Mama huhu

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The past few days have been very so so. I was starting to feel settled here and starting to say goodbye to homesickness. I was having a really good time and I kept to my incredibly tight budget very well and made it through to payday! Which I am pleased with. But the other day my MP4 player decided to wipe itself of most of my music and all of my videos and photographs. This really annoyed me, I hate how technology does this! There is some sort of problem with it and I am not happy. I think all the data is still there because it says I have exactly the same amount of free space as I did before it got wiped, but I just can't access it. And I don't have a computer to see what the hell is going on. But luckily Adam has offered me the use of his laptop to investigate. I think in the worst case scenario I may have to send it back to the UK, get it checked out by creative, have the hard drive wiped and then sent back to me with no data rendering it completely useless seeing as I have no computer to upload things on to it. This really demoralised me! Perhaps it is not such a big deal, but it just reminded me of how far from home I am. If I was at home I could solve this problem, probably with a lot of hassle but it would be easier to solve than here. And I felt like I wanted to start practicing my old hobbies again to distract myself and make me feel better but no, I can't afford the gym membership, there's no gymnasium here, the martial arts are pants and I probably won't have enough time for them because of work. This made me even more demoralised and really miserable. I managed to pick myself up though, I just reassured myself that I'll have to make do with other hobbies for the time being and just take it easy....My body won't complain as much now. I'll learn Tai Chi and Chinese and I guess that'll have to be it. I thought I would treat myself to something aswell, a trip to Shanghai on payday!



This slightly cheered me up, although made me feel quite confused. I really felt like I was in London when I went there yesterday. But I didn't have enough time to take in the sights and get to know the city, I had 3 hours to locate the shopping centre and navigate the subway and the streets. This proved pretty damn confusing, but I guess no more confusing than London; so long as you know what lines you need to go on you'll be able to find your way there. Luckily there were a lot of Laowai around, I made a pretty decent estimate that for every 100 chinese people I walked past there would be 1-3 westerners, which in Shanghai is a lot of westerners and so I asked them for directions to places. I found the foreign bookstore I was so desperately in need of and bought some more chinese learning materials, and I also bought some gifts which I will somehow mail back home. I also managed to navigate my way back to the bus station using only the Chinese language! I was very pleased with myself! And also very pleased that I could actually read Zhangjiagang in Chinese characters on the bus which reassured me that I was on the right bus.



My thoughts on Shanghai....I have not really seen very much of it, but it seems like any other big, big city. I say any other, I really mean London because I haven't really been to any other big city. There are big, big, BIG buildings, people hassling you pretending they want to be your friend when actually they really want to sell you a ridiculously overpriced fake rolex or get you to go to their art exhibition. There are many homeless people, wandering around, dirty and checking bins although not asking for money which I find interesting. The air stinks, the only thing you can see all around you is buildings, buildings, bridges, roads, cars, subways and lots more buildings. Made me feel very glad I did not decide to go to Seoul in Korea because I imagine it would be quite a lot like this. Yes you're probably gathering that overall, I did not like Shanghai. But that is just my first impression. It's just a massive city, a concrete sewer as one of Daddy's friends described Seoul would probably suit what I thought of Shanghai. I do want to go back again though, to see the sights and get offered cheap fake rolexes.



I felt really confused when I got on the bus aswell. I felt like I'd just had a really exhausting day shopping in Brighton. It was dark and it was late afternoon and everyone was wandering about shopping and being generally busy. I was tired, as tired as I always get whenever I go shopping or wandering around a big city (London). And I felt like I had just got on the train to go back to Haywards Heath and I felt like I was going home. But I knew I was not, so I was very confused!



Life in general is good I guess, apart from a few minor annoyances that become very inconvenient (STUPID MP4 PLAYER!!!). I may still not have many friends here really, I may not be able to participate in the hobbies I enjoy doing and my apartment may be crap (crappy phone, crappy boiler, crappy washing machine, crappy water dispenser...). I also may think about home pretty much every other minute of the day, and the weather may also be in the beginnings of the winter phase and so is starting to get pretty crappy. But I have a nice life, especially now that I have been paid. I like being able to walk out of my apartment and buy a DVD if I feel like it, I like wandering around the shopping street with lots of bags of shopping and still have lots of money left over and I like being able to speak enough Chinese to help me find my way around. I also like my job. I have got lesson planning down pretty well, I am being very organised with everything pre-lesson ( i.e. lesson planning and not a lot else) although my post lesson organisation leaves a little bit to be desired, which I really need to sort out because we have an inspection on Monday and Tuesday. I am loving working with some of the kids, they make me smile and I still love hearing them laugh. I feel the pressure from the parents and the students and the school, I know the students don't want to be bored and most probably don't want to be in my lessons (their parents want them to be there), I know the parents want them to learn as much as possible (which involves them being bored and to be honest not learning that much) and want them to have more homework (which means the poor kids have no life...Most of the lessons I give are to children who take these lessons after school hours and school works them pretty hard) and I know the school wants me to please whoever is paying the school. I felt this pressure in the last teaching job I did. It is unfortunate because it means in some cases I can't do what I want to do, but it rarely interferes that much to be honest. I just try to be nice to the kids who deserve it, and act like I really couldn't care less and just want to do my job to the kids who don't deserve me being nice to them. Some kids think that because I am not one of their chinese teachers, I don't speak much chinese and I don't beat them (which I think their Chinese teachers might do) that they like to see how much they can get away with, which suddenly turns teaching into a whole different story. Enough about the students, I am liking the staff I work with although admittedly I am still not a huge fan of going out and getting drunk with them, which leaves me feeling slightly isolated sometimes, but that is down to me for chosing not to drink. I like the chinese staff, they are good fun and very helpful (when reminded enough times) and extremely hardworking, I think it is a shame that they do not earn anywhere near as much money as us Laowai do but that is just the way things are. I also like the school. The facilities are good, although like any work or educational institute the computers and internet connection leave a lot to be desired. But what I especially like is that in my free time in between lessons, I can laze about in the school, I can go chat to the staff, practice my chinese with the other staff, browse the internet, quickly pop to the shops or...My personal favourite, lay on the sofa and watch a DVD in the kitchen! I love it! I also love that I currently have the free time to do this, although I get the feeling this amount of free time will not last. Some teachers are leaving very soon, and we seem to be having a problem recruiting new teachers, so I will be taking on more lessons.



And one last whine...Women! Chinese girls really are starting to annoy me. The girl I met in the bar the other week, I have been in touch with her through text and met up with her about two times since. She hadn't annoyed me until the last time I met up with her, she asked me what I am doing and said we should meet up because she wasn't busy. Me being the idiot I am, I sacrificed Tai Chi to go and see her. I meet up with her, we wander around the shopping street for a little bit and then 10 minutes later she says "I must go meet my friends in a bar now...Where will you go now?".....So then I went home. And then she texted me when I was in Shanghai and asked me to buy her a present....NO!!!!! I will not buy you a present! Although I think she tried to say after that it was a joke, either that or she was implying that I had made a joke by telling her it was too late to get her a present as I was in the bus station. I don't know what she was trying to say actually, her English isn't amazing. And then there's Lucy! She asked if she could borrow 5 dvds of mine and I said yes, and then complained when I was too busy to give them to her. And then she got horribly drunk whilst at work the other night and demanded I be her personal pillow whilst she fell asleep, all whilst she was at work!!! They seem to be very rude and demading.



I am going to leave it there for now, I've whined enough and I probably have emails to check. I will try and upload the photos I got from Shanghai in a bit, this computer is not letting me. Bye bye, and I miss you all!

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