Today was my first day at work. Getting there proved to be difficult, I wasn’t yet ready to try the Eped (electric moped) and the bus route was too complex for me to be sure I would be on time. I decided to take the taxi to work then bus home so I could work out timings. The taxi driver had other plans however and spent the next hour driving round the long way through an entire tour of the outskirts of Suzhou industrial area. They get paid by the kilometre here and time doesn’t factor so the route which would have gotten me straight to the school was out as far as he was concerned and I couldn’t tell him otherwise. The main road through Suzhou is called Ganjiang Road and it goes pretty much straight from Paul’s to nearly work, the problem is that they are building a Tube system so most of it is dug up and has pretty heavy traffic jams.
When I finally arrived at the school everyone said how early I was, although I wanted to be there earlier, that was god because it meant I could arrive a bit late and still be on time for the classes. The classes are quite relaxed and start basically whenever you are ready, they are often late starting. My first group was the older kids who are about 4 years old. Jasper was the first one to come to my attention as he can speak English better than the rest of the staff here and even helps to translate for me. He is a very mature kid and fun too. The next child I met was Barry. He is the designated naughty boy. He can’t sit still for 2 seconds and has to speak when others are and fiddling with everything, however he is also good fun and actually is quite good at English, when he chooses. Jeffrey is the quiet one. He is very sweet and knows quite a bit of English but has to be encouraged all the way to speak up and not just try to hide. The fourth boy in the class had no English name so I got to name him, I decided on Robert! I only have one girl in this class and her name is Becky, she is a little round girl who wears hundreds of layers of clothes so looks even rounder, she is OK at English but sulks if she doesn’t understand something.
The first lesson was just sitting in a circle on the floor and getting to know each other. After that I went off to meet the younger children’s class. Lucy was the only one to have an English name and was a right little madam. Her English was very good for her age, I guess about 3, but she wouldn’t share the toys with anyone and had a few others follow him around. Alan is the youngest member of the school at one and a half and is very sweet but is just playing for the first few days. The other children were one girl and two boys and we all sat round and tried to follow a rather fast video about names of food in English.
I then had the older ones again and we started learning the numbers from one to 20 and animals at the zoo. We used mime and repetition of words mostly, plus fingers to count on. We carried on sitting on the floor for the lessons as I thought it would help then get used to me, and by the end of the lesson I had Barry and Jasper sat on my lap!
My lunch break is very long from 11.30 until 2.30 so I went with Cheery to her restaurant, Cheery’s garden, for lunch and had some rice and veg combo that included more mushrooms than I have ever seen, or ever want to! As she is my boss I was polite and ate a few – they weren’t terrible! The rest of the veg was just steamed and the food was served with no sauces so if I carry on eating this every lunch time I will be very healthy.
By the final lesson of the day with the older children I felt quite settled and was starting to know names of the children and staff. We learnt the song 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 once I caught a fish alive!
To get home I wanted to try the bus journey so I got a lift on the school bus as far as the Shangri-la hotel which is a big landmark, and then I spotted a bus stop I thought I recognised. I got on the number 68 bus and it all went well, I got a seat and when it was time to get off I recognised Ganjiang Road and managed to get off in the right place. It was then quite a long walk to Paul’s house. In the end when I got home it had taken nearly an hour and a half and I was shattered. I flopped down on the sofa but there was only time for me to shove down a couple of veg dumplings before Paul and Kelly came bustling in saying it was red lantern festival and we had to go see the lanterns! We grabbed a taxi, literally, and went off to watch the lanterns. They are made of red paper and have a candle in them so they float up into the night sky, it was very pretty and of course there were the obligatory fireworks going off every other second. We ended up at a small fair next to a bridge that was at such a steep angle that it looked like the people at the crest were simply walking off into the river rather than down the other side. The fair had lots of games and lots of snacks – the usual Chinese snacks of squid on a stick and cows head soup and chickens feet in curry sauce. Paul and Vincent played games like throwing darts at balloons and throwing hoops over prizes but the games looked pretty rigged and nobody won anything.
We also got to see the wall that used to surround Suzhou. It was about 3 metres wide and about 10 tall which must have been a huge feet of engineering when it was built. I can’t find any info on its age though.