I couldn’t really let March slip by blog-less so I thought I’d better find something to say before April arrives…
It’s not been a very exciting month, simply because we’re all just settled into our teaching routine now and there is nothing else to really focus on here. After half a year my students can actually understand what I’m saying to them and this happy miracle, coupled with my new timetable which gives me both Monday and Thursday off and 4 fewer hours of teaching a week, means we all have a lot more fun in class now.
Recent teaching episodes have included ‘Money’ (passing around British cash and letting the students enthusiastically photograph themselves holding it, and singing a classic from Abba), ‘Body’ (giving the students an extensive quiz about health and fitness and inappropriately rewarding them with sweets) and ‘Hotel’ (conducting a hilarious exercise where students ran around trying to either book hotel rooms or register guests in their hotels, and showing an episode of Fawlty Towers). The weather was so beautiful today that it felt wrong to waste it in the classroom, so I took my class out onto the athletics track, got them into groups and they read through a wedding role play I'd written.
This activity ended when one of the ‘brides’ and one of the ‘crazy ex-girlfriends’ started wrestling on the ground.
I did have a short break from Pingxiang at the start of the month, when I was invited down to Xiamen for a reunion of the Guangzhou crew and Torsten’s birthday. I can’t honestly say that I saw a lot of the city itself, as we chose to favour celebration over tourism, but we had fun and I wasn’t robbed, so it rated well.
Xiamen is a coastal city in Fujian province, in the south-east of China. Torsten and Bram live in an apartment with some nice views out to sea but it was really hazy the weekend we visited, so I didn’t actually see them. The imagination is a powerful tool though.
On the Saturday we took the ferry across to Gulangyu Island, a very scenic but rather touristy island just off the coast of Xiamen. It was full of beautiful architecture, little winding paths and greenery.
We wandered around, went to the beach and bought small and unnecessary memorabilia.
On Saturday night we went to a cafe/bar on Xiamen University campus, where a few of Torsten’s friends put on some live entertainment before we headed out to a club.
Here's Torsten and his ladies…
On Sunday we went to China's biggest Starbucks before heading our separate ways.
I caught a 20-hr sleeper train back to Pingxiang. I did not sleep. The Chinese guy below me was an erratic snorer and the Chinese guy opposite me had night terrors. Just some of the highlights of cheap travel in China.
And that's about everything of photographable interest for March. Apart from the dramatic events occurring outside my apartment, where they have decided to build...something. A new shop, rumour has it. Will the shop ever be fully functional? Only time will tell…
