The past few days I have been in Hanshan, a small village further to the south. It is a little and a cozy village and the job that I have is very relaxed. It has been a new and good experience so far.

Sunday afternoon, on Christmas day, I took the train from Jinan to Chaohu and then the taxi brought me to Hanshan. I met up with the owner of the school and the head teacher and then I gave a little introduction to one of the classes. Later we went out for dinner and then I went to my hotel. Everything was organized very well and one nice thing is that everything will be paid for too.

On Monday I started working at 1 p.m. so I could sleep in the morning. The main task during the afternoon was to just sit in front of the English school and to show passers by that I am there. Lot's of their students are passing by when they go to primary school and it is a good promotion when a foreigner is sitting there. So we basically sat there during the afternoon, drinking coffee and enjoying some snacks.

In the late afternoon I got to teach two classes together with Rosa, the head teacher. Because the children are between 8 and 11 years old, they don't know much English and Rosa needed to do some translation. I never taugh students who were this young, so it was a new experience for me. Still I like it and the nice thing is that they just say everything that they know, no matter what it is or what it means.

On Tuesday I had the same program, so in the morning I went walking around the village to see how the Chinese countryside looks like. I stumbled upon an outdoor market where the basically sell everything, both dead and alive. I have seen chicken, goat, pig, cow, duck, fish and so on. Every part of the animal is for sale and it's possible to buy alive animals here too. The main parts were pig legs, dried duck, goat heads and cow intestines. It was a bit strange though...

In the afternoon Rosa and I had a kindergarten class, which is very different than the other classes. Their English of course isn't very good at all and they only know a few words. But it was fun to have a class like this as well. One of the students called me "xiao xian rou" which could mean small salted meat of small bacon, but the real meaning is small, delicate and soft. This is usually used to call people who look younger than they really are. So I have learned something in Chinese too!

For dinner today we had some typical Chinese food from this region. We went out eating with the teachers and staff and had this huge hotpot in the middle of the table. What we ate was goat spine and that was very good meat. It was good and fun to eat at the same time. Huge pieces of meat went into the hotpot and all that was left after barbarian eating were just the segments of the spine and the ribs. It is a bit like eating pork ribs, but the meat is a lot better. It has less fat, more meat and the meat is softer. So another very good food experience! P.s. check the photo for the details.