Back to work!

---

After the October Holiday, Saturday and Sunday were declared as normal working days. This happens quite a lot in China. Whenever there is some sort of National/Bank Holiday, schools will try and organise it so that you can have a few days off together. The upshot of this is that you then have to work the following weekend to pay back the time. Depending on which days were taken as ”holiday”, the Saturday and Sunday then become these two working days. So if the Bank Holiday was on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday would then be taken as holiday. The subsequent Saturday would then be “Thursday” and the Sunday would be a “Friday”. Easy, right? Of course you never get this information until maybe a day before. If you are lucky!
We were visited this week by the Beijing Programme Office. This of course involved meetings and the famous Chinese banquet. Yes, that’s right, lots of food.
Phil was training in another Ningxian this week and I went to join him for the final session of the county based training. Both the two day primary and junior trainings were delivered by VSO trained, local project supporters and national volunteers. Phil and I just helped out when needed and gave feedback. They did really well and are a credit to the project! As is true of all trainings we go on, lots of food was eaten. Phil has now finally managed to persuade the leaders not to get him leathered on Baijiu, the Chinese national firewater, although this doesn’t stop ‘em trying!
The weather is sunny and warm at the moment. This is great for many reasons, one being we are quite reliably able to dry our washing. However the main one is we were told that our heating would come on 15th October and it hasn’t! It’s not so much of a problem as it is not so cold. Things change a lot in China and the heating is apparently going to be switched on from 15th November to 15th March. We’ll hang on in there as we know that the winters are cold here. Our saving grace is our electric blanket which is a must for all Chinese citizens!

---