Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
The end of travelling certainly doesn't equate to the end of the fun and surprises of living in China, so here follows the first blog for after spring fest. There's plenty to talk about!
I arrived home on midnight from Urumqi after those few days in Fukang mentioned in the last blog. It was a comfortable -20 or so and the trees lining their way from the train station all the way to the centre of town were still coated in thick snow. For some reason I decided to walk right past the army of taxi drivers shouting 'WUSU!! DUSHANZI!!' (nearby towns, one famous for beer, the other for town pride and pollution) and walked the 20 minutes home despite having my giant 15+kg bag to carry. Why? Because it felt good to be home and it felt right to walk and soak up my town again.
That -20 degrees says something for the seasons in xinjiang. At the end of February, that was the temperature. Now, a month on at the end of March, it's 15 degrees. That's a 35 degree change in only a month...
Of course that does mean that the snow finally disappeared last week after being 0 degrees before hand. Now that desert sun is shining again with perfectly crystal clear skies above the pollution level. It's hard not to feel cheerful when the weather is that good!
Other than dramatic weather changes, plenty of other things have occured, some better than others. Let's start off with the not so good (but thankfully resolved now!).
I have up to this point said 'I' got back to Kuitun a month ago, that 'I' walked home in the cold with a brutally heavy bag for carrying over ice, etc. Well, this was because I came home alone rather than with Marcus. He had some pretty major passport troubles (he lost it) and got stuck in Shanghai.
He did actually arrive home a day after me, but 2 weeks later it got very very tense for a few days. Marcus was told that he was going to get sent home, and so he began packing annd we went to see all our friends for an extremely unexpected leaving party. It was all, as you can imagine rather worrying and upsetting.
However, at the last moment, it somehow got sorted! One government body overruled another government body, and to cut a long story of beauracracy short, it was decided he could stay as the passport replacement application was already started.One rather big crisis was luckily hence averted.
Onto other topics now - such as school. This term I have 8th graders rather than the 9th graders I had last term. So far there can be no doubt that it's very different work. Even with one year between them, and a lower level of English, the 8th graders are much much more pleasant to teach. The previous students wouldn't respond to much at all, be it discussions, games, drills, pictures from England, music, films...you name it, and they would have struggled to have even minor interest.
The new students are much more interested luckily, and I can actually do much better teaching because of it. Interested students mean a happy teacher who can do more for them! I feel I can be a bit more adventurous with the work I set the 8th graders, and so I will have some interesting lessons planned for them in the future which would never have worked for the 9th graders.
Yay for teaching being more enjoyable again!
There has also been a fair bit of drama over with our friend Jasper's family. I've mentioned Jasper a fair few times, so if you've followed me the whole way through, you'll know about him hopefully. While we were away, his family's bakery unbelievably burnt down. More unbelievably perhaps is how the family doesn't seem to bothered about it. This could admittedly be because they had weeks to deal with the event before I got back to Kuitun to talk about it. It nonetheless seemed strange to me. There is also now a plan in the family to sell the restaurant, which means Jasper isn't going to be our good barman friend anymore but our good foreman friend. He's going for a dramatic career change, going into the building industry. A lot, it seems, can change over one spring festival holiday!
Perhaps the coolest thing we've done since we got back relates to the picture at the top of the blog. We got invited to a concert by Marcus' student Ella, left of me in the photo) for Kazakh new year. The man in military dress uniform between Ella and Marcus is apparently a big star in Kazakhstan and Kazakh speaking xinjiang, and we got not only to watch him sing his heart out for one of the biggest days of the Kazakh calendar but as you can see, we got to meet him. Embarrasingly, considering his popularity, I can't actually remember his name. If it's any consolation, he had the most dazzling smile in the world while he was singing.
The concert was really great, with traditional music and dancing galore. The costumes were pretty impressive too. The photos I got are, afraid, all a bit rubbish as A, the lights made it tricky, and more importantly B, there were TV film crews everywhere in the way. I couldn't get a photo without a camera man taking up part of the shot. This does have one plus side however. Marcus and I made it onto local tv! That's count 2 for me in China after the Haerbin ice festival interview. The obscuring of the view didn't damage the experience too much luckily, and other than the kid who stood at my shoulder for 10 minute staring at me for being a foriegner, there weren't really any major distractions. 他说"这是第一次我看外国人". I'm a big fan of the Kazakh music, and there were some great musicians on that stage. Probably for the best, as despite being held in a small city like Kuitun was the main concert in Xinjiang.
Just to finish, I feel like it would be nice to just mention some of the small occurences that are worth mentioning, but not worth writing in detail about. Take for example the rather unusual vehicle I saw steaming down the road one day as I went to lunch with Jasper's uncle John. A very very very fast horse. John's comment could have been paraphrased to 'Oh those Kazakhs'. Or how about one students wonderful and spontaneous rendition of 'what does the fox say?' in my classroom? Then perhaps there is the guy who forgot the 'get in' and 'with' from the phrase 'I'll get in touch with you' - Chinglish at it's best. Also, it seems the food journey never ends, with new local discoveries as 烤肉黄面 (kebab yellow noodles).The list could go on...
I know there are more gems to mentions, but I can't bring them to my thoughts currently. I'm pretty sure I've talked about the main bits and pieces however, so that'll do for now.
Thanks for reading, I hope you'll read again next time!
- comments
Marcus Daaaaaamn I miss Kuitun, can't believe I havent read this sooner man I'm jealous, we deffo need to kick back and reminisce over a hearty beverage sooner or later