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Published: April 6th 2006
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Two of my Boys
Orlando and Michael looking rather pleased with themselves As I wasn’t planning on spending 12 weeks sitting in Xi’an teaching small children the correct way to pronounce the colours, I asked the kind people in charge of this volunteer program if I could possibly change my placement to something more fulfilling. The Monday morning after I got back from my mini-trip to Shanghai and Beijing, I ended up at the Fourth Military Hospital University, sitting in front of a room full of med students. These are no ordinary med students, they are mostly post-graduates studying for their speciality. And their English is superb, they have a larger vocabulary than me.
The other exciting thing about teaching them is that now I don’t leave in the mornings until 9.20, as opposed to the 8am lift I got to school. And I’m back by about quarter past twelve each afternoon, and so there is usually some lunch left. As the school I was at was so far away, I never returned before until just before 1pm, would have to listen to Bill asking me where I was because he was worried about me (every day!! I was always in the same place), and the boys would have eaten all the
sweet and sour chicken. All in all, a very successful placement swap.
They are fascinated by the fact that I am a psychologist, as it is not regarded as a proper profession here yet, similar to the way it was viewed with hostility and sneers (usually derived from ignorance) in England and Ireland about 20-odd years ago. However, my med students are super-bright, and understand that there is the possibility that emotional disorders are a reality as opposed to people simply looking for attention. There is one slightly off-putting student who doesn’t regard eating disorders as a mental problem, but does consider homosexuality as one. I usually focus on his grammar when he speaks, so as not to get drawn into it, and make him practise using the third person part of the verb correctly. Even though we generally have a topic area per class, the conversation bounces all over the place, from narcolepsy to Rambo, via lung cancer operations and the history of Buddhism. With at least three good rants about how mean the Japanese are.
They invited me and the other volunteers out for a picnic in Qing-Long Temple, to see the first cherry blossoms. Fiona
and Sanne ended up coming with me, as we had gone hiking the day before, and everyone else was a bit tired (read: wusses). We packed up some doughsticks and fruit, and headed east on the 303 to the university. The temple was packed full of Chinese, most of whom had never seen a whitey before. Sanne got swamped by people wanting a photo of her, Fiona and I felt rather left out, until someone took pity on us and asked us to be in her photo. So, one for us, about 47 for Sanne! Well, she is blonde…
We wandered around a bit, took an awful lot of photos, watched Chinese people take thousands of photos of each other elegantly holding a blossom twig. You just know what those photos are going to look like, blown up 50 times and smeared with Vaseline to give that ‘soft look’. We walked around for a while, then discovered that the picnic was simply a snack, Michael the thoracic surgeon decided that we hadn’t eaten enough, so we toddled off back inside the city walls to meet his wife, and grab some hotpot. Hotpot is a Shaanxi province speciality; you get
The Group
I won't go through the names! buckets and buckets of tofu, meat, fish, noodles, vegetables and sauces, and a big pot in the middle of the table to cook it all in. It is usually separated into a broth side, and a spicy side, so you can choose how hot you want your food. I think I may have been here too long, as even cooking stuff in the spicy side, dipping into spicy sauce, didn’t seem over the top. Bangers and mash is going to taste awfully bland now! It was so good, we were there for ages, as meals are social occasions, not just a “stuffing food down your throat then running” experience. With beer as well, it came to a grand total of 2 quid a head. And that’s an expensive one, with clean chopsticks and ventilation! It beat the one that Jocelyn took us to the first week hands down, and as we were with people who knew what they were doing, we got to eat a lot, rather than putting in the potatoes last, and finding they take about twenty seven minutes. Michael’s wife had everything down perfectly, so everything was ready in close stages, not a lot of waiting, but
also nothing getting too overcooked. Just writing about it is making me hungry again…
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Lesley
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You look very pleased with new placement Erin - and the chaps are taller than you are! It looks far more interesting and colourful now the blossom is out - what a quick switch from winter to Spring! Great to hear from you again. Love Mum