Well there's no denying that the last few days have been eventful to say the least... so lets start off with the least interesting thing and move up from there.

I mentioned briefly in the last blog that we would be travelling to Ili to sort out the final bits and pieces of our work permit. The trip wasnt terribly exciting, but it certainly was exhausting. We caught our sleeper train at around 1 in the morning, and spent the next 7 hours catching up on some heavily needed rest. One dissapointing thing about the train journey is that being asleep, we missed out on the scenery - which around Ili city is meant to be a big step up from the landscape around Kuitun. Why? because it's out of the desert. Ili City is situated in the mountain region of Xinjiang, so not only is it not desert, but there is even a river running through the city. Pretty crazy stuff after living in the desert.

After our journey that was longer than the majority of train trips you can take in the UK, we went to sort out what we came for. A photo. That was all. It turned out we travelled for 7 hours so an official was present when the photo was taken. In other words, our trip to Ili consisted of having a photo taken, then waiting for our return train. So 14 hours there and back again, for one flick of a camera. I won't say i was annoyed, as i did get a much needed break from teaching (having taught lessons for the weekend, I needed some time not teaching),

On the bright side, we did have a fair bit of time to burn whilst waiting for the return train, so we did have the luck of getting some great food over in Ili City. The place we had lunch was pretty spicy, and was mainly dishes I had eaten before - a spicy pork dish, a spicy fried chicken dish and a spicy tofu dish for example. There was however the addition of cooked blood, that didnt go down to well. Don't get me wrong, in the UK, im a big fan of black pudding, but chinese cooked blood is basically blood and nothing else. It's sort of a funny tasting gelatinous red thing.

We also had the wonder of seeing an area of water in Xinjiang. Since we got here, we've only been in the desert region of the province, and to see an actual genuine river was rather nice. Even if the views reminded me of pripyat with a weather forecast of nuclear fallout. It actually did look quite nice in reality - just the photos have made it look like we were at risk of extreme radiation. I still think we may have accidentally taken a wrong turn and ended up in Russia briefly though. That river did not look like it was in China.

We spent a short bit of time looking round a semi-deserted fairground next to the river (you can find a few photos on the blog), but very shortly after we were back on the train home to Kuitun. Once again, it was dark and we missed the scenery! And so after a 25 hour day, we finally got home.

Now for the more interesting things - at least, what I think is more interesting. This Saturday, every middle school, plus one high school had an inter-school English language play competition. And guess who the judges were? Luckily Marcus and I weren't the only judges... otherwise we would have a troublesome time explaining to our schools if they didn't win.

The schools performed a pretty interesting mix of plays - everything from 'The sound of music' (two schools did it) to Hua Mulan. Some schools even performed there own plays, such as No1 middle school's terrifyingly happy 'Happy club'. You had to be there to see how such an oxymoron as 'terrifyingly happy' can work.

No8 Middle School's performance was another play written by the school, but unlike 'the happy club', which made me sad from its terrifying happiness (that makes me sound so miserable =P), No8's was a genuinely touching performance. Their play was a story of a Kazakh girl, who through her hard work had managed to secure a scholarship at No8. Her family celebrates with her, but is naturally sad to see her go (I believe people can board at No8. It's a richer school than my one).The Kazakh girl ends up fitting really well into the school -which is nice to hear (at my school, I had a student call in disgust a fellow student a foreigner just because she was half Kazakh). However, the parents, who were so concerned for the girl's safety, didn't take such good care of themselves and end up in a car crash. So this poor girl is now at a boarding school, having lost both her parents. The story ends by showing how well No8 apparently looks after its students, no matter what and how it acts as an extension of the student' family. So this is clearly a sad story. What makes it worse is that is also a true story. I only realized after I looked down on my judging sheet to see what questions I needed to ask the performers, and down on the page were the horrible words "is this a true story?". This was all made worse by the fact that the narrator could well have been from a Kazakh family, so for all I know, the person I had to ask whether or not the play was a true story, could have been the student the play was about. All I can say, is I hope that the narrator wasn't the student in the play, or otherwise she is the bravest school kid I've ever met. Imagine being a 16 year old, on stage answering questions about a play that is your own life story, especially when so sad.

So that's the sad side of the play competition over, but there was plenty more that was more light-hearted. One school's performance of 'snow white and the seven dwarves' had no dwarves, but instead had students of No7 middle school. I'm not entirely sure why, but it meant that, like a number of the plays, there was a good excuse for some traditional Xinjiang Kazakh dancing. Their decision to have students instead of dwarves did lead to a fair bit of confusion however. Their script still talked about dwarves and a prince, so my questions to ask them were about dwarves and a prince. So I had to come up with new questions on the spot, which isn't easy when you have to consider that they have to be simple enough for the students to be able to answer, but not so easy that they can't be marked on their answers. Once again, like No8's play, there were hints of 'our school is the best'. That said, my school was even less subtle, as at the end of their performance of the 'ugly ducking' - L left out intentionally as that's how all the actors said it - they brought out banners saying 'we are the best! Vote for us!'.

For silly entertainment, I must say that the school who performed 'the emperor's new clothes was fantastic. The kid playing the emperor knew how to play an idiotic, vain, leader perfectly. I did not expect to witness a pouting, topless 16 year old grandly wobbling about a stage when I woke up on the Saturday morning. If you don't know the story of 'the emperor's new clothes', it would be easier to look it up, than for me to explain it here I think.

The differences between each school's performances were huge. You could tell which schools were richer than others for example, as some would have the whole group dressed in expensive looking traditional clothes and would use fancy props, whereas other schools had to make do with completely home-made costumes out of cardboard. That said, the schools with fewer props did show that you definitely don't need all your props and costumes to be fancy. Unfortunately for them, one of the judging criteria was on costumes and props.

In one of the performances based on a traditional Chinese story, there was even sword fighting. This fighting also looked to convincing to just be amateur actor's fighting - these kids had done some martial arts at some point. Having a martial arts display in the middle of this play reminded me of something important about Chinese students. Even if something within school is just for a bit of fun, just because of the working mentality of Chinese students, they will take it deadly serious. It was the same with the dancers. The plays with Kazakh dancing, and the performance of Hua Mulan, had dancing that looked like it had been practiced over and over again. If Chinese students do something, they make sure it's good, or better.

I also ended up being pushed into the whole performance thing. I ended up playing the titanic theme tune with one of my students, him on Soprano sax, and me on guitar. This was fairly fun, but I did not expect to have an audience consisting of every school in Kuitun at any point during the year. The woman at the head of education in Kuitun also asked me to play a solo piece too. For some strange reason, that I will probably never understand, I decided to play a German song instead of an English one.. at an event that was essentially a celebration of learning English. My reasoning was that the students were celebrating learning a foreign language, so I felt fitting to play something in my first foreign language. In retrospect, it seems a bit odd nonetheless. I also ended up playing the said song rather badly, so I have probably accidently made every school in Kuitun think I can't play guitar. Oh well.

Now I should also talk a bit about the Sunday of this weekend past, and the misunderstanding of the phrase 'halloween party'. We have some friends in Dushanzi, a town 20 minutes south of us. These friends are actually, despite how unlikely, are four girls around the same age as me and Marcus from the UK, who also work as foreign English teachers. One of them was a PT volunteer in Kuitun last year, and she loved it so much she decided to stay. The other three are employed by the same school. So these girls invited us for a Halloween party, without saying very much about it. The first alarm bell should have rung when they said that there was one party in the morning and another in the evening. A party in the morning? What on earth? That's when really little kids might have a party! And…that may just be how it turned out. The Halloween party wasn't for us, it was for 120 very excited six year olds.

So where would you choose to hold a party for six year olds? How about in the car park of a supermarket? The first part of the Halloween festivities was to look after the swarm of kids, while they dangerously hacked away at pumpkins with knives too sharp even for me to use happily. I can tell you, I did not expect to be looking after hundreds of armed six year olds in a supermarket car park this last Sunday.

Following on from that rather worrying ordeal, we continued to lead our little army down the main street, as they screamed "TRICK OR TREAT!" at the shops. What I really didn't understand was the "1234 HAPPY HALLOWEEN" they also seemed to like chanting a lot. Some of the shops had clearly been forewarned of this strange procession, and were ready to give out sweets to the kids. Unfortunately, no shops gave any tricks instead of treats. Without trying to sound too mean, that could have been entertaining, if it was just a minor trick.

So I compared this group of six year olds to a very short army. What made this even more so was that the school seemed to be taking the event as a good excuse to advertise - with two giant red flags with the school's details on it. But when you can't read the fancy characters, and see a large group marching with giant red flags, you don't think Halloween party, but uprising. Luckily, as the crowd was mainly made up of 6 year olds, I don't think even the most policeman could mistake such a party as an uprising.

After the trick or treating, we took the kids to yet another car park. I guess they used car parks, as not every car park has a lot of cars in it in China. Cars are on the increase, but there are fewer in the west than in the east of the country. Here we just played games with the kids for about 20 minutes, so there isn't too much to say. But just for completeness sake, I thought I would briefly mention that there were games at the end of the 'party'.

And guess what? We had to do it all again for slightly older kids in the afternoon!

I have yet more to write about, but it doesn't fit in with the contents of this blog, so I'll just have to write again in the next few days.