Civilisation... Sort of.

18/08/13

 Our day off finally arrived and after some serious coaxing Rory managed to get me up and ready for another adventure – training really takes it out of you and I was cosy! Once I was back in the land of the living we Googled where to eat in Beijing, hopped on the subway and headed downtown. We made a beeline for an American BBQ restaurant and after ordering in English (which was a change from pointing and smiling) we were given knives and forks and then came the fun part – stuffing ourselves with western food! It was our most expensive meal to date at around £20 but it was worth it for a little normalcy!

 

The westerner part of the city

 As we were pretty tired from a long week of training we dandered around the area and got a good look at the CCTV building. When Rory told me where we were going I thought it was going to be something out of the Big Brother House/1984 but CCTV actually stands for China Central Television. Either way it was pretty impressive and worth a look. 

 We then headed to the Saniltun Village area – we had a very small map of the area and as this part of Beijing is famous for housing embassies from around the world we knew we were in the right place. However, we saw some sort of diversion on the road we thought we were meant to take – turns out we weren’t heading towards the shopping area of Saniltun, rather we were walking around the Soldiers Hospital. No joke, we kept walking past all these building with “x-ray/cardiology/optometry” signposts. After a very long diversion we managed to escape the hospital and find the bar street which was cool and right beside another mall! 

The dodgy hospital diversion

Another huge mall

 China is completely full of malls and they are full of American shops and eateries. I actually quite like it – Rory and I were saying how you could be anywhere in the world when you’re somewhere like this. It feels like America when you’re walking around a shopping centre, then you go to the bathroom and the smell reminds you that you’re still chillin’ in China!

On the way home we stopped at a western supermarket – the nicey section was disappointing but I did buy some long life milk for cereal. Apparently they’re not that in to milk over here, I think they’re all lactose intolerant, so trying the long life stuff will be an experience!

Balloons, Locksmiths, Hot Pot!

15/08/13 - 17/08/13

A few cool things happened over the past few days but really, they’re not cool enough to merit their own blog. 

1. I learnt how to make balloon animals! This was in preparation for some promotions we’re doing for the school but it was actually quite fun! This is one skill that’s definitely going on my C.V. In other news, Rory can’t tie a balloon to save his life. It’s his genuine disability. 

2. We did promotions for the school. This involved being driven to a mall, wearing our school t-shirts and terrorising children. I was perfectly happy to make balloon animals, smile at the children, say hello and play a few games but the Chinese teachers got pretty pushing and ended up grabbing me and shoving me in front of children. This didn’t put me in the best mood as I was working pretty  hard and making sure that I not only talked to the children but was also nice and smiley with the parents. Rory and the other white boys who were at the promotion were left completely alone which was pretty annoying – if you want to chill out, be a boy in China, nobody will ever bother you!

3. After our long, hot day of promotions we returned to our apartment to find that we couldn’t get the door open. Our neighbour came but couldn’t open it. An apartment worker came but couldn’t open it. We went and spoke to the maintentance men. They laughed and told us to ring the police. We rang a Chinese teacher from school who got the maintence men to try open the door, again. They told us to ring the police, again. Rory ran around trying to organsie stuff while I sat in the little sun house and drank Fanta Apple, which is surprisingly nice.  The Chinese teacher then got a “locksmith” to come to the apartment and let us in. Really he drilled a hole in the door and we gave him £15. This only took 4 hours and was exactly the way I wanted to spend one of the nicest days we’ve had in Beijing – air quality was at like 56 aswell!

4. We ate Chinese Hot Pot. Apparently it’s a big deal here and I’ve been wanting to try it for a while. Basically, your table has a gas hob over which you place a pot of broth. You then cook meat and vegetables in the hot pot, hence the name. We originally ordered two plates of meat and some noodles but the Chinese workers couldn’t get their head around this and eventually managed to convey that it wasn’t enough food. We took their word for it and they ordered us some extra dishes. Turns out the Chinese don’t have a grasp on portion control. We ended up with three plates of meat, a portion of noodles and then a HUGE plate of vegetables. Despite our best efforts we just couldn’t finish it – this picture is pretty much what we left!

More Training

14/08/13

This morning we managed to get ready and arrive at headquarters half an hour early. The shower didn’t flood the apartment and we were even able to check Facebook! The training lasted from 10.30am to 5.30pm with an hour for lunch and a few breaks throughout the day. Again it was pretty similar to our CELTA class – lots of information about teaching and more lesson observation and demonstration which had given us plenty of ideas for games to play with the kids. 

We ventured out for dinner and located a very busy restaurant with a picture menu. There was no English but we pointed at what we thought was beef/pork and it ended up being pretty tasty. We had some more questionable noodles but overall I think it was another success. I can’t wait to learn some Chinese so we can order beaut meals when we go out! 

As our days are going to follow a similar pattern of training, eating and sleeping I’m not going to Blog about them all so hopefully the next Blog will be a bit more interesting!

Training Day

13/08/13

It’s finally happened. Our training has begun and we’re almost real life English teachers! The day began well, my alarm was set to give me plenty of time to get ready and be at training for 10.30am but when I was half way through my shower Rory started banging on the bathroom door. From what I could make out the bathroom had flooded so I hopped out of the shower, quite calmly as this had happened before. However, he had failed to mention that the water from the shower had not only snuck out under the bathroom door but had also flooded the entire apartment. This was a huge pain as we both had to run around with mops trying to usher the water back in to the bathroom. The apartment is fully tiled so hopefully there won’t be any lasting damage!

This set us back but we rushed to headquarters and by the time the elevator had taken us to our floor it was 10.31am. We thought this was pretty good going but apparently not! Despite that slight delay our training got started and it was fairly standard and pretty similar to our CELTA course but rather than forking out wads of cash, we were getting paid to be there. We had the standard introduction to the other teachers, followed by an introduction to Beijing and then our teacher trainer taught a lesson in Russian, to show what it’s like being taught a foreign language. We’d already done something similar in our CELTA classes but it was still interesting as it was geared towards a class of children – the content didn’t seem too challenging but the pace was much quicker than what we’re used to. Teaching children is going to require lots of energy so we’ll see how that works out! 

Training finished at 1.30pm so Rory and I returned to our swimming pool of an apartment. Rory then went to check out a real swimming pool at the nearest gym which greatly excited him and gave me some free time to restring my ukulele. We then headed to the electronics market to find a router so we can get wifi. This was pretty confusing so we went for dinner instead. We went back to the first place we ate and with a little effort ordered our dinner. The main dish was some sort of meat, we’re thinking pork and we got a side of noodles. The pork was great, the noodles were average but at only £3.50 each it was a bargain! We then headed home, did some washing and at Rory’s insistence, began reading Harry Potter... again!  Esther, the bestEST, nicEST, kindEST mother around gave Rory her kindle so at least we don’t have to share... if that makes it any less sad!