A birthday celebrated away from home and other adventures just to start October off

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I have to say it feels very weird that in this month last year I was celebrating my 25^th birthday and telling all my friends and family that I had accepted a job working for Disney and that I would be moving to China in December. Not to mention that I was drinking beer with the comedian Ed Bryne whilst working at a bar in Salisbury. It has come around so fast, especially when I add all the trips I’ll be taking soon. With my sister arriving mid October and leaving on November 1^st its only 2 weeks till I go to the Philippines for my friend Casey’s wedding and then only 4 weeks after that till I’m home for my annual renewal contract leave.

Disney Land – Round 2 of the year, Round 1 of October

So I kicked off the start of October with the chance to watch the swimming championships in Hong Kong and cheering alongside Charmaine for the South African swim team. Charmaine is very good friends with the coach so he managed to swing us some VIP tickets to go watch. The day after the finals we took the swimmers (they were the under 25 team) to Disney Land Hong Kong since we get a certain number of free entries. I also managed to meet up with Rebecca from my old Hangzhou centre since she’s just finished her contract with Disney and will soon be ready to head home after a month exploring China from North to South with her parents. I can’t wait to spend some more time together in the Philippines’ having our usual adventures again for a week.

Back in February I couldn’t believe how hot it was here in Hong Kong compared to Hangzhou, but the first thing I said to Charmaine when we were walking around was ‘wow it’s not as hot here as it was in feb’. I seriously must be acclimatising quicker than I thought to the heat and humidity in Guangzhou. Anyway......We made it in time for the first Flight of Fantasy parade and the kids soaked up the crazy Disney (my daily life) feel and we went our separate ways and allocated times and places to meet up for progress reports. It wasn’t half as busy as it was during Chinese New Year when I went last year even though it was the start of the National holiday so the queue times weren’t so bad. As there were 3 of us we decided that we would just go through the single rider queues to make it fair, so of course the first ride had to be Space Mountain. Charmaine doesn’t like rollercoaster’s but we persuaded her to get on, she didn’t die so that was a plus haha. The whole day was a blast. I had my photo taken with Buzz and Mickey to add to my Woody photo from last time. We watched the new Light show parade which was so pretty. Very similar to the one I’ve previously seen in Paris but much bigger with different characters of course, so that was awesome. All three of us took it in turns abusing our staff discount with the kids; the funniest thing is that the staff our happy to put it through but I have to be holding the cash to hand over. At one point I was doing transactions at the same time at the two tills next to each other so I said ‘OOO thank you for holding my money, I’m so rich I need these two girls to hold the cash for me in their purses’ It certainly put a smile on the cashiers faces. I was also luckily enough to win a few free bookmark things that they were giving away at the time with their prize draw. The kids were so polite all day saying thank you and telling us how grateful they were to have us give them discount etc, but like I said to them, how often can I abuse the 35%!d(MISSING)iscount we get so why not let them use it. We get 12 free entries a year and theres no way I used them all up unless I came to Hong Kong once a month which wouldn’t really be possible with my schedule. I am however thinking that when I’m back home I might go over to Disney Land Paris to grab some goodies for everyone at the centre since Yoshie brought some gifts back from Disney Land Tokyo for some of us so it seems only fair.

We didn’t hang around for the fireworks since all 3 of us had already seen them previously and I’ll be seeing them with Chelsea.

Cat sitting

So one of my co-workers Sidanii is leaving Disney English and has accepted a job working with another English teaching school here in Guangzhou. Disney English isn’t for everyone, I probably wouldn’t still be here with all the hassle I’ve had with stuff if I wasn’t so lazy and scared of contracts being even more screwed up with other companies, least we know we will be paid every month. I’ve heard some horror stories before of some schools just not paying staff. Yes the hours are crappy for social stuff and we don’t get much holiday but there are other perks too that most teachers wouldn’t dream off.

But yeah Sidanii used up all his remaining holiday with the National holiday days off to go to Bali and other parts of Thailand so I offered to look after Chewie (Chewbaca) his kitten for the two weeks he was away because I’ve met him a few times when I’ve been over to watch Walking Dead. Wow o Wow what fun that was. The first night I got about 40mins sleep with all his crying and destroying my bathroom, which wasn’t handy when I had to catch the bus to Hong Kong at 8am the next morning. But he settled down quick enough and although the midnight wake up calls of him chewing my sheets and often enough my skin were great fun, it was nice to have someone else in the apartment with me. But I now know that is I was to have a pet here I would want to get a bigger or more separated apartment because its not fair on the cat and not fair on me when I want some privacy and only have the bathroom that has a door. I ended up buying Chewie a dog rope toy because he’s teething and I got fed up with my fingers and toes being the ultimate fun target.

I did however enjoy using my early birthday present to myself taking photos of him posing all day everyday with my new camera. I brought it mainly because the one on load from my dad is too heavy and bulky for little adventures and this new one is still just as good but smaller and more practical to take around with me on little trips. So yeah thats one thing off my list, next will maybe be a new mattress or a new laptop. The mattress will depend on whether Charmaine decides to renew and we find somewhere together which might have a decent mattress already. Currently my duvet from Hangzhou that I brought is folded into a quarter (because ½ made no difference) in order to add some type of cushioning for my back.

Work

So during the National Holiday most of the staff combined the in-service days with their entitled days off and went away to various places. Since I’ve used up all my paid, unpaid and various other days for my sisters visit and the Philippine’s I had to stay and work the few days in-between. It was actually great fun because those of us who were left got to decorate the centre with Halloween decorations and dress up for the Halloween events. It was so much fun teaching the kids how to trick or treat, turning the lights of around the centre and knocking on doors for treats. I dressed up as a devil on the 2 days that I did it, was great fun. One of the days that we did the events was on my actual birthday and one of my students in my F1 class Hermione sang happy birthday to me in English, it was so cute. She is the sweetest thing ever, she comes to all the events that the centre puts on and both of her parents always accompany her which is just so nice to see.

I’ve been having lots of chats with my LLD lately about progressing in the company since I’ll be staying for another 12months. My main focus from now on is communication. I know that to most people that don’t know me I come across in a certain way, but with the way I’ve grown up and the people I’ve dealt with over the years it’s kind of the only way that I really know. However I do think that people back home would be shocked to see the new Holly because I feel that I’m a lot calmer now a days and don’t bite as often as I did in the past. Being away from the stresses that I had in the UK has certainly made a difference. Yes I’m still my sarcastic self, although slightly toned down because the Chinese staff just don’t get it and yes I still do send the slightly angry worded email or comment when things really do just annoy me so much. But I’m getting there and thats the point. But I see a lot more counting to 10 in my future if I’m ever going to get this SFT promotion, although I certainly do need it and the pay rise if I’m ever going to get debt free by next year or I’ll be signing another extension next September too. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing because I could craftily plan a vacation back home in October so I could be back for my birthday as well as Christmas since I’ll have another 28 days off plus 5 extra days added to my allowance from this years to work around the National holiday which is around my birthday. But yeah we shall see.

My LLD has also been trying to butter me up recently with lots of compliments and praise because he wants me to agree to moving classroom. This all started with a visit from our RLLD (regional language learning director) basically the overseer of Disney English in the south region, coming into my classroom and asking in three different ways ‘Holly do you know who is allocated to Pride lands’ and in three different ways I answered ‘No I don’t’ It really made me question whether I should know and why the hell he was asking me. I had recently been in there for a month when we were trying a new schedule thing out, but I did my month and was happy to move back to my lovely 100 acre wood. I brought up the questioning in a meeting with my LLD and he explained that the RLLD wants him to allocate/nominate someone to go into that classroom to make better use of it because we are technically over staffed right now with FT’s. They both suggested........yes you guess it...Moi. So when I accepted the award for the staff member that met the DE methodology a few months back I wasn’t expecting this as a future prize. Pride lands is a fish bowl. It’s right at the front of the centre with a large window that the parents waiting in clubhouse can see into. I guess this is what you get for being so awesome/loud and annoying. It’s a lot of pressure and I know Sasa isn’t too pleased about it to which I’ve apologised lots for but theres really nothing I can do now. My only annoyance really is that why should I have to move from my classroom which I’ve been in for 6months now so that a newbie can go into my room and not the empty fishbowl room. It also means having to think of display ideas for The Lion King. But we shall see how it goes anyway and also how much bribery my boss is willing to provide haha

My Birthday

I was kind of in two minds about my birthday this year. Normally I have either shared it with a certain person or I have lots of friends around. This year there’s not so many but it was still good fun. I had to work on my birthday but as I mentioned before it wasn’t really work and was made great fun by all the staff. We usually have a cake brought by work and its this weird fruit thing, I’ve made it perfectly clear in the past that if it got brought for me I’d throw a fit, so Sasa being the awesome person that she is got me a super doper chocolate cake. Now the way she got me to come find the cake was hilarious. The Chinese staff had hidden themselves down the other end of the centre to set everything up, so Sasa comes along into the Treehouse (staffroom) and says ‘Holly, Amy there are some parents who want to speak to you’ So I was like yeah ok i’ll come with, it wasn’t until we started walking further down the corridor when I said ‘why are the parents down here.....OMG Sasa you’re such a bad liar’ but it was so cute, a cake with candles and my friends singing happy birthday to me in Chinese. Made me feel very special.

After work a few friends and I went to Little India for dinner and then onto The Tavern for a hefty amount of drinking. There were lots of free shots from the owner and my gaming friend Ben brought some too. And before you ask, I did not have a hang over the next morning but tequila shots are still yuck.

On the Friday, since everyone was back from their trips then a big group from work and my gaming friends all went to KTV. I hate to use this phrase but we had a BLAST!!!!! The greatest moment being, Yoshie and I singing the whole of Teenage Dirtbag all the way through without the lyrics. I received some very cute presents including a teddy with my birth date on it, a cheese knife set, and 5 fabric roses. Another funny moment was towards the end singing ‘Get lucky’ and my having a tantrum and changing the lyrics to ‘I just don’t get lucky’ oooo and singing Backstreet boys ‘Everybody now’ and changing the lyrics ‘Am I sexual, yeaaahhhh’ to ‘Am I sexual, noooo’. Some of the lyrics on the screen were questionable to with Seals Kiss from a rose being changed to ‘Kiss from a rose on the graze’ not grave, and The Cranberries ‘with their tands and their guns’ instead of tanks. Only in China J

And that in a rather large nutshell was my October. Now to work for 10 days before I’m off on holiday to the Philippine’s hehe



Stay tuned for a special blog for Chelsea’s visit and the many adventures we will be having.

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Photos

Vampire Winnie
Decorating for Halloween

I never get lucky!!!!
Having a trantrum and changing the lyrics to Get Lucky