Ni hao!

Well, what an interesting week or so it has been, not only did I spend a wonderful few days in Beijing but my placement school in Nanning, Guangxi is also very nice and friendly.The flight from Heathrow to Beijing (via Air China) was fair enough, I managed to get sat next to Isabel and we both made friends with a Chinese guy whose English name was Lebrand (something to do with basketball?) who was very nice and helped us with our Chinese numbers and the very very odd breakfast, hot noodles anyone? hmmm, maybe not so much.Right, Beijing rocked! On the way to the hotel though, we saw giant outdoor gyms (which looked like adult play areas) and people were working out in them! How cool is that? Aaaaand something extra scary…we saw a naked man swimming in a frozen river…training for the Olympics maybe? Hehehe but yes the hotel was very swanky with a huge room with two double beds and our view was of a wall with trees painted on hehehehe, although we did find what looked like a western toilet did not lead to western plumbing, as fellow Guangxi gappers Claire and Carina and my partner Caitlin found out (five minutes into arriving they broke the toilet and had to use charades to explain to the hotel staff...glad I hadn't landed yet :)...)

I met all the other gappers Caitlin and co are lovely, very hyper at times and I love their accents ^^ much more pronounced in some ways then I thought, fun fun I shall return with a mixed english/chinese/ozzie accent! The other gappers were really nice too…well most anyway, a few were slightly less then hmmm, how to put this? Pleasant maybe? Yes, that's a polite way of putting it, Tom Neale was nice and Chris (A girl though!) was our mini walking translator as she'd studied Chinese in school in Australia so we were like yay!

We had such a cool tour guide in Beijing called Tom, he took us to The Great Wall where I managed to climb like 300m before I gave in and had a small photo shoot session with Isabel, Luweener (the spelling is so wrong I know) and Mata (two NZ girls) hehehe. We were also taking to the Forbidden City, where so many Chinese people wanted photo's taken with us it was hilarious, but kinda sweet. Though we walked for so long my back was killing me! It was very pretty though, kinda samey in some ways and the guards wouldn't let us take photo's of them :( We were in Tiannemen square before that and got a group photo, which I'll try to upload later but that was very amusing as everyone was watching us and pointing *sigh*.We also went to the Summer palace, which was very pretty, and funny for we found 'The Hall of Accumulated Embroidery' (which was actually a funky stone wall…), luckily no more photo taking by the Chinese…we think, they might have been sneaky about it though. The lake around the summer palace was also frozen! But we have no idea how, because it wasn't that cold, a mystery methinks.

Aaaaaand the highlight of Beijing was the visit to the hutong, a network of very small roads only rickshaws can use with houses (used to be for court officials and were in a square with a courtyard in the middle). It was so much fun, we ended up having a huge rickshaw race, I was sitting with Carina and we came sixth, our driver rocked, even when Steve tried to cheat by holding onto our rickshaw so it wouldn't pass his…grrrr. We also beat Caitlin and Claire, mwuahahahaha! To get to Nanning all of us, bar four (who were getting midday flights), were up at 4am to be at the airport for around 6am *sigh*, we were almost late due to the phantom Jared (he comes and goes as he pleases basically) and also Tom Neale, which I couldn't believe, hehehe such an irresponsible boy tut tut.

The flight was fine though, if a bit boring, though one really rude Chinese women (the only one we have seen so far) told Carina and I to shut up when we were talking! We ended up laughing at her, it wasn't as if we were the only ones talking, the food was so so, no noodles this time, yaaaaay! It was yoghurt, fruit and some odd omelette thing which no one touched.

Arrival in Nanning was lovely, it's so green! There are palm trees everywhere, if there were no Chinese people or signs it would remind me of Barcelona, I love it! We were met at the airport by Shadow (our link teacher) and Mr. Liang (the 'leader' of the English Department), the first greeting was "so beautiful!" hehehe, how sweet! Well, form there we split with Carina and Claire which was kinda sad but they came over a few days later so was all good. Anywho, we were taken to our driver (how cool! We have our own driver!) who took us to the school/uni campus, which is huge! There is a kindergarten, a primary school a middle school (where we are teaching) and a university on the same campus! It's so big it has its own roads and road signs! We were taken to a banquet with Mrs. Li aka Shirley the Headteacher after seeing our apartment, which is really nice bar the bathroom, we both have big bedrooms with double beds, two new computers, a large TV in the living room, a balcony, a small but serviceable kitchen and a teeny bathroom we nicknamed 'The swamp no.2' after Claire and Carina's original swamp bathroom. But yes, after leaving our apartment (twelve flights up and named 'Caitlin and Lauren's magical place of Happiness') we met Shirley, Mr. Liang again, Shadow, Mrs Lan (Also English), Mr Lan (also English but not married to Mrs. Lan) and another teacher whose name meant crazy in Chinese. It was very nice, though we were laughed at for our chopstick skills and our inability to get bones out of the meat with said chopsticks.

The next day Shirley, and another teacher Lisa took us out to dinner at a very nice buffet place where we also met the educational director of Nanning, though we did kinda feel like token westerners as we weren't really introduced to the others apart from Ivy, a very nice and very beautiful Uni student from the Uni near our Middle School. After dinner, where we had proper chips! Yay! We were taken to KTV (karaoke) and rented out a huge, very ornate looking room with the people from dinner and stayed for over 4 hours singing Chinese and English songs, they are completely different in style although we did sing some Avril Lavigne and Linkin Park.

The next day, as tired as we were from the very late but fun evening at KTV where we were also taught a funky dice drinking game (so much fun!), Ivy took us out to a very big department store in Nanning to go clothes shopping as both Caitlin and I found we feel very frumpy here as Chinese women are always wearing heels and very pretty clothes. I didn't buy anything but Caitlin bought a skirt and then when we went to a store to bargain for clothes she also bought a top for about Y70 (which is very very cheap!) and now we are officially (tehe maybe not so much) part of the prospective China bride circle, mwuahahahaha!

Well to wrap up Nanning after that, as so far not too much has happened, we've settled into our apartment quite well, Shadow has been very helpful and looked after us so much. We've been exploring the many many canteen's on campus, occasionally with the help of a few middle school students such as Dream (a senior 3 boy…kinda weird) as well as Moz (another senior 3, though a girl this time) who also helped us when we got lost the other day (The campus is seriously that big!).

The only other big highlights have been Carina and Claire visiting, which was lovely, though it sounds like Carina isn't overly enamoured by her placement she's slowly adjusting, playing a lot of sports by the sound of it and recently I found out her students have been declaring their love for her, tehehe much mockery to be had there methinks.Well, I've been writing this between observing classes in preparation for next week and I should really finish up as I need to be making some notes *sigh* I actually have to work! And I had to get up really early this morning as well, 6:30am!!!

Oooh I just remembered something! Yesterday Caitlin and I got up at 6:15am to get ready for a school assembly at 7:30am where we were asked to give a small speech about ourselves, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be luckily, though I'll be happy to never do it again. (Though logically, if I think about it, I'm doing a mini version of that in all my lessons for the next 5 months, noooooo!)

Until next time.

Zaijien!

P.S Ultimate Chinglish List (Part 1)

- Great choice, Perfect Reflect (Restaurant sign)

- Hall of Accumulated Embroidery (referring to a stone wall)

- Full Boby Massage (a massage parlour sign)

- Hall of Scrupulous Behaviour

- Heart cerebral disease sufferer ascend the Great Wall to please watch for.

- Speaking Cellphone is strictly prohibited when thunderstorm (you had to be there for the humour)