Teaching in Yongzhou

10pm on a Friday night, students are studying for an exam on Sunday. We went and disrupted them for a while to take photos.

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OK, so we are finally teaching English in China!  Our first week consisted of mayhem as all the leaders in the school staff (Principal, Vice Principal, Dean, etc) invited us out for lunch and dinner and tried to get us drunk at every meal.  This is when we tasted turtle, eel and chicken gizzards.  Ok, I just watched James while he ate the chicken gizzards.  The eel was nice but I don't like the texture of turtle.  Our Foreign Officer, Leonard, took us to Ja Ja Fu, the supermarket, and helped us get some food for our apartment.  Unfortunately the items on the shelves were unrecognisable, and even when explained to us, we couldn't figure out how to work them into a meal.  So we loaded up on snacks and now we eat out for every meal.  It's pretty cheap, there's restaurants just outside the school, you choose what meat and veges you want and they fry it up in a big wok for you, give you some rice and beer, and this is for 15 yuan ($2.50) for 2 people.  When we want something a little nicer, we go across the road where it costs 30 yuan, or go get a BBQ dinner for 28 yuan.  In Ja Ja Fu, we can buy Snickers, Dove and Kit Kats, but no Cadburys.  Just Nestle.  No Violet Crumbles though.  Chinese chocolate has a higher cocoa content, so better quality, but it tastes like cooking chocolate.

James, Leonard, Leonard's wife, Miss Ding (Principal's wife) and Edward (Miss Ding wants to adopt him as her son).

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James started classes on the first Wednesday we were here.  I was told at 9pm Tuesday night that the timetable was still being restructured so I wouldn't start till Thursday.  On Wednesday night, Leonard called to say that the Dean had finished the timetable but had locked it in his office and left for the weekend, so I wouldn't start till the following Monday.  I was OK with that, though I thought it was pretty unorganised of course.  On Thursday morning at 7:40 the doorbell rang, James answered it (I was still in bed) to Mr Lieu.  Mr Lieu had come to escort me to my first class which was at 8am.  I jumped out of bed and headed to class with no make up, no coffee, and no idea what was expected.  It went well, then had another class.  Mr Lieu brought me what he thought Westerners eat for breakfast, 2 slices of bread soaked in a bowl of warm soy milk.  Then after my third class (!!!) Leonard came running up and apologised for the mistake but Mr Lieu was mistaken and I still wasn't supposed to start till Monday!  Absolutely fuming inside, I laughed it off and accepted Mr Lieu's apologetic invitation to dinner on Friday night.  Was a great night actually, had warm ginger rice wine, duck with the beak and feet still attached and supposedly the creme a la creme of the dish (Mr Lieu's naughty 6 year old son grabbed them to eat and was in trouble because they were meant to go in our bowls!).

A teahouse in Yonzhou.

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Met the other foreigners teaching here on the Saturday night, Tim and Barbara Murphy from USA, and Geoff and Margaret from Brisbane!  Had a lovely time speaking English all evening to people who could understand what we were saying.  Didn't have to repeat ourselves or mime anything, it was great. 

Since then, we've been hanging out with the Principal's wife Miss Ding (the women don't go by their husbands names here and they still call themselves Miss), playing Ping Pong, Snooker, Mah Jong and last night we taught her and a few others Blackjack. 

As Yongzhou district has 9 million Chinese residents and 6 foreigners, we are a novelty everywhere we go, people come out of their shops to stare and yell "Hello!".  The students giggle and stare when we walk through the school, James has a group of girls with crushes on him and a few stalkers who keep turning up at our door at all hours of the night.  Luckily we have a peep hole and when it's them, we don't answer the door.  We get given gifts all the time, food, money boxes, and an umbrella last night. 

Having heaps of fun here, and will keep this website updated with our stories and photos!