Yesterday is chocolate, tomorrow is green

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…..after the trip to Shanghai yesterday to collect Larry, the “team builder” I have a cold. It's not going to stop me from going to the hotpot restaurant tonight with some of the other teachers & administrators. We go to the one we couldn't get into last time because there was a queue at the door. They are full tonight but we were ushered upstairs to sit on blue plastic stools until a table is free. You know what they say back home, if you want a good Chinese restaurant go to one where Chinese people eat. When they are queuing at the door, in China, with a choice of thousands of other eating places in the vicinity, you can't go too far wrong.....

…..as usual we struggle through the menu &, with the help of pictures, hand waving & a few Chinese words here & there. After we've ordered Angel, our Chinese administrator, turns up.....

…..Peter & Angel decide to go back to the school while Emily, the new Aussie teacher, Cathy, Larry & I head off to find the pool hall we'd been to previously. It's quite hard to pick but we did it. Larry is a barrel of laughs & seems to enjoy himself to the full. Emily does well but is obviously suffering the same cold that I have.....

…..I have a rotten cold today. Despite it being sunny & quite mild I stay in most of the day & dose myself with honey & lemon juice. I have my pupil to tutor in the afternoon but get through that quite well. He's definitely improving & also, as a bonus, is much more keen to participate in class. We agreed to try three sessions first, to see if any improvement was being made so today I get my first tutoring payment after this, his third lesson. More honey & lemon tea & an early night ready for the English Oral Testing next week. Over 160 kids to speak to in the hope they can give me coherent answers to a few simple questions.....

…..Monday morning. Feeling worse. Blocked up, the genesis of a sore throat. Still, I'd better eat something to get me through the day. The Western Cafeteria seems to be kept at tropical (Canadian indoor?) temperatures. I have a modest breakfast then feel a bit sick. I'm deciding whether to sit & let the feeling pass or make the 300 metre dash for my apartment. I wake up facing a chair leg & wondering where the table top went. The others help me up & comment on my unearthly pallor as they help me to the empty tables at the back of the room where I lay until Angel, Rainy & the doctor from the School Clinic arrive. The feeling has passed, my temperature is normal & I feel a lot better so I end up going back with a promise from Dennis, the Chinese cook in charge of the Western Cafeteria, to boil up some ginger for me as a remedy.....

…..I get through a morning's testing. The Chinese teachers have vacated a space in the corner of their office &, as they pass by at various times, are as sympathetic as the language barrier allows & occasionally pass me fruit, biscuits or small cartons of milk. My voice deteriorates during the day though &, despite getting the ginger, to add to the tea, lemon & honey, it's a relief when it's over. A session of “team building” in an unheated classroom in the evening doesn't improve my health, mood or voice. Not in the mood for dancing around pretending to be a train or a truck. Some healthy participants have serious doubts too. I should have left early, at the same time as Emily.....

…..after “team building” Kelly & Elizabeth host a short meeting / social between the Grade 3 Foreign & Chinese English teachers, that's Kelly, Roger (I don't know his Chinese name), Su Yin Hui (Suzy) & me. It's a much better team building exercise, the apartment is warm, Roger's home made grape wine is fine & Kelly is pleased to have some Chinese swear words clarified.....

…..I'm off to dose up on honey, lemon, ginger & maybe get an early night ready to spend tomorrow asking an endless stream of grade 3 kids in the oral test, "What is your name?" (they usually get that right), "What is the weather today? "...Sunday". "What are you wearing today?" "...I am fine thank you....?
OK, I picked some bad ones. maybe it's because I sound like Paul Robeson played a half speed they can't understand me. I have to give the prize for the most imaginative (or desperate) answers to, “Yesterday is chocolate” & Tomorrow is green”.....

…..I pass on the opportunity to do another “team building” class, this time with Kelly & the Grade 3 Chinese teachers. I find out later it would have been the best one to attend as, after their more staid & traditional approach to teaching the Chinese teachers were, to quote Kelly, “bouncing off the walls”. I'm having trouble imagining Wang Quan Hui from class 3/10 doing that.....

…..this bug is really peculiar. I keep coughing but, to use Emily's elegant phrase it's “not satisfying” in removing whatever I can feel in my chest, I still have my appetite but my head still feels totally blocked. The rest of me is now feeling quite reasonable. At night I wake up twice feeling 100% fit & well, except that I'm soaked in sweat & have to go & have a wash & dry myself.....

…..I refuse the Tylenol offered by Cathy (I don't like taking pills), anyway I think the other stuff is taking effect, very slowly. Unless the bug is still searching through my system looking for a weak spot, though it shouldn't take this long to find one in someone so old & decrepit.....

…..my voice is JUST sufficient to ask those questions, again & again & again..... We are working with 5 classes; over 160 children for each teacher. Their parents have paid good money to send them to a private school & some, sadly, will not get their money's worth. However there are some very bright children too but most, as you might expect, are in the middle, a classic bell curve. I'm always conscious of the fact that even the dumbest ones can write their name in Chinese characters or with our Roman alphabet & the smart ones, well, they'll probably rule the world in times to come.....

…..I've never been to the USA so the frequent talk of Thanksgiving over the past few weeks was just a curiosity. However with all the US teachers here this really important celebration for Americans was not going to go unrecognised. Dinner in the Western cafeteria at 6pm. Dennis & his team had spent the day cooking up 2 turkeys, which arrived after we had worked through a series of strange offerings which apparently are not usual Thanksgiving fare. So, if I AM ever in the USA during this celebration I won't be asking why there are no shrimps with pineapple or potato croquettes or whatever it was in mayonnaise. The turkey made up for it. Dr. Wang the founder of the school, came in to carve it & have a chat. He joined the table where I was sitting. He's very approachable, shrewd but likeable & having lived in the USA for 15 years has a much broader view of the world than most Chinese.....

…..after putting any left over turkey in doggy bags for the diners the remaining beer & wine were taken off to a large room near the dormitories which I hadn't actually been in before. It's a sizeable function room with large screen, lighting, dance floor, seating for around 100, a bar & sound system hooked up to a computer with an inexhaustible supply of Chinese & English karaoke! Karaoke, with a throat not recovered is not really a good idea but good fun. I did mostly the bass parts! The Chinese, it appears, love karaoke & Rainy in particular has a very nice voice. It wasn't a late night & I don't think anyone overdid it, except perhaps me with my voice.....

…..woke up only once last night, again feeling great except for the wet bed after the sweats I had in my sleep. Thank heavens it's my laundry day on Friday. This is the strangest cold I've had. It's always worse here I've been told by old hands, because of the muck in the air. Whatever it is stuck just below your throat won't come up or go down. I'll spare you the details but it adds a little colour to this grey, wintry city.....

…..one blessing this week is that, although the warm weather is over for a few months it hasn't actually been cold this week, nor really windy. I think the previous arctic winds & driving rain would have finished both Emily & me.....

…..I have been asked, as have the other teachers both foreign & local, to do a demonstration class for the parents, in my case of class 3/6. They're OK, excited to have the parents there but as good as you could wish them to be. We have to wear our dark suits & white shirts provided by the school. I am greeted with many cries of, “Teechaa, Teechaa, ni hen shuai!” (Teacher, teacher! (their pronunciation of the English), You are very handsome!). Too late kids, your test results have already been handed in. We, rather they, given my voice, sang “Hello Goodbye” before we went through some warm up English & a game based on prepositions, finishing with singing, “Here comes the Sun” . Some parents looked happy, others a bit bemused, yet others totally inscrutable. I asked Suzy later to pass on any feedback, good or bad!.....

…..I caught up with Dr. Wei in town at lunchtime on Friday. It's surprising how much even a little English conversation improves fluency. I hope it's working for my Chinese. I now know that badminton is called “rain-feather ball” (yŭmáoqiú) in Chinese & am asked why the word “Bad” appears in the English name. Some things just can't be explained . I experience yet another variation on hotpot, this time with mushrooms, thinly shaved beef & a number of vegetables which, after cooking in your own individual hotpot on the table, can be dipped in one or more of a selection of spices which you choose before the meal starts. I would have been totally at a loss by myself both ordering & knowing what to do with everything when it was delivered, even given the picture menu. I am also given some medicine for my cough. It's really a children's cough medicine so it doesn't taste too bad. It's my shout next time, if I can shout by then. There's no such thing as a free lunch.....

…..Emily has been to the clinic at the school three times, had a jab of antibiotics & been off work for a couple of days for her trouble. I think my sleep, ginger, honey & tea approach seems to have worked a little better. Not good but I made it through the week (just!).....

…..my computer has decided, of its own accord, not to connect to the school's system which is our gateway to the internet so I am cut off for a while. I may be able to use my PC in the teacher's room but I suspect it will be like watching paint dry.....

…..I think, after this week's disruptions & afflictions any Christmas mail that might be sent could well arrive late.....

…..finishing off the week with a meal at a pizza/steak restaurant with a few teachers near the old Pagoda (note neither the so called “Big Pagoda” in the centre of Yangzhou nor the “Small Pagoda” are actually pagodas at all, …..). I would have preferred a new Chinese food experience but some of the others get cravings for Western food. At least they didn't suggest Maccas or KFC! It was all right but nothing special. I actually had baked rice with tuna & cheese, an odd enough combination, especially bearing in mind the lack of any real concept of cheese in China, from what I have seen so far. Still, after a visit to an Art shop, a DVD shop (hard to resist at least one purchase from a reasonable selection at ¥9 or 10 each - I bought the Unbearable Lightness of Being which I've been meaning to watch for months) & Angels & Demons. A couple of games of pool & it was time for a reasonably early return by taxi, honking our way through the grey, wet streets back home to school.....

…..to finish off the week an Australian expedition to the Blue Market, an uninviting, 3 storey concrete building with hundreds of traders in cramped stalls separated by narrow aisles partly filled with the overflow of the traders' stock plus shop owners & their families or helpers squatting at tiny tables eating lunch from steaming bowls of rice or noodles & other dishes. It's the place where I found my picture framers a few weeks back. Peter, Emily & I need a few things. There is all the tacky, cheap stuff that you might expect but mixed in with some quite amazing statuary, Chinese lanterns & all manner of clothing. The calendar stalls are probably the best example of the best & the worst. Large calendars of such monumental ugliness & bad taste that they are really cool, like the one I was tempted to buy of Chairman Mao superimposed (badly) on various scenic backgrounds, or painfully innocent pictures of bikini-clad girls superimposed (yes, badly) behind pictures of unaffordable sports cars. Others so magnificent that, like the A2 size 2010 Year of the Tiger calendar I bought for ¥18, or about Au$3, you just can't resist. I did need a calendar. Neither Peter nor I really needed the Chinese lanterns but they'll add a bit of colour to our rooms.....

Great photo, audio or video opportunities missed this week:

…..Me in my new suit & white shirt.....
…..The word “POO” displayed in red lights on the drink dispenser outside the art shop. I had my camera but the flash reflection obscured the word.....
…..me trying to do justice to 10CC's “Dreadlock Holiday” at karaoke on Thursday.....

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