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Its been a month since my last blog. Times goes fast when you’re having fun - or when you’re in China anyway.
Bei Hai was interesting. It is the most popular beach for the Chinese in China. The reason may be that the water is constantly below your knees for as far as you can walk out, or as far as you can be bothered to walk out. Many Chinese I spoke to couldn't swim so this may be ideal to sit in the water and not be scared of drowning. The Chinese are quite modest, I was the only person on the beach wearing a bikini, many wore a full piece with a little skirt attached to the bottom. It was also very popular to wear beach pajamas. Anyone Chinese, sorry to say this, but it was hilarious… seeing grown men walking around in matching ‘shorty’ pajamas… infact sometimes the whole family, mum, dad, son & daughter would all be wearing the same design.. Damo and I couldn’t resist buying a pair each… matching of course…
We found 2 Aussie bars in Bei Hai which was great… after 2 and a half months of being fully submerged
in the Chinese way of life we were ready for a western fix. We had pizza 4 times, with real cheese and managed to find a bottle of Australia Chardonnay.. How devine.
The seafood was awesome. We sat out on the wharf overlooking the ocean watching the sunset and we ate SO much seafood…. Damo and I ate over 70 prawns between us… We had fresh crab and bugs too… As my mum would say, “How fabulous!!”
We only stayed a few days as the beach was packed and we kept getting the ‘Laiwai’ discount. Lai Wai meaning foreigner = meaning times everything by 3, 4 or hey why not make it 5 times the normal price.
The Beach is set up with plastic tables and chairs and umbrellas. Nobody sits on the sand and gets dirty. In fact many of the women wear their high heels on the beach and men wore suits. But we did it the Aussie way. We sat on the sand, spread our towels out and built a massive sand castle. Some Chinese came and helped us but many just stood and stared. As we were leaving we saw others starting to
build sand castles too. We may have started something.
Back in GuiGang I frequent the markets for our fresh vegetables every couple of days and now the stall holders are starting to know me. I love to walk around looking for the freshest and healthiest veggies I can find. I can buy veggies and salad for dinner and the next day’s lunch and dinner for under 2 dollars. It is wonderful. Then we come home and it is a BIG effort to prepare the food before cooking; every piece of lettuce, celery, carrot, eggplant etc needs to be washed and the potatoes scrubbed. It takes time but it's worth it as it all tastes so good probably because so much love has been put into the preparation.
There are no ovens in China (except for industrial ones that can perhaps be found in a small amount of restaurants) so we just use a wok on the stovetop which is gas from a gas bottle feeding the stove and also the shower. We never know it has run out until our shower is freezing.
After eating we have to wash and dry the dishes and then put them
Entrance to Silver Beach, Bei Hai
- Distinguised Guests Deserve Hospitality - all in the sterilizer for around half an hour. Everything that is not plastic has to be sterilized.
There is a gigantic shopping centre near us which is very expensive however stocks almost anything you need (but alas no salad dressing, cheese, decent wine or CC’s). We have found the smaller, older, more traditional shops sell supermarket stuff for half the price, including long necks of beer for 50 cents - Bring that on!
Teaching is going well. I have learnt so much in the past 4 months and I'm still enjoying every minute of it. The teachers are commenting on how well I am doing and that I have many good ideas for the lessons.
Damo and I were invited to the Senior High School to do a lesson and go to a party. It was great. We talked about Australia, played some games, then they had so many questions to ask us. We found out that party actually meant a concert but it was fun. The reason for the ‘party’ was for International Youth Day and it was to show the talent of today’s youth. They had singers, comedians, dancers; some did traditional acts, others
10 bucks to hire seat and an umbrella
so we camped on the sand and made sand castles all afternoon.. did something that looked like it was straight out of a Britney clip. Although it was all in Chinese we had a great time.
One of my Grade 7 students Soul asked if she could come over for lunch and of course I said yes, many kids caught on and I had students over for lunch everyday that week. We had salad and as it is a new experience for them they loved it. As I have said before everything is eaten hot even lettuce and cucumber so a cold salad was a different experience. By the Friday I had 7 kids in my loungeroom eating.
The kids are so great. They choose their own English names so it is easier for the English Teacher to say. Many students have interesting and creative names such as Alien, Jacket, Jet, Tomato, Apple, Every and Soul.
The school has so many mango trees within the grounds so every student (all 950 of them) get 1 mango each…. I definitely feel like I am living in the tropics now. We have had a lot of heavy rain. Very very heavy rain, cats and dogs rain! Right now it is pouring
outside but the sun is out. The kids are still out playing as it will probably stop in 2 minutes - yep, it just stopped. Sometimes after the rain the sun will come out and be so bright that you can hardly see and it quickly dries up all the rain.
There are many wonderful things here, but there is also the other side where children are forced to do tricks on the street, as in back flip after back flip to get money for their parents. These little girls and boys that are maybe 4 - 5 years old are treated like monkeys and their rib areas are bruised and I wonder what their organs are like from doing so many back flips... it is really hard to stomach. There is just stuff like this that can be heartbreaking. Even though I can’t make a difference for those kids I hope I'm making a difference to the 200 students that I teach every week. I just keep my thoughts on that.
A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed (Eeek!!) by the local TV station for National Family Day. Guigang TV filmed my lesson, filmed me playing
basketball and then I had an interview about the differences between family life in Australia and China. In that order too, so I was sweating from the humidity and playing basketball and red faced with a microphone in my face.... It was a charming look I can tell you that!!
So, all is well in the tropics of the northern hemisphere. Everything is so different to what we are used to. Sometimes it's a bit of a roller coaster as to how we will feel about his wonderful place from day to day, but we are learning and growing and experiencing and we wouldn’t change any of it.
Bye for now. Dani xxx
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Damo
non-member comment
Hey...
It is alot of fun here and it makes me smile seeing your blog and reliving all the things we have done.... I can't wait for our next adventure..... Bring on Beijing..... xxxx