End of our second month in Shunde, Daliang

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Wow, where does the time go? So the good news is our first pay packet is finally in our hands (we get paid on the 10th so its a long 6 week wait) and it is definitely a highlight for us, having spent our last few days eating the remainder of everything in our cupboards (including porridge made with water) so we cherish being able to buy some ‘luxury’ items including cheese (oh sweet cheese how I have missed thee), Weetabix (and not the fake stuff either), pesto (3 quid a jar but worth the spend) and chocolate! It’s funny the things that you miss when you are away as when we are back home, we’d think nothing about it and wouldn’t bother if we didn’t have those items in our fridge (apart from the chocolate of course).

We’re definitely getting a lot more comfortable with our lifestyle here and managing to source where we can buy ingredients that we thought wouldn’t exist here. Half of the week we tend to eat chinese food (albeit minus the pig intestines and ox testicles) and the rest of the week we eat comfort food from home. Everything is cooked from fresh as there’s certainly no ready meal section in Tesco or Walmart over here- the freezers stock 50 thousand different varieties of dim sum and that’s it (seriously, but not that we are complaining as dim sum is very nice too). Let me think, have we had any more food breakthroughs? Well this week we learned what mung beans were after we tried to make a green lentil curry with them. Also, I managed to track down baking powder which I am ecstatic about, as now I can go all Mary Berry and cook some cakes! And we have worked out how to cook pickled cucumber and twice-cooked pork, which are delicious (Margaret and Archie are in for a treat when we get home).

It’s nearly two months since we started our teaching journey and there have been many ups and downs and laughs and tantrums along the way. Weekends are still very tiring but on the whole I think we seem to have a bit of an idea about what we’re doing so that’s good. Of course we all have at least one student which we wish we could throw off a steep cliff, but hey, that’s part and parcel of being a teacher I think. We had a teacher ‘photo shoot’ 2 weeks ago, so now our faces adorn the posters and walls in the school, and on the website too. Our boss’s friend is a professional photographer and after the shoot, they offered to take some nice romantic shots of me and Greg as a couple. As you can guess, we looked at each other in indifference and just shrugged before declining her offer. And they say romance is dead!

We had our Halloween party on Saturday night and well, it was an eye opener. I dressed up as a witch (no make-up required) while Greg did the classic ‘scream’ mask thing. We each had a classroom of kids doing different activities (Greg did bobbing for apples while I did the gross mystery box challenge) and it went well to an extent, but at some points we had over 30 kids jumping around the classroom grabbing things and generally being not very well behaved! And this was with their parents standing next to them!! We’ve since been told that apparently that in the area where we live, which is very well off, and due to the one child policy, kids here are nicknamed the ‘little emperors’. Anyway, don’t get me wrong, the MAJORITY of the kids we have are lovely and a pleasure to teach, if not excitable at times like any other kid, but then there are about a dozen or so who definitely live up to their ‘little emperor’ title! But we’re getting much more confident in our abilities now, and I have also realised that not every single kids is going to love you or even like you, and if it’s a choice between them liking you but behaving badly or them not liking you but behaving, then I’ll choose the latter thank you very much. Greg had a bit of a bizarre moment the other day when a wee old women walked into the classroom smoking a fag and talking like Pat Butcher before simply walking back out again.

On the culture side of things, we’re proud to say that we can now count to 5 in mandarin, or 10 using local hand signals (they have a unique code which is different than just holding up random fingers) which is handy in the classroom. I know it’s not much but it does help! We can also say basic phrases (badly), but hoping to get some mandarin lessons soon with one of our chinese friends. We’ve also taken to the local way of getting around by buying a couple of bikes (named Charlie junior and the Blue ninja by the way). They really help us get around, as the streets are really long and it does save time. We’ve managed to befriend our local security guards at the apartment block where we live who always give us a wave and a smile as we go through, and also the local shop owners next door to where we work. We’ve been out for several BBQs now, which are immense. And we’ve picked up a new dice game which all the locals play, which has become a firm favourite, and turns out to be great as a drinking game! Thursdays have become our new badminton day at the local sports centre, where at 2 quid a pop we can’t really complain. Last week we were having a game when we noticed an old man sitting at the back of the courts not playing against anyone. 2 minutes later he came over and started indicating to have a go against Greg. Greg accepted his challenge and the old guy was rather good! Afterwards he told us in sign language that he was 73 years old lol. Well, here’s hoping I’m still as active at that age as he is.

On our final day off this month, we decided to give the bikes a good airing and went for ride to explore the area more and get our bearings. It was really interesting to see the mixture of old and new, east meets west. There are so many new modern buildings and hotels on the main larger high streets, as well as loads of western style clothes shops and fast food outlets. Then you turn a corner down a little hidden away street and you’re faced with loads of really old dilapidated buildings dotted with food stalls, tea shops, fruit markets and open faced shops selling anything and everything from cleaning products to carpets and toilets. It was great cycling along with all the locals on their bikes too as they went about their local business. People spotting is a great past time and we managed to get a feel for how chinese people go about their daily business. You can see loads of people just sitting on stools outside of the shops, old people having an afternoon stroll (often backwards) with their buddies, friends having some afternoon dim sum, women and children treating themselves to some cakes at the local bakery, or workers stopping off to buy their fruit and vegetables for their daily meal (no one seems to do a ‘weekly shop’ here- its very much buy as you go and that means everything they use is very fresh, even down to the chickens which they often buy still alive and then kill themselves as apparently it tastes ‘fresher’ and much better. Think I’ll stick to Tesco pre-packed frozen chicken breasts though- buying chicken thighs is adventurous for us).

I’ve mentioned before about the way people respond to us over here, and it never fails to surprise me. Sometimes you forget that you look different to everyone else and therefore are taken by surprise when someone turns around as they walk by and says hello in English, or when an older chinese person smiles and laughs and then waves at you as you pass by, like it has totally made their day! Last week a guy stopped in the middle of the road, in his car, to take a picture of Greg! And another guy ended up walking into a bollard today while he was too busy staring at me, and he really hurt his leg cursing and swearing. But he still turned around and looked at me laughing as he was walking away – bizarre and amusing at the same time J My perception of Chinese people has changed in many ways and I would say that people here are definitely friendlier than I expected, especially when they don’t know you. For instance Greg’s pedal on his bike was loose today and so we stopped at a little open shop where there were some workies standing doing some building work. Greg tentively indicated if he could use his spanner and the guy ended up passing him about 3 spanners without even so much as a second thought. Then a little while later, his bike chain came off (very unlucky you’ll agree) and while we were standing trying to fix it (and on the verge of another little tet-a-tet), a guy stopped on his bike, came over and just started helping him put it back on. Then he took the bike to check he was satisfied it was back on properly! Its things like that that really make it fun to live here- that probably wouldn’t have happened back home!

And finally, we weather here has started to cool down now, so it is really really pleasant to walk around. The humidity has gone out of the air, and it feels like a pleasant spring day. In fact, we’re having to get the jumpers on at night now! But the temperature should stay roughly the same now until next February, perhaps it will drop a little bit more but not much. So a nice, mild winter ahead, hurrah! Hope everyone had a happy Halloween J

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Comments

[Nikki]

Sounds like you guys are having an awesome time!! Can\'t believe that has been two months already! Look forward to next update!! Xxx