brock and I also ordered a small carraffe of the foul smelling dirt liquour for ourselves as well. Couple this with the crate of beer we polished off and the bottle of gin and tonic that was passed around and you'll start to understand why Dave and Meredith decided it was a wise idea to have a wrestling contest- and also why I'm helplessly slurring my words and dropping R's all over the place, a lot more than usual I mean!

The Next morning I had to get up early to go and buy my flight ticket from Shanghai to Chengdu, so there was no chance of sleeping off the hangover. Once again Nancy was a great help. After saying good bye to all my friends and the chinese teachers that I had become friendly with it was finally time to say goodbye to Shijiazhaung!

Students Lunch!

After telling my classes that I planned to leave China I recieved many requests to go and have lunch with the students- as well as farewell letters and presents. I tried to accomodate as many as possible but it wasn't that easy having 0ver 700 students it was quite hard to fit them all in.

One day I went with 3 girls from class 20; Rowland, Ketty and Rose. We ordered a lot of food and thought we would have plenty to spare but they ate a surprising amount for 3 (young) girls and almost all of it was eaten. It was a nice way to say goodbye to some of my favourite students.

One of Many last Nights!

For My last Weekend in Shijazhaung we all decided to have a celebration. We got all the teachers together and went for a Beijing Duck meal in our town. Always a delicious and quite an experience with the chef bringing the bird to your table to be cut and specially slicing off the most tender part of the duck for you to eat first before getting down to business with the rest of it! Afterwards we ended up in YYBB and then Mazzo club once more.

The Sunday after we went to the house of one of the school teachers, called Violet. She has been applying to go to American as a foreign teacher and so needs help and advice practicing her spoken english and also for the interview-which she ensures us will be very tough. So she invited us all over for dinner and said that she would teach us how to make the traditional chinese dish of dumplings!

I love eating dumplings so I jumped at the chance to learn how to make them. I thought I could add it to my expanding repoirtoire of chinese dishes- currently stands at 3 (gongbao ji ding, suan la todou si and rice). I was a little dissappointed when I arrived as everything had already been prepared, all we had to do was physically make the dumplings. But looking back this was a good thing as the dumplings take a long time to make and cook and if we had had to prepare everything as well I think it may have been an even more late evening

Violet and her husband Michael have a lovely home set in a communist compound. Michael is also a teacher but he is currently placed at a country side school as he wanted to go and help some of the less fortunate children. We were joined for the evening by Violet's Sister and her mother who were both visitng and both thrilled to meet some genuine "laowai"!




Making the dumplings was quite tricky. Violet's mum was a real pro and could make the things prefectly in a matter of seconds, we took considerably longer and our attempts were possibly as far off from looking like the real thing as they could be but at the end of the day they all still tasted the same, so who cares! We all made so many that I think Violet and Michael must have had enough left over to last them until New Years Eve!

Serve the Servants....Teach the Teachers

So after the school told me that I wasn't teaching the Kids for the final week of Classes they dropped the bombshell that instead we would be teaching the teachers. While we were only told about this a few days in advance Kristina, the older lady from America who th school hold only just slightly below Chairman Mao in their opinions, was told about it over a month ago and had prepared power point slide shows and full lesson plans.

We were told that we would work in pairs and would each teach two 45 minute lessons. We thought that this sounded very easy and that we could probably get away with preparring a 30 minute lesson and just field questions for the remainder. This, China Being China and Sandy being Sandy, was of course wrong. It turned out that we all would teach just 2 lessons each- but each lesson was 90 minutes long. Dave do not even find this out until he thought his first lesson was over the teachers refused to leave. Typical.

Topics of the week have been:
Dave- How I spend my Holidays and Weekends
Meredith - Educational Pressure
Brock - US Government
Becky - Family

Kristina taught every day in the schools auditorium using the full facilities of a slide projector and lights and sound. The rest of us just had to use Dave's class room and I had to make do with my laptop resting on top of a chair on the table.

I taught about the Education in England. First I spoke about the 4 different stages of school ; primary, secondary, higher and further. Then I broke them all down and spoke about each in detail-what they entailed, how difficult they were and what exams the students are expected to take. After that I spoke for a long time about how students go about training as a Teacher and how foreigners can become teachers in England - many eyes lit up at this point, and I was bombarded with questions of "How easy is it for me to get a job in England, where Can I get a Job?" I then spoke about my Education and showed photos of my secondary school, university and college days. The lesson side lasted just over an hour and then I took questions on any topic for half an hour. Questions included "Do you like David Beckham" and "How much was your laptop" so I'm glad I gave a clearly thought provoking talk.

Job Done

My time as a teacher has nearly come to an end. Last week was my final week of teaching kids and this afternoon I will give my lesson to the the teachers.

I was upset that the school decided that we would give classes to teachers in the final week as I had planned a party for the children but they told me the friday before the monday of the final week that instead I only had one more week left. This annoyed me as well as I had completed writing an exam for the kids to see how much they had learnt over the year. They sat the exam in their final lesson and then I had to go to their class rooms in my spare time to give them back their grades and prizes for the best attempts.

The kids took the exams quite seriously and most of them produced good papers. Some of the classes had lazy kids who didn't even bother writing their names, but I suppose you have that in every school.

Most of the papers were good- obviously the grade A sets were better than the B sets- but there were a few choice quotes ;
"I very like listen to Gay Sing Music"
"I like to drink Cock"
"My Father is My Mother"
"You wank to know about me"

and personal favourite

"my father is a cock. he cocks me."

But I probaly shouldn't be laughing at my failings as a teacher.

Saying goodbye to the students was quite sad, a few cried and since then i've had a steady stream of emails repeatedly asking "why? Why you leave China?" Rather more pleasing was is the collection of toys and presents I have amassed in the last week.

I have enjoyed teaching but I cannot wait to get back to England.

Exploring Shijiazhuang

After spending nearly 5 months in Shijiazhuang I still havn't really seen much of the city apart from the shopping malls and bars and have not been to any of the recommended sites around the area. One night after moaning about this to Nancy we decided that enough was enough and we'd finally go and see the places recommended by the guide books before my time ran out.

First was Zhaozhou Bridge 安濟橋. This is probably the most famous site in Hebei. Made world famous by its appearance in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I think). We got up quite early and made our way across town to the bus station. Nancy had planned every thing to a "T" and all the buses linked together perfectly without any waiting around. The bus we had to catch to the bridge left a little to be desired though!






The bridge itself was very beautiful, it looked especially scenic in the winter as the water below it had frozen and we could walk around underneath it. Zhaozhou bridge is the oldest segmental stone bridge in the world. Also known as "safe crossing bridge" it was constructed in 595 AD during the Sui Dynasty. Despite everyones scepticism, including my own, the original bridge is still what is standing in place today, having survived 10 floods and a 7.2 richter earthquake. For once in China something was genuine!




After the bridge we made the short trip to Ba Lin Chan temple. One of the Most famous buddhist temples in the region and one that most Chinese will try to visit at least once during their life times. The temple was the first one of it's sort that I had seen (believe me there were plenty more to come) and that coupled with Nancy's enthusiam and excitment to be there made it quite interesting. The Monks were cool to see and there was plenty to look around. But it was so cold that we didn't spend any more than an hour or so there and were soon back on the train to the shiz.

Not just my general laziness for once

Not just my general laziness for once

Whilst most people assume that I’ve got bored with the routine of keeping a blog or that I’m too caught up in the West Wing to bother updating, there is actually a good reason why this page has been rather uncared for in the past week. There was some sort of Tsunami off the coast of Taiwan that managed to damage the wires that deal with international Internet pages.

Not all the wires were destroyed, but 3 out of 4 were, so whilst we can access the Internet, there are 3 times that amount of people trying to access the information on the same wire at the same time, so it runs unbelievably slow. I wasn’t going to update until this sorted itself out but it’s been a while now and it doesn’t seem as if the problem will be resolved soon, so I thought I’d post without pictures of videos and try to upload them at a later stage.

Charlie

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

After Christmas day we had to work all week through to Sunday- New Years Eve. We finished at Noon and soon 9 of us found ourselves on the train destined (once again) for a big night out in Beijing. The eventual group that we amassed there was 14 in total as Wallace and Renée, Brock’s friends from home, brought some friends of their town from their town as well-so we had built up quite a decent little crowd.

Because of having to teach we couldn’t catch a train until 2.30pm and didn’t arrive in Beijing until 5pm and not at the hostel until 6pm. After a few problems checking in- I’ll let you read Dave’s account of it but the moral of the story is you must always remember to take your passport and visa with you to any hotel you want to check in at, and if you don’t just try and make up a name that might have stayed there before, do not bother with photocopy’s of your passport as they are only ever used as evidence against you- we set out for a meal at an American Diner called “Steak & Eggs” and got back to the hostel for about 10pm.

After a few hours drinking and playing table football New Years was looming so we decided it was time to go up to the roof. Brock and his friends had done it before, said it was easily accessible and gave superb views of Beijing- we were hoping for hundreds upon hundreds of fireworks. Well the roof was locked and we despite our best efforts we couldn’t get up, so we sprinted downstairs to the courtyard and had our rendition of ‘auld lang syn’ out there, all shook hands and wished each other the best.

After that we headed to Brown’s nightclub and welcomed the New Year in, in style. The rest left about 3/4am but Anthony and I stayed on and were later taken to a 24-hour bar called “the Den” by a fellow English man for a few late beers as well.

Now the part of the checking in problem from before that I hadn’t mentioned was that Anthony wasn’t allowed to check in-despite arguing for about the best part of an hour. So he officially had nowhere to stay. With Dave sharing a room with Hilary, the 3 girls and Zack in one room and then Brock and I in a twin room there was only really one place for him to stay. So he and I tried to go top to toe in my tiny single bed- but I woke up and found him sleeping on the floor- apparently I stole all the covers!

The next morning we woke up said our goodbyes and Dave and I went to check into our 5 Star Hotel for a day of relaxation and recovery! Money very well spent! We hung out in the steam room and hot spa and ate and drank for free the whole day. In the evening we ventured out – after free wine and gin & tonic- to Club Football to watch the Liverpool game and then back to the hotel with the idea of watching the Newcastle match at 1am. But after the exploits of the day before we were fast asleep before it started!

CS and Snow!

One of David and My favourite pastimes of late has been going to player Counter Strike at the 24 hour Internet Bar at the end of the street. Yes instead of exploring China, trying new cultures and experiencing what it really is like to live in a foriegn country, we lock ourselves in an internet bar for hours on end playing computer games.

It's actually not quite as Geeky as it might sound and we have made quite a few new friends whilst being there. It's also quite funny watching Dave's students squirm, as they see their teacher walk in. The Kids are not allowed out in the evenings but they sneek out and spend all night - 6pm to 6am- in the Net Bar before going to school the following day. If the school found out then I think they would be almost definitely be expelled.

Anyhow, one night after a long session on the computers and a few beers Dave and I left the Net Bar expecting to find the same dirty old street that always awaited us. Not So. In the 4 or 5 hours we had been in there the whole street had been completely covered in about a foot of snow. We couldn't believe it. It was quite a strange feeling walking down the deserted street at 3am with no one else around in crisp fresh snow.

Boxing Day football!

One of the best things about Christmas in England- apart spending time with your family and loved ones etc - is the obscene amount of football that is on around the festive period. Dave and I not wanting to miss out on this important English Tradition therefore organised a game for Boxing day- however unlike the games that were taking place in England we would be expected to play!

Dave's could couldn't wait for the match and put up posters around the school informing people of a Foreigner's team v No.42 Elect. Stretching the truth a little as there was only Dave and I playing for the Foreigner's team. It turned out to be one of Dave's Classes v another of Dave's class + him and I.

We turned up a little hung over and bloated from the day before and walked out onto the glorious mud pitch. We saw the other team all in their matching Portugal kits- what more encouragment did we need to try and win- and went about finding our team mates who had either forgotten or like us eaten too much the day before.

We managed to scramble together 6 players to accompany Dave and I and so we started 1 player down-2 if you include Dave! The game was quite good fun and ended up 5-5. We had gone 1-0 down within about 20 seconds of kick off and I was beggining to wonder what Dave and I had gotten ourselves into. Our team rallied however and I managed to bag 3 goals without reply to give us a 2 goal league. I probably shouldn't have enjoyed scoring against a bunch of 17 year olds quite as much as I did, but after my third goal I was tempted to do some sort of sommersault celebration but resisted.

That wasn't the end of the game however and the other team soon fought back to 3-3 and things were looking tough as they were camped out in our end and our lack of a proper 'keeper was seriously costing us everytime they came forward. However against the run of play we managed to nudge ourselves in front again when one of the our team who played the whole match in a huge puffa jacket, two pairs of trousers, gloves and scarf managed to take the ball around 3 players and finish beautifully. We then somehow found ourselves 5-3 up as Hunter- one of Dave's students that we went for dinner with earlier on in the year- unleashed a pearler of a shot from outside the area.

With what seemed to be a unasailable two goal lead with 5 minutes to go we sat back a bit- mistake I hear you cry and the other team worked their way back into it with a scrappy goal. It was back to the wall's stuff for the last few minutes but we just couldn't hold out and in the dying seconds the pretend portuguese got an equaliser.

THe game was very enjoyable and we have now made it a weekly fixture. Hopefully in the future fixtures all our team will turn up and we can find a proper goal keeper!

Water Colour Challenge!

A while back we were asked by Sandy if we wanted to have a few lessons in traditional Chinese painting. We thought that this was a strange offer-especially seeing as we had yet to receive one single chinese language lesson in the time we'd been here- but seeing as we had nothing better to do we thought we'd go along with it.

The lessons were quite good fun. The teacher assigned to us a famous chinese drawing out of his book and then we set about copying them. Dave was given the task of drawing a peice of cabbage with some chili's - quite apt as that is actually one of Dave's favourite chinese dishes - and I was alloted a basket of peaches. We quite happily spent our weeks wasting time drawing.

After two weeks of lessons we finally learnt the reason for us having these lessons.The school had entered us into a province wide talent contest-where foreigners had to demonstrate any skills that they had learnt in China. Our performance would be Kristina singing a traditional Chinese song whilst Becky, Meredith, Dave and I did our painting in the back ground. Fine, I hear you saym but what you don't understand is that usually Dave and I had spent about 15-20 minutes on each of our little masterpieces; Kristina's performance of two songs was scheduled to last about 8 minutes!

Still nervous on the day and not sure how we were going to manage it, we went on stage and managed quite admirably, and I'm sure it must have been fixed as somehow we managed to come 2nd out of about 40 Entries-some of them were pretty terrible but I think Kristina's excellent singing- she was a professional singer in America- carried us all through!

The next day we were supposed to repeat our performance at a special christmas meal that was attended by all of Shijiazhuang's big wigs- but Sandy who had managed quite amazingly the day before sent us along to a event where we would be painting without any paint brushes or paper. So it was up to Kristina to sing by herself whilst the rest of us sat by watching, enjoying the excellent food and getting drunk!