I’ve got so much to say, hope I don’t forget it all!! I was picked up at the school this morning by two students, Jill and Alan. We went to a park in the middle of Shanghai. It had a fairground, a huge boating pond that went through most of the park, and a zoo. The animals in the zoo were a pretty sad sight. We went boating, which was great. I was shocked at how huge it was! And I was told there is another one twice as big! It’s like a peaceful haven in the middle of all the chaotic traffic. Then we met two more of their friends. They are all around 14 to 15 years old. We took about four buses during the course of the day. We snacked on roasted chestnuts and drank this tea milkshake thing that had bits in it. I asked Alan and Jill what the bits were and the only way she could describe it was as “from the sea". Had a jellyish quality…. Two of the buses were so packed that I had to stand on the second bottom step where the door was, which meant the driver couldn’t open the door as I was squished against it.

Alan at the boating pond

We went shopping in the afternoon and then back in the evening for some tea at Jill’s house, it was delicious. We had crab and, amongst other things, a black egg, which is apparently a Chinese specialty. It wasn’t too bad though, despite how it looked.

When it was time to go home, Jill said, my dad will take you back to the school. I thought, brill, a relatively stressless journey would be fine. But they don’t have a car. I was getting a lift home on the back of his moped. Bearing in mind how stomach-churning any kind of travelling is on Shanghai’s roads, and the fact that I have already been in an accident in which a moped was squished under the bus I was in, I was a little anxious. He gave me a helmet and placed one on his head as well (not bothering to tie the straps, preferring to have them flapping in the wind). And off we went. I don’t think I have ever been so terrified in my life. Nobody has right of way, there are no traffic lights and instead of looking in their mirrors they beep their horns. But after 20 mins I was home, with everything intact. My legs were like jelly. Don’t think I’ll be doing that again in a hurry. I am also really sunburnt.

Today Fi and I were teaching classes together at the Experiment school. We gave them the start of a story and split them into groups. We gave each one a word and they had to incorporate their words into a story, however silly they wanted it. They were about 14 years old. They were really good and this one in particular was hilarious,

Once upon a time there were two Scottish girls, Fiona and Sophie, who went on a big adventure in China. One day, Sophie and Fiona came to a coffee bar. They sat at the window and they could enjoy a wonderful view. Suddenly, a very handsome boy came to them and said hello to them. Sophie and Fiona stood up at once. Fiona said: “My dear, your jacket is so fragrant and it makes me faint.” In the meanwhile, Sophie sat on the chair and made a very beautiful pose. The cool boy said to Sophie, gentle and soft: “Your hair is beautiful. I love you, my baby. But Fiona is also very beautiful, I love you, too.” Sophie hit the table angrily, and said: “Foolish man, I tell you, you should go to the moon by aeroplane or rocket. I don’t want to see you forever. You’re a banana. Actually, you can do money business with me, I’ll kill you!”
Sophie and Fiona went out of the coffee bar after they paid the money of tea. The sun shined so beautiful…….

How funny is that! Some of it doesn’t make sense but I think you can get the gist of it.

Students at the SISU School

This Saturday we are all going to stay with a student’s family from the SISU School where we live just now. Sarah and Kim are staying overnight on Fri and Fi and I are going during the day on Saturday, as we have to pack for moving on Sunday! It is to give us the chance to see how the average Chinese person lives.

The headmaster of the SISU School, Mr Wang, has given us about 20 pears and mooncakes (a traditional food which Chinese eat on the Mid Autumn festival, which starts with the Chinese national day, October the 1st). We will be celebrating this next week with a party, which is also Sarah’s 18th birthday so we think it will be a pretty big celebration!

Busy classroom!

Fiona and I are moving to the East Century (the Orient) school this Sunday. The hardest thing about moving is that we will miss the teachers here, the kids, and Sarah and Kim, as we have been here for almost a month now and are pretty settled. But it means we only have to work at one school, rather that four! And we get a decent amount of time to sleep and prepare lessons, as we don’t have to travel an hour and a half to get there! We will be working 20 hours a week now, rather than 35. They are giving us a car and a driver for one day a week so we can visit the other girls at the other school, or go sightseeing. Everything we need is pretty much on the school campus as it is one of the biggest boarding schools in Shanghai and I think the biggest one in the Pu Dong District. (One district has roughly the population of Scotland, maybe slightly less)

Despite all the teaching problems I am loving it here, and I only get the odd homesick moment. And if I can say that after the week I’ve had then I don’t think I’ll have too many other problems. You know the extremely naughty boy I had last Thursday…. climbing on chairs and tables and sticking stuff on windows etc? He was my best pupil this week and that whole class were angels. Shame about the class after them though! Dinner over the last week has included; noodles and pasta with tuna butter and mayo, dumplings and noodles, dumplings and a fish finger (a bit random). We ate out last night at a little restaurant just across from the supermarket, and above McDonalds. I had spaghetti, which was lovely.

I‘m at a school today called the Experiment school! It’s great though because we have six classes between the four of us so we only teach three classes in pairs. Much better than seven classes on your own!! There is an English corner after school for just chatting to the kids informally. I have written postcards to quite a few people, but it is not a simple process to send them. Sherlia takes them to the post office and you have to write quite a lot on them, as well as some Chinese characters. And I’m waiting till the digi photo printer is working at the Auchan supermarket so I can send some photos in the post. Theodore has offered to put our photos onto a disk so I might see if I can organise that soon. Sherlia is taking us somewhere in Shanghai tomorrow for some sightseeing which will be fun. Then we will be going to Kun Chens house on Sunday. This last week has gone soooo quickly!

Here are a couple of photos of the Orient School.

I was given a Chinese name last night (it sounds just like my name, that’s what it is based on) Su fei ya. Fiona’s is Fei xiao na and Sarah’s is Lily! (which is quite random as many of the kids use this as their English name, might be Le Le). Kimberley’s is Jing Ling , not quite sure how that came about either.

Our Teachers Day celebration was quite an experience. The main feature I found different was all the toasting you have to do! We toasted about five times at our own table, don’t know what for, then the head master and vice headmaster went round the other eight tables toasting everyone at those tables, then came back and toasted us some more. Then it was our turn. There were about ten people per table, we went round the eight tables and had to toast everyone there. Then we had to go round some of the other tables twice, i.e. if they were the English department, or the primary school where we worked. Theodore, the vice headmaster, took some photos of us for me.

We have the weekend off. Yeay! It’s raining ‘though. Fi and me are particularly tired but I’m hoping next week at least we’ll have some experience and know what to expect.

I was asking Theodore for advice on travelling and his number one destination was Beijing. He recommended I go there first, although he said not to travel in China on my own, basically just because of the language barrier.

I am missing everyone, but not that much yet because everyone here has made us feel like family and we have been very busy this last week.

Today I was at a school and I was showing them some photos of my family etc, and one of the photos is of my mum when we were on holiday in the Dominican Republic last year. More than once they said to me (pointing to my mum) …. how old was I in this photo!? Thought you would like that Mum.

It’s teachers’ day today so we are all out for a meal with the teachers from this school. Fi and me were at a meal for the same thing last night with another school! They also gave us red roses and carnations.

We didn’t have to work too hard today as we were just chatting to older kids about ourselves and Scotland …their English was soooo good, better than some of the English teachers we have spoken to!

I’m going to get some digi photos developed tomorrow and see if I can send them home. They have one of those machines where you put your memory card into the machine and pick the photos you want. I will take some more pics tonight of the teachers and maybe Sherlia, our best friend!

The last few days have been absolutely mental, I’ve had no time to do anything! We are teaching full time at the Oriental Primary school and part time at three other schools, so instead of 15 hours a week we are working 35! And the other girls are working about 15 to 20.

I had the naughtiest boy so far today! He would not do anything I asked him and was standing on tables and sticking stuff on windows. The rest of my classes have generally been fine, it’s just so tiring! We have to commute an hour just to get to the Oriental school.

I am getting bitten to death and I think I am getting fat as well. There’s no time to exercise, and everything is cooked in oil! There is no such thing as a light meal here and you just eat when you can.

Its 6.40, just about to get picked up for my next day of teaching. Teaching a bingo lesson sounds like a great idea. The only problem with it is explaining to the kids what to do! Its a lot harder than you think. I’ve tried lots of little team games with little prizes but when they can only say ”hello”, “how are you”, “yes I’m fine” and basic words, explaining more than that is a battle. They get bored very easily and if they don’t have your attention for the WHOLE lesson, they start playing up. I have to go soon, the van is picking us up, really wish they had seatbelts …..

Teaching was an absolute nightmare. In the morning we still didn’t know what we were doing for the day. The SISU school wanted us there for their opening ceremony but the head of foreign language wanted us at his school, where we were supposed to be teaching. After some discussion, we ended up at the Orient School but we hadn’t prepared anything as we’d been told we were going to the opening ceremony at the SISU!

The little kids were quite naughty, we had no resources and they knew very little English so it was hard to communicate. The air con didn’t work, and we couldn’t find a drink of water anywhere! We only had five classes today but we have seven the next two days. We got back at 4 o’clock today after an hour’s bumpy ride, to be told we had to teach another class at the SISU school where we live, straight away.

And we crashed into this guy on a moped just as we got home! We had just been saying to ourselves the other day how we though it was weird that we hadn’t seen an accident yet, considering the way they drive, and it happened! I think the guy was alright, not happy about his bike though!

I’ve managed to install the software for my camera and download some pics. I’ve just not had the chance to do stuff with it or work out how to send them via email.

We did a bit of sightseeing yesterday! Two of the teachers from the school took us to the Nanjing road, the Bund, a temple (I cant remember its name) and we took pics of the Pearl TV Tower and other stuff … good day. My stomach started playing up on the taxi ride home which wasn’t much fun at all, hardly surprising the way these guys drive, it’s enough to make anyone’s stomach turn!

We are starting to realise that eating healthy meals isn’t as easy as we thought. I tried to cook some sweetcorn last night and it just tasted disgusting, didn’t know if it was the sweetcorn or my cooking! We ended up just eating freeze-dried noodles. It’s hard when all cooking instructions are in Chinese and we don’t know what half the food is in the supermarket! And all the bread is sweet.

Oh yeah! We bought a DVD player last night for 20 pounds, got it working in10 mins and watched a DVD. It was great! We bought about ten DVDs and these things called VCDs but we aren’t sure what they are but our DVD player is a VCD player. Two DVDs cost us about one pound a go.

Starting teaching tomorrow. We’re supposed to be at this posh primary school (where we have 7 or 8 to a clss) but the bilingual school wants us at their opening ceremony!

I don’t know yet about sending photos I know there are places where I can get digital photos developed and no doubt it will be dirt cheap! Incidentally, the school has decided we need a web cam and a microphone!! They have gone out of their way make sure we have everything we need! Yesterday, the vice headmaster, Theodore and a very friendly, helpful teacher, Sherlia, took us shopping for SIM cards! And its not like they didn’t have other things to do! But they are probably two of the nicest people we have met out of a lot of nice people. It’s only 7p for me to text from abroad, cheaper than at home! It’s something like less than a penny to another Chinese mobile!

Teaching: we were told yesterday that on Monday we will start going to the classes in this school, the bilingual school, helping out with activities and stuff. Then, after that, we will be going round to other schools, like primaries and kindergartens to start teaching. Kun Chen is coming round this morning at 10am to give us our timetable.

Tomorrow, I think we are going to Nanjing road, which has the biggest shopping mall in Asia! Then along to the Bund, which overlooks the Pearl TV Tower …. the view that you often see on postcards of Shanghai. And on Sunday I think we are going to Chinese gardens or something. Theodore said he is going to arrange for Sherlia to come with us, and for the school mini bus to take us there! On their days off! But we can’t stop them, they love doing things like that for us. And Kun Chen is asking us if there is anything we would like to do, like travelling after the placement or during our holidays, as he will help us arrange the best deals and places to go and give us advice.

Oh yeah, they have a kind of courtyard bitty with a piano in it, all the students here play apparently, Theodore told us we could go down and play any time of the day. There is a running track, a basketball court and a football pitch just outside our window, so we can do that too if we want.

I think I will try the chicken feet next time, no doubt I will like them.

It was raining when we got here and it rained all yesterday but today it is lovely! All the kids are outside our window, on the playing field, playing football and basketball with their school shirts and jogging bottoms on! They will fry!

We were told on our way back from the airport that there are gym and swimming facilities in another part of the city that we can use! God knows where that could be!

I’ve still not changed my Hong Kong dollars yet but its cool because the headmaster gave us 100 pounds each so, when we went shopping yesterday, we just used that. We bought absolutely rakes of stuff for the house. Food and other random items, which would’ve cost us at least 150 pounds, was 500 something Yuan which is under 50 pounds (sorry no pound sign on this keyboard).

I’m having fun so far, although me and Fi’s bathroom and utility room got flooded last night because when the guy came to fix the washing machine, he left one of the pipes hanging out. We managed to put it back in before too much damage was done and it all dried off itself this morning. The school bells go off about 15 times a day, starting at about 7 til 10.30 at night, God knows what for! Every time it goes off I feel like I should be getting up to go somewhere or do something. And our doorbell is really funny, not sure how to describe it yet.

The link representative Kun Chen has returned to Britain just now but he’s coming back in two weeks, so that all good. He says he is going to help us out if we want to do stuff like trips and that. I don’t think I’m going to extend my visa because I think we have about a month to travel at the end and I think, after 5 months working here and 1 month travelling, I will be ready to come home!

Its 20.13 now and we’ve just made some dumplings with yummy meat in them and they were lovely! We’ve found food that’s fairly healthy and normal! Still annoyed that the first e-mail I sent didn’t work.

The flights were fine. We went economy class, which was ok, and the transfer was fine too. We were met at the airport by Kun Chen and some other teachers from the school. They are all lovely and will do anything to help!

We were whisked away for a meal as soon as we got to our apartment, which was our first taste of Chinese cuisine. I passed on the chickens feet this time! The lunch we had at the school canteen today was really quite nice …. rice, meatball kinda things, shrimps, some really spicy bamboo things and spinach, which was good.

The apartment is very big, really nice, ‘though the shower is as bad as I feared, but its all good! None of us slept very well last night, I think because of the heat and our solid mattresses.

We went shopping today at the big supermarket which was quite an experience …. if you think the queues are bad at Christmas time you should see them here! The supermarket was over two floors and you can get a lot more stuff here than I imagined! We’ve bought some food, which I think you need to boil, but we’re not sure how to do it! I don’t think we’ve got the facilities.

I think we’ve got about a week to get sorted out before we have to start teaching, which is good because we’re going to need the time.