A peek into Beijing

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We met at the airport on Sunday morning at 9 am and had a very long day of travelling, it took us about 20 hours altogether. Waiting for us in the arrivals lounge were 5 of the teachers from Honglian primary school, they were all really friendly and very excited to see us. They dropped us off at the hotel and told us we had 30 minutes to get ready and we were going to be taken out for lunch!

We checked in to our hotel which is on the 12th floor, had a quick shower and freshen up and then set off for our meal. We arrived at the restaurant which looked like a small temple and were ushered to a private room upstairs, where were greeted by the headteacher and treated to an exquisite meal of local delicacies which included Peking Duck, fried tripe and szechuan mushrooms. All of the staff took great pleasure in the fact we were useless with the chopsticks. The meal was quite surreal as we had just stepped off the plane and were feeling rather jet lagged. We were dropped off at the hotel at 1.30 where we had a much deserved 4 hours sleep.

Later in the evening we met up with 5 other teachers who are also here for the China links project. We were talking to them about what they had been doing and what they had taught - all seem to have had very different but exciting experieces in their schools. We then went for a walk around the area to get our bearings, I ended up coming home in a rickshaw, (which is bike with a little carriage on the back) with one of the other teachers - it was fun but quite a scary experience. Meanwhile Miss Finn was carefully ensconsed in a taxi (she was very very cold!) and met us at the hotel.

Our school is closed today and tomorrow so we have taken the opportunity to see some sights with the others. This morning we went to the silk market. Beijing is made up of a series of ringroads, we are staying on ring road 2 but we had to get to ring road 6 to get the the market. When we arrived we were greeted with a mecca of market stalls spread out over 6 floors. There was literally everything in there that you could ever want to buy from tea to ties!! There were lots of women shouting "Buy this beautiful scarf for your mum", "Does your handsome Dad need a new tie?", it was intense but good fun. We managed to barter for most of our goods and have got some cracking bargains!!

We came back to the hotel where we had a very Chinese lunch of sandwich and fries and then set off out again to Tian'Anmen Square, this is the central part of Beijing that is home to the government and political buildings, the Forbidden City and the music theatre. We spent most of the afternoon just looking and taking photos of all the impressive and famous sights. The funniest thing we have found is that people take photos of us everywhere, they either ask us if they can take a picture or pretend to be taking a photo of something else but manage to get us in it - we feel like celebrities.

There was a sandstorm yesterday afternoon and we were told not to leave the hotel, luckily the weather has been lovely today and we have been walking around in our t-shirts - lets hope it stays like that!

Tonight we are going out for a meal and going to book our trip to the great Wall of China for Sunday. We then have to come back and watch some DVD's for the important conference on thats being held here on Thursday. We have to do a 20 minute presentation to over one hundred teachers on our project with the Primary school. Then it's a discussion on planning and assessment; it's going to be a challenge to get into work mode when it feels like our feet have hardly touched the ground since we arrived. We are nervous for our first day of teaching, you need to all send us your luck!!



Miss Loftus and Miss Finn

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