Training In Yangshuo

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After the 4 hour flight from Kuala Lumpur we finally arrived in Guilin, China. We disembarked the plane and headed through security, quarantine (a new checkpoint to combat swine flu) and then collected our luggage. As we came out through into the arrivals lounge we were met by a representative from Buckland (the teaching agency we came with) and met two fellow fresh recruits David from Leeds and Alyssa from Minnesota. We threw our bags into the cars which arrived to take us to Yangshuo and headed onwards, the journey was about an hour and a half long but I kept drifting in and out of sleep but each time I awoke I was greeted by some stunning scenery of the strange Karst Mountains that surround the region.

Once we arrived in Yangshuo we headed straight for Buckland HQ and had lunch with some fellow teachers before filling in a few forms and then being driven to our accommodation. The hostel we were placed in was comfortable enough with the only real negative being the Chinese squat toilet which unfortunately saw more action than either Andy or I had hoped. Arriving on the Friday and with the training not starting til the Monday we had a few days to acclimatize to Yangshuo, we spent these days mainly with David (who I mentioned and earlier), Stu from Aberdeen and Nate who like Alyssa is from Minnesota. The weekends’ nightly activities largely consisted of exploration, the occasional sub-50 pence beer and a couple of visits to the local dumpling restaurant where Nate put to use his excellent Mandarin. Aside from the evening activities we went white water rafting on the Saturday whilst on Sunday we hired bicycles and rode to Moon Hill. The white water rafting was absolutely awesome with two men to a raft and no way to paddle we were all give a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads. With neither Andy nor I being typically Chinese in size our raft had a rather different weight distribution to most and resulted in us taking most of the drops (one of which was 13 meters) side on, this made it more fun if slightly more hair-raising. One of the real beauties of this trip was that despite the obvious risks about the majority of Chinese people there of all ages decided that once on the water rather than wear their helmets they would take them off and use them as a tool to splash other rafts. The splashing was relentless especially if you were to get stuck of come to a bottleneck which required a bit of queuing. The rafting itself seemed to last for ages, I think it went on for about an hour, and we managed to capsize only once; we came out of one of the drops slightly distorted and somehow flipped, I scraped the floor and ended up under the boat, a hand grabbed my shoulder and a Chinese worker about half my size grabbed me and pulled me to the side ready to once again jump aboard the raft. The real miracle was that neither of us lost a flip flop, an outcome that looked unlikely when we arose with only a single flip flop between the pair of us. Overall the rafting was a massive success, it was a field trip organised by the language college attached to Buckland (both of which are owned by the same guy, Owen) and also gave us a chance to chat to some of the students there. The college is for over 18s and I ended up seated on the coach to the rafting with a 28 year old city worker named Hank who had come to Yangshuo like so many to improve his oral English. Most of the students here are really cool and surprisingly good fun to chat to.

We rode to Moon Hill on the Sunday, roughly a 20km round trip, and whilst biking in the heat of Yangshuos’ summer was not exactly easy the 20 min climb up the steps to the top of Moon Hill proved more difficult. On the way up we were each accompanied by women of at least 50 years old who barely broke sweat on the climb whilst offering us the chance to purchase water, coke and even beer. The hill itself is very much like the rest that surround the area but is distinct due to the large hole in the top, apparently shaped like the moon. The views from the top of Moon Hill were pretty spectacular and made the climb worthwhile and definitely worth the effort if you visit Yangshuo.

From Monday onwards we had our Orientation and Training at Buckland; this broke down as Cultural and Contractual training on the Monday with Owen, Lessons on Teaching on the Tuesday with Ping and Classroom experience from an experienced Buckland teacher, Kate, on the Wednesday. On the Thursday and Friday our group had to deliver a lesson each to a class of around 30 students. The training was really useful and helped the transition giving us a better understanding of how Chinese Schools work amongst other matters; for example the Children are in school from 7 am until as late as 11pm. Alongside these training lessons we attended English Corner on the Monday evening, a 2 hour slot set aside for Chinese students to mingle with the English teachers in a more informal environment and a chance to practice and improve their English. This was really good fun, with the students being so eager to chat and practice it makes for a really enjoyable evening.

My practice lesson was on Friday morning at 1050 and we were each given 30 minutes to fill, we were allowed to choose the subject matter but we could not repeat a subject that any other teacher chose. Due to a bout of illness my first choice of subject (the Weather) had gone so I ended up choosing to teach about animals and the ways in which they moved. This comprised of some pictures and words that needed to be matched up (eg Snake-Slither, Frog- Hop, Horse- Gallop), creating some sentences that hopefully had a bit of alliteration and then performing the actions to the movements; my action for gallop proved to be a particular hit. The lesson was pretty successful and the feedback I got from Kate was very positive, beforehand I was a bit nervous and when you first speak and get no response from the class its pretty scary but as t lesson went on it turned out to be pretty easy and I actually found myself enjoying it.

On the Friday night we were all taken to a restaurant overlooking the river by Buckland for a meal and drinks, including our first taste of the local spirit Bijou. After plenty of delicious food and many Gan Bei’s (Gan Bei is the Chinese equivalent of bottoms up) we all left and headed to a KTV bar. KTV is massive over here, its Karaoke in a private booth which in our case held about 40 people. A mixture of Chinese and Western songs were sung and Andy and I wowed the crowd with a beautiful duet of the Britney Spears classic, ‘Hit me baby one more time’, not our choice of song. Following the KTV a group of us slipped off and headed to a local rooftop bar for a few more drinks, all in all a pretty good night.
In the afternoon before the meal we were all told of which schools we would be placed at, I was informed that we were set to go to Lan Shen in Yongzhou County, a small rural town about 2 hours from the nearest significant city, whilst the school and the town sounded cool it was a bit remote and we were not overly thrilled. The next day the Australian couple Gavin and Nicole found out that their school had pulled out on them and now they asked if we would considerer swapping situations. This meant them heading to our school and then we would then hang around a few more days in Yangshuo whilst we were found a more suitable school, so this is why were still in Yangshuo.

On the Saturday after receiving the news that we would no longer be heading to Lan Shen we headed to see the famous light show over the river with a group of the remining teachers who had yet to head to their schools. The show was directed by the same guy who did the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and was pretty phenomenal. Although the performance was conducted in Chinese the choreography and lighting was stunning, as the show was performed on the river by 700 performers against the backdrop of the surrounding hills it was an amazing spectacle. The strangest part though was at half ten with the show reaching climax almost half the audience rose to their feet and left, I can only assume that their coaches were leaving, still it was a bit strange.

The following day the majority of our remaining fellow trainees left and us stragglers remained in Yangshuo. For the majority of this week we have just been milling around the town, playing ping pong, chatting to the Chinese students and been enjoying the occasional drink. The situation as it stands is that we will remain in Yangshuo for another two weeks until our school which looks likely to be in Yongzhou needs us. Apparently they have two volunteer teachers with a couple of weeks remaining on their contract so we have to wait for them to move out, a bit odd but I guess this is just how things work in China. We were planning to leave Yangshuo and head up to Shanghai for a few days but have been asked to stay as we may be needed to teach some of the college students which would be cool. Well that’s all for now.

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