OK ok new stuff, yay, about time eh?

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Hi again fowks, this blogging thing has been running into all sorts of delays and hiccups, not sure where the blame lies. Could be me, not a lot of time with work and socializing and that, could be the computer….one thing all should know about China….nothing works…including our PC. We had a big ass system crash after having a shop in town fix a couple of things, so muggings here spent the better part of two weeks trying to install dodgy Chinese windows (you know what I mean) and then installing all those little bits of essential software. Then we ran into driver issues and couldn’t get online except at work (where the PCs are virus ridden). So my apologies to any who have been waiting and waiting.
Not sure where to start, we’ve been up to this and that. Had our first decent trip, couple of good day trips and the Halloween fest.
Some thoughts.
China isn’t as paranoid as we’re led to believe. People are people the world over. Still if you see a green shirt coming, act natural!
Guiyang is being brought kicking and screaming into the modern era. Basically you can get an OK cup of coffee, and the supermarkets are starting to do loaves of bread minus the sugar (yay). We can even get brie (Danish) and Camembert (Swedish or summit). So Brigid’s happy (Cheeeese)
I am addicted to Hua Jiao. This is known to you in the West as either Sichuan Pepper or Chinese prickly ash. This can be consumed in a number of ways, usually with other chilies and salt. This stuff is NOT chili, but it is a little spicy. It has a numbing quality a bit like cloves and with chili takes the pain out of a spicy dish. The best application of Hua Jiao is probably with Barbeque. Barbeque here is awesome, loads of stuff, cabbage and Tofu and chicken and ducks eggs, potatoes and green beans and all sorts….mmm whole fishes. So you pick up your morsel of choice (cabbage is better than you think) dip it in your little tub of spicy goodness and scran it. So fine, must go at least once a week.
Currently I hate Maltodextrin; it’s in all the crisps and tastes like shit. Not sure what it is, but whereas you can get used to MSG (sweat a lot), this flavor really gets on my tits.
Bought a new hat (as some may know I’m not happy without), it’s big and wooly and apparently makes me look like a turtle.
Finished my first entire course last week. HF2B, I am now officially a teacher. 2 of them got over 90%, lowest was 70, I rock. I was so worried when it came to testing time “have I managed to teach them, will they pass?” So I’m quite chuffed, cute kids, but so naughty.
I can tell that I’m developing in teaching. I’m starting to come up with plans fro classroom discipline and that. Some of those kids are so bad…..stealing stuff and fighting. It’s time for star based reward schemes and detentions I’m afraid. But I’m getting there. One thing about this English teaching malarkey, we’re trained on CELTA courses to teach adults, not kids, so it’s a bit of a learning process (considering that 90% of our teaching is kids). Brigid has a pig of a day on Mondays; she’s got 2 hours at a kindergarten outside of town, first thing in the morning. Then in the afternoon she comes with me and Aaron (another teacher) to cover for another teacher (Steve, who’s filming a docu) at Number two experimental primary school, boy oh boy what fun. Probably my hardest class. Try teaching English in English to large classes of kids who don’t know any English. Fiddly, although last week (for the first time) I had a TA (teaching assistant). The running joke with having no TA is that we’re using the immersion approach to language teaching, otherwise know as “keep talking and they may learn something….eventually”. Starting to think immersion approach may have come about through necessity rather than educational psychology.
I think we may have a new flat mate, saw a rat in the kitchen (what ama gonna do). Oh and we’re moving to a new flat soon, hope it’s nice, think we’ll leave this flat to the rat.
Can’t seem to find any knock offs yet, but we’ll keep looking (apparently you can get a well cheap North face jacket in an underground shopping mall market thing, which we can’t find.
Starting to meet a lot of people, can’t say that we’ve e made a huge amount of friends, but some things take time.
My Chinese sucks, but this immersion approach is starting to work, got a few phrases down, and learning more every day, hopefully by the time we come to leave I’ll understand what the hell the taxi drivers keep asking us. Speaking Chinese is quite good fun and not to hard as the grammar isn’t impossible, but writing Chinese characters ain’t gonna happen in this lifetime. Fortunalty we have Pinyin which is phonetic, so with a little practice you can say most things. We’ve got Rosetta stone software, which is the best going for language learning, and some local friend and colleges who we can ask, “what’s this” and “how do you say” as well as having a good chuckle at everyone bad pronunciation.
The photos above are of all sorts of things, there’s some of HuangGuoShu, the most powerful waterfall in Asia.
HuangGuoShu
Yeh, went there a while back sorry! It’s a nice kinda park thing (China doesn’t do natural nature, I mean they even call their country a garden), with a massive 180- ft waterfall. You can go behind, it’s pretty cool. We took a tour with Aaron and his girlfriend San (spelling?). We ended up at a Miao village, a large Buddhist cave, a knife factory (? Naw) and a beef sweet shop, as well as Huaguoshu, nice day, wandered round drinking Baijiio and had a nice big lunch. Unfortunately Brigid had toothache (which she later had to have sorted, my god dental care is cheap here), so she was not in the best of moods, but hey she took shed loads of photos. Awwww, it’s just been brought to my attention that the photos bought it when the computer crashed, piffle, and damnation!!!! Sorry fowks, you’ll just have to Google it huh!?
Tan Ha Tien
Another big park with cool carste cave that you walk and float through. Be cooler if there weren’t big ass lights everywhere but hey. We went with LIndi, a good friend and fellow teacher, but now she has departed for pastures new, i.e. Perth, Australia. Bye Bye LIndi! See you in Oz perhaps. No nature but pretty enough. I do find this manicured landscape a little weird, but this is one of the world longest running cultures, so if it can be pruned it will be.
Halloween
Turned out to be a big deal, at least with the school. We all dressed up and through a big party for loads of the kiddies, I wore a homemade top hat, cloak, flour and water mix and ketchup. I was going for the zombie gent look, worked too, scared the bejeezus out of them, hehe! Then a few days after went to the pub and had a big party, Bijiio again, and vomit. (I really must not drink Bijiio, white wine my arse!!)
Qingyan
We had a day trip out to Qingyan. This is an old fortified town outside Guiyang. Pretty, not to touristy yet, had a nice cuppa and a wander aboot (and yes Canadians do say “oot” “eh!” Aaron.) Really pretty old building, not a lot to do yet, but sooner or later it’ll probably end up like Liijang. (See Tiger Leaping Gorge) so glad we went now, before it’s screwed up.

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