Advertisement
Published: December 3rd 2009
Edit Blog Post
I'm adding heaps more photos some from the start of the trip I didn't put up before..
over the last few days we have been twice to Kparty, a giant karaoke bar which is 8 stories tall. it is all made up of private rooms each with a a guy kind of like a butler who just gets anything we need. there is a huge free buffet there made up of about 12 different restaurants, like sushi places, places where they make soups with the ingredients you chose, we even tried baby birds (quite difficult to eat). From there we went to a bar where the girl were with knew the owner, so we got taken straight to a VIP section that looked over the rest of the bar. the whole evening was paid as it was a welcome which was great.
the next day I met the main boss(john) who asked if I wanted to go the the china car show with him and his friend. which i was definitely keen on unfortunately Paris and Jonathon both had class so couldn't come. we had to drive for almost and hour and I asked if we were still in
the same district which he said we were, so again I was surprised at the size of the city we are in and how very little of it we had seen. He showed me some of the buildings he had built in the past, they were huge! he said they had about 15,000 workers each.
he also showed me a buffet that he said he had to take us to that was the biggest in asia, he said nearly 20 times the one that I thought was big at Kparty. the car show was heaps of fun, very big! it had all the latest model ferraris and lamborghinis. there were 2 floors of a huge building filled with cars (i'm not sure how they got them on the second floor) Each car had a model standing next to it and each car brand display would have about 20 models lined up in the front of their display. I was the only white person there, quite a few chinese people came up to me and asked if they could have their photo taken with me, which john thought was very funny and also made me stand next to lots of the
models so he could take photos too.
after that I got abit of a cold, but i'm the last one in the office to get it and it seems nearly gone now.
Then I had my first lesson, which was quite scary as it turn out we are not just helpers for the teachers but we are the teachers! but my lesson went quite well, at first i just taught them abit about New Zealand, then did some introducing activities, which they seemed to enjoy. Ive only had one class so far but I think we have 4 next week.
then after class some of the students asked us if we wanted to go to Kparty again, because 3 of them were having their birthday, so we went along with them which was fun, one of the teachers (joy) came aswell.
again with the birthday party I was surprised at how extravagant their celebrations are like our welcome party.
Yesterday we caught the metro in to a slightly more central part of the city with the boss' daughter, but got very lost and had to catch alot of trains the last one being the rush our
train at 6 o'clock. I have never seen so many people on a train before or such a long train as the one we went on. it was quite scary, all we could do was let ourselves be pushed on. the first train paris and I got on but Kate (the bosses daughter) didn't make it so i jumped off. on the train was a man who was so tired he could stand up and kept falling down, it was quite dangerous for him I think as he could easily get crushed under all the people.
during the day we went to a toy mall that was about 7 stories tall, where we bought really big remote control helicopters, which im not so sure if they were the best purchase or not as they cost almost $50 nzd and i dont really know how long they will last. (paris' has already broken and mine is abit broken)
then quite last night about 6 policemen came to our apartment asking for our passports and papers, it was quite scary at first and pretty frantic because we had no idea what was going on or why they were there. we
Panyu square
one metro stop away from our house, it would take a couple of hours to walk there. still don't know why they came or how they knew we lived there because the school certainly wouldn't tell them and they were surprised when we told them. but after we talked to the police for awhile they got quite friendly and we took photos with them. they were there for quite awhile checking everything, and they couldn't really speak much english. but we know that if we ever get in any real trouble we can just call the boss and he would sort it out for us.
Then today a couple of the students I had had in my class came with a huge cake, lots of food and wine, for my birthday, they said that they probably wouldn't be able to come to school on saturday so wanted to celebrate today. I'm not sure if its normal or not but it was really nice and alot of fun. I think we have the day off on saturday the lady boss said so that will be good, paris is pretty keen to go to a place called chimelong, which is a part of the city with heaps of theme parks including the biggest water park in the world.
i think the water park is closed because its winter (even though its about 20-26 degrees every day) but we should ahev enough to do at the normal theme parks.
We just went out for dinner and had quite a nice noodle soup(usually we eat in the staff canteen but today the cook has the day off) and it only cost us 6yuan (just over $1nz)
tomorrow, I think we will probably go shopping again like we do every morning, my search for shoes is getting pretty desperate, but I still have found any shoes big enough. and we still want to buy bycycles as they are very cheap here and we do so much walking, paris is constantly bringing it up so i think the sooner we buy them the better.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0678s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb