Deqing - my next home

Deqing Foreign Language School

Two days after the summer camp I boarded a small plane to take me from Tianjin to Hangzhou. The flight was only 1.5 hours long but I happened to sleep through half of it as I was still tired from the intense weeks teaching in EF. Once I arrived, I was picked up by a staff member from Echo English and taken back to a small, dirty hotel to rest for the remainder of the night. 

The next day I was told I would be catching a bus to Deqing but this time another staff member would accompany me to make sure I got off at the right stop. As we moved further away from the densely populated city of Hangzhou we began driving through small rural towns and then this eventually became just trees and hills. I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried, where the heck was this place? Well, it was much further away than I expected and we finally arrived 1.5 hours later where out of nowhere tall apartment buildings began to appear with wide streets and lots of trees and greenery.  We got off the bus and Tiger, the Echo English employee asked for directions to the middle school that would be my home for the next month. 

The town was much prettier than I had anticipated and has very little smog which means everyday I can see the sky and clouds - yay!

After we located the school we were quickly met by one of the Chinese English teachers and ushered to the Headmaster's office so they could discuss my schedule. My teaching schedule is very light which maybe the result of my temporary stay. I only teach the 8th grade (13-15 year olds) therefore, I have only 8 classes (45 minutes each) per week. After working my butt off in Tianjin this was going to be a well-deserved break!

While I was out for a walk last week I noticed some guys sitting around holding snakes. I found out later, that in the same county there is a village famous for its snake farming. They produce around 3 million snakes per year which are either supplied live or preserved to restaurants or used in Chinese medicine. They even make snake infused wine!