It's starting to feel like home here!

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We spent last weekend in Wuhan which is two hours by train south of Guangshui. We had been planning a weekend away after we got paid. Last week was our first payday and the school paid us without any problem with a large wad of 100 yuan notes. We shall have to open a bank account eventually! I have been very stressed as the school took our passports nearly a month ago to get our Foreign Experts Certificate (which allows us to convert up to 70% of our wage into foreign currency when we leave China) and our Residency Permits which allow us to live legally in China. Anybody who was in Toowoomba before we left will know what a process it was for us to get our visas to allow us to come to China in the first place. We had to apply to an agency who had scanned copies of our passports, Tesol certificates (an oral English course we did), our resumes listing our life experiences (at that stage they weren't worried about any degrees etc) and a letter advising why we wished to teach overseas. The agency found us a position immediately and we signed contracts with the school. After that the fun really started! We ended up having to have full medical tests including chest xrays and aids tests. These test results even had to be sighted by the Chinese Embassy in Canberra! Paperwork went backwards and forwards - most of it via fax in the middle of the night (including a detailed list of all paid positions we had ever held with dates and employers names!) until eventually we had to prove we were educated by producing High School Certificates. Thankfully Jerry had his, though it was by that stage packed in a box ready for storage. My high school certificate disappeared years ago though I was able to get one by driving to Brisbane. Anyway we eventually got the paperwork from China (all colourfully stamped with red stars) which we needed to apply for our Chinese visas. Our visas eventually arrived two days before we left Toowoomba. The whole process had taken over two months....
Once we arrived in China we had to sign official Government contracts. Then the school had to apply for our residency permits within 30 days of our arrival in China. Due to the Chinese New Year fortnight holidays (which Government offices have - nobody else seems to!) it held up the process even longer They had them for nearly a month and we still ended up getting our permits (last Friday in Wuhan) over a week outside the legal 30 day visa period. We are still a little worried that we may have to pay the fine when we leave China as the dates don't coincide. The fine is 500 yuan a day each - nearly a months wages each! The police said that we won't have to pay but they won't be stamping our passport when we leave the country. Anyway we are now legal and got a day off school to go to Wuhan to collect them.
We stayed two nights in Wuhan at the Holiday Inn and it was great to have cable Tv and a western buffet breakfast! Champion (our support teacher) came with us to translate at the police station and we paid for him to stay the night at the hotel as well. He loved the experience and said that it was a weekend he would never forget. We were glad that he was there because the school had told us not to worry that we didn't have our passports as out Foreign Experts Certificate (which we had been given a fortnight before would be adequate as ID in China). We knew this wasn't the case and as a test we handed them over in the hotel as ID on checkin. They refused to accept them much to Champion's surprise and would only take out passports. We couldn't make the school understand that there is very little we can do in China without producing our passports. Hopefully that will now make things easier for the next foreign teacher that the school gets. We have been lucky that we live in a small city and everybody knows that we teach at the local school - had we lived in a larger city we would have been asked to produce our passport regularly by the police.
We went to the Western supermarket whilst in Wuhan and spent far too much money on groceries. Even at this particular supermarket we had to produce our passports as Id! We were able to buy cheese, butter, rye bread, rasberry jam, peanut paste, pesto sauce, pasta and scotch. It was comparable in price to Australia but we were spending a Chinese wage, not an Australian wage! However our meals will be a little more interesting now! We also bought over 30 DVDs for one Australian dollar each! Unfortunately the power lead on our laptop burnt out upon our return to Guangshui so we can't watch them! The school have told us they will have a new lead for us tomorrow but sometimes tomorrow doesn't come in China! I'm using the most disgustingly filthy keyboard at the local internet cafe at the moment!
Champion took us out for a meal on Friday night to a buffet restaurant. It was great value - 58 yuan ($10) for all you could eat. There was so much food - lots of seafood, including smoked salmon. They bought around huge chunks of meat on long skewers and sliced them at the table. Jerry tried eating turtle (still in the shell - looked terrible - slimy black meat!) and snake (very bony and covered in the usual hot red spices). I decided I didn't need that cultural experience. After the meal we took Champion to a cafe and we all had some great coffee. He really enjoyed the coffee - usually Chinese drink tea all the time. The 3 cups of coffee cost as much as one buffet meal! The restaurant was on the other side of the Yangtze river and that part of the city was like you were in another world. Very pretty, with a large lake and university campus. It felt very European. We shall probably stay there over the May labour day weekend - we have four days off then.
Though we spent 3 days in Wuhan we didn't do much sightseeing. Hopefully we'll do some in May. The city was very busy and the traffic very heavy. We caught taxis nearly everywhere - half an hour costs about $7 - buses would have been cheaper but taken so much longer.
We caught the train back on Sunday evening. What an experience the train staion was! It was enormous and thankfully Champion had written directions to give to the person selling the tickets. We eventually found our way to the departure hall - one of at least 4 - and there we waited for over an hour having no idea what to do next! We studied the tickets and the signs and eventually figured it all out though! The hall was absolutely crammed with people - I doubt they could have fitted anymore in!
Next Day: Still waiting for our power adaptor - Chinese trains are great though the train we caught to Wuhan came from Beijing (13 hours away) and was filthy. The Chinese don't understand the concept of throwing rubbish into a bin. The return trip - once we made it to the train - was very smooth and as the train had only started it's trip to Beijing it was very clean. There was such a scramble to get aboard the train - everybody pushes and shoves and the stairs up are really high so it is difficult to actually step up to the carriages. We know that if we are brave enough to go on an unguided tour in July not to take hardly any luggage or the trip will be extra difficult.
Guangshui City is 20 minutes by taxi from Guangshui Town where the train station is. The taxi fare costs 5 yuan (under $1) each. This weekend we plan on going to Guangshui Town to explore it more fully. The countryside between the two towns is now very pretty - all tiny fields full of spring vegetables. The second planting later in the year is rice. The road is lined with little tiny old houses and rows of trees. it is a very wide road but not very busy - we will walk to the next village and then catch a taxi or bus nward from there. The area is surrounded by low hills and is very scenic. Both of us know that after the weekend in Wuhan's smog it was a wise choice to work somewhere much smaller and therefore with clean air, if not clean streets! Whilst we were in Wuhan we tried to get the photos on our digital camera downloaded onto Cd without any success at any of the photo shops. We decided to try one of the computer shops and they downloaded them for 10 yuan. Everybody here will make easy money if they can - he unwrapped all the stuff he needed to do it out of his stock boxes, burnt our cd and then put all the bits back onto the shelf again! We were pretty happy about and will put some of the photos n the website once our computer is working again.
Not a lot more to say - this week I feel really happy. I think it's because we have our passports back. The students have just finished their 4th lesson with me and they are all responding so well to our classes. They actually cheer and clap when we enter the classroom and tell us constantly that they are really enjoying the classes. They like the fact that they can say whatever they like to us - they say that they feel free to talk about things in our class that they would never mention in other classes. Certainly some lessons now are very noisy but as they are all chatting in English we don't mind - they love word games amd calling out answers. The school are happy with the lessons as well which is the main thing.
We are busy planning our two months touring China in July and August. We are considering going on a guided tour but would like to think we could do it on our own. We wish to visit Yunnan Province (which borders Vietnam and is the home to most of China's minority tribal groups) Chengdu (home of the pandas) and then do a trip around the Tibetan grasslands and visit a couple of Tibetan monastries. Yunnan and Chengdu are heavily touristed but after spending so much time without Westerners we'll be quite happy to talk to some. The Tibetan area is very isolated and will be hard travelling with long days on trains or buses - but very interesting. This will be a part of China where absolutely nobody will speak English so evening booking train tickets etc will be hard work.

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