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Published: April 9th 2007
Well, it has been a month since my last blog.
What has happened? Every day I am learning as much as the students I am teaching. I have absolutely wonderful students who are eager to learn. I walk through the school grounds and hear a hundred "Hi Dani, how are you?"'s or "What are you doing?" or just "Dani" with a big smile and wave. Even the students I don't teach will say hello as I pass them by.
Damo arrived in China on 24th March for a holiday and quickly grew to love the friendliness of the people and laid back lifestyle of being in China. He now wants to work as an English Teacher too.
The food just keeps getting better and better and we are forever being asked to people houses for supper (dinner). Tomorrow night we are going to the Vice Headmasters parents house as they live on a farm and their cow had a calf. As they are poor farmers and can not afford to feed the calf, it is going to feed us! Yep, we are going over there to eat the baby cow for dinner....
It was Damo's birthday
the day after he arrived and Liz, my Head Teacher, put on a surprise birthday for him. She knew that he likes barbeque's so she arranged a barbecue for him in the school grounds, invited many teachers and some students that cannot go home on the weekends as they live too far away. We had Chinese sausages, hot dogs, corn, chicken, beef and Liz brought a cake with "Happy Birthday Damo" on it.. It was great. Although Damo was quite jet lagged and still a little disorientated from being in a bizarre environment I think he enjoyed his day.
On the last Wednesday in March I was happily preparing my lessons for the rest of the week and I received a phone call from the Head Teacher,
"Dani you have the next 4 days off!", "Say what??"
I found out that the students have exams at the end of every month. During this time I get to have a break for 4 days.
My new friends who speak quite good English, Lance and Rosemary. Lance who is an Engineering Student at a University 20 hours away, had holidays so was staying at the school where his
Statue in Nanning
Damo trying to blend in family lives as his father is a Chemistry Teacher. And Rosemary who is studying to be a Chinese Teacher is also on holidays and staying with her father who is a Maths Teacher. They took the opportunity of me having a morning off and took us out for breakfast at a wonderful restaurant - now my favourite for breakfast - where we had so many things to choose from. It is similar to a tapas style meal with 15 - 20 little snacks you can choose from. We sat there for about 3 hours eating many different flavours and drinking copious amounts of tea and talking and the final bill came to $1 each.
After breakfast we visited a traditional tea house and met Mr Wang. He is a hilariously funny happy man now that he is living his passion by owning and running a teahouse. We sat and drank tea for a few hours and learned about the serious business of making, drinking, smelling, tasting and brewing tea. We learnt about the difference between green tea and red tea. Green tea is best to drink when you are thirsty and red tea is best to drink 20 minutes
Park in Nanning
This looks all quiet innocent, but wait until night fall!! after you eat to help with digestion. Red tea also helps you to wake up so don't drink it at night. Always drink tea hot as this is when the tea leaves are fully open. The tea leaves are washed twice with boiling water before we drink it for the best taste.
We decided to go on a tour to Detian Falls, 400kms west of Guigang. So Thursday we caught a train 200kms to Nanning, stayed the night there ready to get up early to jump on our tour bus at 7AM the next day. A teachers brother is a travel agent so arranged the tour for us. We had an authentic Chinese tourist experience. We did not see one westerner our whole time. One the first day we caught the bus 5 hours and were reminded of the movie Babel... think Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett on the bus travelling though the desert. No one spoke English on our bus or anywhere we stopped and the roads were dirt with huge pot holes. The edge of the road dropped straight down about 20 meters... It was a bit hairy, but we got through it and arrived at a
Dancing in the Park
At night this park in Nanning is filled with huge speakers and DJ's in different areas and the locals go to the different areas to do ballroom dancing, the nut bush, disco dancing, the tango it was quite a sight. Yep, Damo and I had a go at the ballroom dancing.. LOL!! beautiful spot in the middle of a jungle to go white water rafting.
Putting our life jackets on, there was no English to be seen or heard. Instructions were being given in Chinese and the danger signs were in Chinese. We had no idea what the rules were, what was going to happen or what to expect. But that just added to the excitement of it. We were supposed to be going white water rafting except the water level was low so we just went calm water rafting, but it was wonderful. We sat one person per raft with a man paddling at the front. The mountains were so steep and lush and there were many birds singing, then our guide started singing a Chinese song in a sweet high voice. Once again I had come across an experience that was surreal and hard to explain, but is was truly beautiful. We rafted through caves which were pitch black with one torch per raft just enough to see the beautiful natural formations of rock in the darkness with water pouring down into the river, or just enough to see a huge rock about to hit you in the head
What no bottoms up
A relief to be about to 'sip' our beer without JUMBAY... or a bat flying past about a meter from where we were sitting.
Once we finished our river rafting experience we were taken by bus to the other side of the gorge so we could do a bush walk though the jungle. I never thought that China would have a jungle. It was lush and peaceful. There were mini waterfalls all along our walk.
We had dinner with our tour group and a elderly couple who it seemed had never been near westerners before as they were just staring at us and smiling. They stayed at the table until everyone else had left and kept offering us tea to drink. I tried to tell them that I am a teacher in Guigang but they just laughed so i probably was telling them that I was a mouse again!!
We arrived at our hotel late into the night wondering what to expect but it was simple, clean with 2 beds and bathroom which was all we needed. We decided to go out for a walk and came across an outdoor barbecue and we sat in baby sized seats which are found all over China as they perfectly fit
Happy to sip
Even Damo the seasoned drinker is happy to sip beer for the evening a Chinese person, although our knees were up to our armpits it was nice to sit outside under some big trees and have some barbecue snacks and a few bottles of Chinese Beer. I saw the moon for the first time in 6 weeks that night.
Since I have been in China, I have seen the sun twice, both times nearly completely hidden behind the humidity and clouds. I have not seen a blue sky. I have heard in the middle of April suddenly the sky will turn blue and it will stay like that for months... I am patiently waiting 😊
Saturday was an early start to see the Famous Detian Falls. The second biggest transnational waterfall in the world. Niagara being the biggest. It was not to disappoint us. There was a river that separated Vietnam and China so we were not allowed to go swimming in it, however there was a beautiful walk around and though the waterfall on the China side. We came across the ruins of a temple on our walk up to the top of the waterfall were some people had lit incense and put some food for Buddha, I left him
some lollies.... The waterfalls were spectacular and I have decided that waterfalls are my favourite things. I love to feel the energy of them, to smell the fresh earth and lush trees, to feel centred and true and positively in the moment.
After a few hours of exploring it was time to go back to Guigang. Our bus which was Chinese size too, was squashy and hot and annoying but that's just all part of it.. hey!!
A couple of days later we went back to see Mr Wang at the tea house and we ended up being taken to lunch at a traditional River Li restaurant. River Li is about 300 ks north of here and the water they use for cooking is brought down from there, the fish are from there too... noodles are made exactly to the recipe of that area. We had fish soup. It was so fresh that the water was heating in a wok at our table and the fish came in still wiggling... yep, they were trying to jump off the plate as they we placed in the boiling water and murdered in front of our eyes. I had to stare
at the picture on the wall or else i would have cried.
At this point we were introduced to the Chinese way of drinking. Drinking beer that is. There are no sips, no gulps, or no mouthfuls of beers. The Chinese way is all or nothing. GUMBAY.. Bottoms up... They fill your glass, you say GUMBAY and skull the glass of beer. This is the culture. Luckily I had a class in the afternoon so I had an excuse not to drink but Damo was right there with them all the way... Oh yeah and it seems there are no drink driving restrictions here too, so it was an interesting drive home.
A few days of just hanging out, going for lunch everyday at our favourite restaurant for Guilin Me fun, which is a big bowl of soup with meat, herbs, noodles and a hard boiled egg. - a bargain, a dollar for 2!!
Lastly, the local doctor called us at 8.30 Friday night saying they are having a party for us that night.... OK!! They came and picked us up and took us to KTV (Karaoke)... What a laugh! They had hired a room with a
big screen TV, juke box, snacks and non stop beer. Again, there was no drinking the beer slowly. Every glass was... GUMBAY... skull... GUMBAY.. skull... It was great fun.. we sung the only English songs on the box which I am not telling you. Lets just say Backstreet Boys and The Carpenters are National favourites here in China!!
Last night we went to Liz's for dinner and made salad for them as Damo brought over some salad dressing from Australia. It was wonderful, yes, I am easily pleased! My taste buds were very happy to taste something so familiar. All food is eaten hot, stir fried, boiled or steamed including lettuce and cucumber.
Now to plan this months trip!! I am truly happy and have only the desire to be right here in China, teaching English experiencing all there is to experience.
Once again I feel that I am truly blessed to have the opportunities that I have.
All the best,
Dani xxx
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Aunty
non-member comment
wow
Oh Danni, this all sounds so very fantastic...is there any chance we can get to these falls when I am over there? they look fantastic! However, I may have to give the skulling a bit of a miss- are you sure I can't just sip the beer? it truly does sound like a wonderful adventure, so enriching. Enjoy every minute of it Danni. love you, see you in July