Hello all!

Well Jon and I have now officially finished working for winter vacation. On 23rd December Jon and I went and helped out Simon and co at Pingxiang Oxford English School's concert. Besides rocking up 10am for a rehersal we weren't really needed to help out much so we generally sat around watching the rehersal and practicing our solo part of the performance, occasionally having the odd kid siddle up to us shyly and then run off when we started to look in their direction. We had a good time at the performance that night and sang our bit of the Beatles hey jude (and I still can't get it out of my head). We then headed to a small local restaurant for a late dinner (10pm) abd had magic tricks performed at the table by Mr Gao (an associate of the school) who runs a local drama studio, one of the most fun nights I'd had in ages.

We actually had Christmas eve and Christmas day off work which surprised me no end as I had been expecting to be working those days and had resigned myself to the fact until Carrie told us about it. So there was the obligatory Christmas eve Lunch with the higher ups at the college which consisted of majoritively spicy food.( I like spicy food but the quantity and the frequency of it are starting to get to both of us, luckily our winter vacation should take us away from the spice zone and into sweeter waters in Shanghai and hearty warm goodness in Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinces) For Christmas dinner we went out with our Co-teachers, Carrie and Lin, to a western-style resturant- Sansiro- for steak.

Taz, a former teacher in Pingxiang but not at the college, also returned for new year and we went out for another meal with him and a friend of his friend Jorvik. Afterwards we went to a traditional chinese teahouse on walker street where we were served cups of a tea sold for 200 pounds a cake for free. The first tea was delicious, a very full, mellow and almost earthly flavour. The second tea was also good and smelt of hunny but had a mild smooth flavour with a hint of sweetness to it. The tea was served with the full traditional proceedure in little saucers-like cups that contained a few mouthfuls. You are supposed to first admire the flow of movements of the person serving the tea, admire to colour of the tea once it is served, smell it, take a sip and rinse it around your mouth before swallowing so that you might appreciate the full effect of the tea. It was a really interesting experience and the next time I go I'll be sure to take my camera so I can show you all how beautiful the place was.

This month I have given and marked oral exams for all 360 of my students (give or take 10), after 20 hours of work I had finally finished them and was all excited about having all this free time to catch up on my gym sessions when, of course, I fall ill with a severe cold agrevated by giving exams for two to four hours at a time in a large cold classroom with no central heating, and of course I kindly decided to share it with Jon (who is still glowering at me from the bed). We were bad enough that Anastacia (see previous post) offered to fetch all our meals for us so we didn't have to go outside as it was important that we stayed nice and warm until we were better (we didn't have the heart to tell her that on some days it was probably warmer outside than in the apartment).

The biggest news of all?..... It snowed in Southern China! Who'd've thought? Picts are on Jon's blog. It made the campus look quite pretty and watching everybody slip and slide around was evilly entertaining as we walked around in our walking boots with plenty of grip with little trouble. (Well most of the time).

Now we are planning the details of our winter vacation. Due to time, cost and the fact that Jon had to purchase a replacement laptop, our winter itinery has been reduced to going to Nanchang for the Magic the Gathering pre-release, on to Shanghai to fly to Harbin, Changchun then back to Harbin to fly back to Shanghai for the Spring festival and maybe a brief visit to Guangzhou if time and funds allows to visit one of Jon's students (Joyan) who is on a work placement there for the final part of her Diploma.