Xi'an Evening News

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Another action packed day in China today. We started the day at 5.45am in order to catch our flight to Xi'an. The hotel continued their sensational service by providing us each with a takeaway breakfast. Such wonderful attention to detail!

The flight was fortunately uneventful but the cabin crew made me realise that some of the behaviour experienced by my local massage man is completely normal in China. There is a much smaller distance of personal space here and it's not uncommon to have people and their bodies very, very close to you. By accident of course and only because they are trying to get their work done.

Xi'an is a very attractive city with an amazing wall around the perimeter of the old area. There are numerous gardens. All well manicured and a great place for people to walk, especially of an evening. Our first meeting was with an agent called D

Eduglobal agency was our next stop. I left my marketing material with my collegues to present, as this agency was kind enough to organise a special meeting for me to try and establish a sister school relationship with one of their top schools in Xi'an. It is called Xi'an Number 1 Middle School. I was obviously nervous about meeting with the Principal, especially knowing that they had rejected Banksia LaTrobe as a sister school a short time ago. To make things worse, I was told that an editor from the Xi'an evening news would be there to write an article about our discussions. Intimidating .... you bet. Their school looks like a university. It's massive. Their meeting room felt like being in parliament with a very large table set with gorgeous flower arrangements, a lovely lady to make us tea and a microphone between each pair of seats. After an hour and a half of discussion regarding what each school could provide for each other, I could hardly reach the Principal across the table when he passed me his school pin. It seems this is a good sign. The Principal then showed me around his school as you can see in the photo's. For us it means now our Principal can contact theirs and we can start our sister school relationship. For RHS it will be mostly a cultural experience but for the Chinese students it will be a great way of improving their English language skills. They are also interested in teachers sharing their knowledge and skills. Never let those students complain about our school rooms in the summer. Here there are 50 or more students packed very closely together in one room with a chalk board and the teacher and the temperature is very warm. No complaints from these students and excellent results. Perhaps we are being too soft?? Students here are often at school at 7.00am and don't leave until after 6.00pm. Such a long day for both students and teachers!!

We had a lovely walk to an older part of the city this evening and a very delicious dinner for $5AUD each. That included five dishes and drinks. Very reasonable we all thought. The food is very different to the Chinese at home. Very fragrant, fresh and tasty. Yum!

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