A Mongolian Wedding

I received my very first Chinese wedding invitation the day before I left Tianjin from my colleague Yuki. Unfortunately, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it since I was going to be in Deqing for the next 4.5 weeks. So, I was a bit sad to miss out on going to a traditional Mongolian/Chinese wedding (imagine all that yummy food!). Anyway, I managed to get some photos but will have to wait until I return to Tianjin to get all the gossip.

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!

More summer camp photos

 Just a few more photos from the last round of summer camp classes in Tianjin. Some of you who are on Facebook may have seen these already so these are the benefit for all of you who haven't.  Those long days and nights planning, teaching, organising resources and doing the achievement ceremonies (a cross between a meeting the parents, a demonstration of how you teach and a mini graduation) are over - phew. Thank goodness summer camp only comes once a year! Roll on Winter camp aargh....

Below is a photo of my Chinese colleagues from a conference they had to attend a couple of weeks ago. On the far right is our big boss and Centre Director Pepper. Next to her is Tracy our Senior Teacher and the rest of the local academic staff. I'll post a photo of the other foreign teachers like myself once I return.

I have left Tianjin to work out my notice period from a recruiting company. Then on October 1st, I catch a plane back to Tianjin to begin a new contract with the same training school I was working at over summer. But for now, I am in a small town just north of Hangzhou called Deqing. Photos of this picturesque place will be uploaded tomorrow!

Robin from my phonics class

Awesome colleagues from Tianjin

Storytellers class

Reading Science class

Summer Courses

Food class

Silly face!

Vowels

  The first round of summer courses are now complete and I have 3 days off before I have to head back into the school to prep for the final round. Next time round I am teaching the same topics again except for one new addition where we teach five English nursery rhymes to young learners of around 4-6 years old over the three week period. At the end of the course they should be able to recite and perform them in front of their parents in the final week. The classes where the parents are encouraged to attend are called Achievement Ceremonies. I had to do two last week. These can be rather nerve wracking experiences as they are there to observe you, most of the time sitting stoned faced at the back of the class. For these you need to prepare a PowerPoint introducing yourself, the aims of the course, the methods of teaching, pictures of their kids in class and then how wonderful they are lol! Then you launch into a series of activities for the parents to see how you teach and how you interact with their children so they can see where they hard-earned cash is going (this is certainly not the time to forget anyone's name or mess up an activity).  Even though, I had never observed an Achievement Ceremony prior to doing one myself I was lucky enough for mine to go really well and I received positive feedback from both the parents and the bosses - phew! 

Nuts!

 

My apartment in Tianjin

The lounge

Looking out the kitchen window

I have been really busy lately teaching at my new school so my posts haven't been as frequent as normal. The summer period is not a holiday for some of the kids as they sign up to extra classes to prevent any 'backslide' in their English. 

I thought I would post some pictures of the apartment that I share with another EF teacher Ellie from Wales. We are on the top floor (level 28) and look out over the city (and a sea of other apartments in various stages of construction). We are in a very convenient location as we are sandwiched between a large mall called Joy City on one side and a subway station on the other. Joy City is about 6 stories high and has a ice rink at the bottom where shoppers can look down and watch either kids skating around or ice hockey players practicing their shots at goal. The mall is always busy, similar to Christmas shopping at St Lukes lol!

This school apartment is much nicer than the one I received with my first school in Yongjia. It has a kitchen and all the mod-cons you can ask for and everything is much cleaner and in better condition.  It definitely feels more like a home than the other place. When I arrived, the school gave me a little goodie pack with sweets, coffee, toiletries, towels, slippers, a map and laminated copies of my home and work addresses in both Pinyin and Chinese characters (very vital information). My bedroom had been cleaned beautifully and the bed also had new sheets, duvet and duvet cover.

Our apartment - terracotta one in the foreground

View outside my bedroom window

I was given a set a keys to get into the apartment, one was a tag to get past the security gates, one key was to get into the building and another into our actual apartment. We also have security guards that sit out by the gates 24/7 letting cars in and out and just watching everyone going about their day.

Joy City

The kitchen

Summer school at EF

 Above is my teaching schedule for the next 3 weeks for the first half of the summer camp.

My first class starts on Monday with Reading Science - yep you read that correctly I have to teach science to a group of teenagers. We only received the content yesterday so I went in early to get familiar with the topic and the experiments we would be doing. Although, I haven't done science for many years I think this is going to be an interesting class to present. For the first hour I am teaching about the different layers of the earth and the second hour will be based on earth's resources. I have found a couple of cool experiments on Pinterest and I hope I will be able to find the ingredients here, so after I post this I will be heading down to Walmart (10 minute walk away) to check out their supplies. The other classes I have are Meet the World with kids around 11 years and then phonics (Sound and Word Adventure) for the smallest kids with the youngest being 4 years old.

Training has been intense but really thorough at English First and I am really enjoying my time here. We have a number of EF schools in Tianjin and I am based in TJ4. Our foreign teachers come from Canada, USA, England, Ireland and South Africa (and now NZ!) and everyone gets on really well. Some have been living here for as long as six years and have made their home in China while the most recent (excluding me) has been here for six months. We also have a number of local Chinese teachers who we co-teach with, administrators who are busy dealing with the parents and keeping the school running smoothly and the sales staff who have targets to meet. All in all, it's a small but tight knit and hard working group.

My school TJ4

My desk

Flying to Tianjin

To get to my summer school job in Tianjin, I took a 4 hour flight from Wenzhou. You can also take a train to Tianjin but I wasn't too keen on a 20+ hour trip even if I did pay for a sleeper cabin. Also, some of these arrived in the middle of the night and I didn't think my new employer would be too impressed if I asked them to pick me up at some ungodly hour. Thanks to my friend May, she was able to book me a cheap flight on Tianjin Airlines for just under $150. Because I was leaving the day after the Dragon Boat Festival when people would already be back at work (or for kids, sitting their end of year exams) I was able to get these at a much better price.

So, on Tuesday 23 June I was up early doing a final clean of my apartment and packing the rest of my things ready to meet May at the bus stop at 8am. Because I hadn't caught many buses in Wenzhou and didn't know which one to take to get to the airport she decided to come with me to make sure I didn't get lost. So, off we went. Firstly, we had to get to Wenzhou so on the bus we hopped to catch the ferry in Obei. After we made it across the murky river we were lucky enough to see bus number 42 a few minutes later that would take us directly to the airport. That trip probably took about 45 minutes. We arrived at the airport at 11am, well before my flight at 12.35pm.  The airport was small but very busy, so as we waited we looked in the gift shops to pass the time.

I arrived in Tianjin at 4.35pm after a brief stopover in Qingdao and was picked up by one of the Chinese workers from English First. After a 30 minute drive we arrived at the apartment I would be staying at in the middle of town. There I met the HR assistant Rita, who let me in and showed me how everything worked - everything is written in Chinese of course, even trying to work the washing machine and the remote on the aircon can be like a puzzle sometimes. However, it is so nice being in a big city and I am surprised by how beautiful it is with it's old buildings, statues, parks and the river that is perfect to run along. I am definitely going to like it here.

 

Packing up

 Today is my last night in Yongjia as I fly north to Tianjin ("bright lights, big city") at 12.35pm tomorrow.  As I could only take one bag of 20kg and one piece of hand luggage with me on the plane, my friend May suggested that we courier one of my bags up to my new school. This was going to cost me a lot less than having to pay for the excess baggage at the airport.

This is Greensuitcase (Kerryn's nickname for the bag she gave me) getting packed, then on the little courier truck ready for its next big trek. It weighed 25kgs and cost me $30. They said it will arrive in Tianjin on Thursday, the same day I start working at English First. Fingers crossed it arrives in one piece! 

It's getting hot in here....

It can get really hot and muggy here that it feels like you are living in a sauna.  But this is how most middle aged men deal with the heat in Yongjia. Yep, it's the old, roll your t-shirt up over your puku technique. 

So funny!

Spa Day

 On Monday, I met with my American friend Stephanie living in Wenzhou for a girls spa day. My classes were slowly being cancelled and used as revision time for the end of year exams next week so I had plenty of time to spare. Of course, I was fine with that so off I went to catch the bus into the city and to meet at our usual spot - Starbucks. After a quick coffee we caught bus 92 to the spa. As the bus was full, I ended up sitting next to an elderly lady.  She could tell we were foreigners and insisted on talking with me. My Chinese is still very poor so we only had a short conversation but it was still good to practice.

Fifteen minutes later we were at our stop and walked in the 33 degree heat (sweat dripping off us) to the ladies only spa just minutes from Stephanie's apartment. Once inside, we were given a towel and Chinese style pyjamas to put We showered, changed and then met in the sauna with the rest of the staff. They probably don't see many foreigners so they all came in with us, in their work clothes, while we tried to talk to each other - us trying to speak Chinese and them English. They had brought us in cups of hot tea to drink as we sat there chatting about the treatments we wanted.

After the sauna we were moved to the massage room and we laid face down on the tables. We were having back massages first and then facials (yay!). Once we were comfortable the massages began, but 5 minutes later the rest of the staff came back in to talk to us again. So much for the relaxation! This time they had their smart phones with them, and they had apps that they could speak Chinese into, and would translate back into English. Sometimes it worked but other times, it was hit and miss, but that was ok.

The massage was deep tissue and after about 5 minutes, I was wondering what the heck I had got myself into. This was painful! Every now and again they would talk to us about our health. "You need to eat more black food", they said to Stephanie, "it is good for your kidneys". I was told, "your back channels are clear, very good". It would've great to get more information but I will have to do that another time when my Chinese is better. As time went on, the massages became more comfortable, and the initial pain had vanished. After about 2 hours we had our facials and it was so good that I'm sure I had a wee nana nap for a few minutes.

Just over 3 hours later, we were done. Totally relaxed and feeling great. We slowly got changed and went out into the reception and paid our $60.  Then they sat us down and gave us a small cup of red bean soup. After a few photos, Steph headed home and I caught the bus back into the city to catch the ferry home. I got stuck in the rush hour traffic so it took me around 2 hours to get back to Yongjia. But at least I felt relaxed and  happy!

The sauna

The massage room