Sanya

                We left for Sanya  Sunday night.  We were so excited!  Although it’s only been a month of teaching so far, this vacation is needed.  I think that since we started the year off so disorganized we were all a little bit frazzled.  It didn’t help that we went away last weekend and then my grade 11’s were heading into essay week, so I had a ton of marking on my plate.  The week was so crazy it was nice to jump on a plane to paradise.

                When we first got to Sanya we didn’t think that we could still possibly be in China.  This place is absolutely gorgeous.  The water is beautiful, there are palm trees everywhere and more people try to speak English to you.  There is a very large Russian tourist population as well.  We noticed our first night out that some of the shop vendors weren’t speaking mandarin to us, they were trying to speak Russian to us…thoughtful, but still doesn’t help us. 

                We spent the first day at the pool.  Well I stayed out on the beach for a bit.  I finished my book and laid out in the sun just as I had dreamed for the last few days.  The only thing that made this a little less peaceful  were the beach vendors walking back and forth every five minutes asking you to buy fruits, pearls, or go on their motor cycles.  I walked along the beach and found some really fun shells to make necklaces out of as well.  Once I was done at the beach I joined the other two girls at the pool.  They had spent this whole time on floaties in the pool, without sunscreen….and these girls don’t bode well with the sun like I do.  I even got a tad burnt, so you can imagine the sight of them at the end of the first day.  Robyn wasn’t too bad but Amanda does resemble a crustacean.  At night we headed to a market in town where we ate dinner and did some shopping.  There are tons of Hawaiian type gear here.  It’s too funny.  All the men here are wearing matching Hawaiian shirts and shorts.  It was a pretty mellow night as the girls were feeling the burn, and we were all tired from spending the day in the sun. 

                The next day we headed to the pool yet again.  We had sunscreen today, but the girls were still a little toasty.   We bought some floaties the night before so we had a great time hanging out in the pool again.  I started another book which makes me so happy.  It’s nice just to lay back and have some me time.  It’s been a pretty heavy trip though.  Having all of this time off really gets your mind wandering as to what is happening back home.  All we have been talking about this trip is planning for our next trip in January, and what it’s going to be like when we finally get home.  The time has passed quickly, but it’s still a long haul until we’re home. 

                That night we went out for dinner with Darrel and Margaret (the principal and his wife who teaches at the school), along with our dep. Head Cassie, and Lindsay and Mandy, two other girls from the school.  We ate at a western food restaurant called Fat Daddy’s.  It’s always nice when you have a change.  Dinner was great, but the adventure to the restaurant was a little much.  Darrell had the address to the restaurant and the taxi ended up dropping us off in a totally different area of town.  We tried to ask some of the rickshaw guys to guide us to where we were going and they said they would take us there….well they took us to a place to eat, I think where their friends owned the restaurant.  That was the first time we had taken one of those…that was quite the adventure and experience.  We then asked around and tried to find someone who knew the restaurant we were trying to go to.  The taxi then took us to yet another restaurant…We were all getting a little frustrated at this point.  The girls we were meeting were already at the restaurant so they asked the owner to walk over to the landmark that we were at and walk us over to where we needed to be.  It was so nice of them to do that.  It was so hard to find because his sign had been blown away during a typhoon. 

                Today we did some shopping.  We got a lot of fun little gifts for people and did some great bartering.   We’ve learned that you should only pay what you want to pay, eventually they will give in.  Also, if we want to get the same sort of thing we can get an even better deal by buying it all together.  It’s pretty funny how they think we’re stupid.  They always start off the price at least double what we end up paying.  We had a late lunch, and now we’re back at the hotel taking a little cat nap.   Amanda’s burn is still really bad and robyn had a little bit of a rough night out.  She was pretty entertaining though.  My favourite tid bit of the night was a little bit after we home.  Amanda and I were up talking and robyn had ko’d on the bed.  All of the sudden, she gets up and takes the little sashes off the end of the bed.

                 I asked her, “what are you going to do with those?”

                she replies, “bathroom!”

                I say, “What are you going to do with those in the bathroom?”

                She then replied yet again, “bathroom”

                Lol, then she comes right out of the bathroom and strips out of her dress and falls asleep again….Amanda and I cannot contain our laughter.  I was very curious so I get up to go to the bathroom to see what she did with them.  All she had done is sprawl them on the floor…hehe, so random. 

                So far this trip has been awesome.  I am so glad that we chose to come here.  It was a pretty spur of the moment decision, but it’s exactly what I needed.  Tomorrow we’re going to head to the hot springs.  Darrell and Margaret went and said they were pretty amazing.  Tonight will probably be a low key night as well.  I’ll update once we are back in Wuhan :S. 

               

TGIS?

We are finally at the end of a very long week.  Working until Saturday is not a good thing for the students or the teachers.  By Friday we are already starting to speak like ESL students, by Saturday it is really bad.  I actually said “somes” in a sentence in class.  It was super embarrassing on my part but none of the students seemed to notice, since this sounds normal to them. 

                Wednesday was the first day of Autumn festival, so the students were pretty excited to tell me all about it.  They tried to teach me how to say some names and words in Chinese and apparently my accent is hilarious to them.  A few of them gave me moon cake as well to celebrate the holiday, it’s very “delicious”  As is everything else that is good. 

                We had the Terry fox run yesterday.  We just ran around the school compound, so it was a short fun.  I beat a bunch of my students, which was pretty funny.  The boys forgot that I run all the time and were shocked as I ran past them.  We had been teaching them all about Terry Fox for the past week, just as they would if they were in BC so a lot of them were pretty excited for the run. 

                We had to do interm report cards this week as well.  So not only did we have to work an extra day, but we had extra work to do as well.  So let’s just say that this week vacation for autumn festival is much needed.  Sanya is said to be the Hawaii of China.  A bunch of my students actually wrote about Sanya in their essays and it sounds like a great place to go relax and swim.  The weather is calling for thundershowers though…so hopefully that doesn’t happen :S  I would not be impressed.  All I need to do is swim around the pool for a bit and that will satisfy my craving to be in the water.  As much as I like to say I’m glad I’m not working at the pool, I miss being in the pool!  Especially in a place like this where the humidity is absolutely awful. 

                Anyways, it is late here and I’m just anxious to leave tomorrow so I can’t really sleep.  Haha, I’ll go pack and finish the piles of essays I have to mark :S  This is why I want to be a math/pe teacher!  Bah!  I will update when I get back in a week!!!

Guangzhou Trip and more

            So Friday we were off to the train station to Guangzhou.  We were all very excited about this trip.  There were seven of us going: Robyn, Amanda, Brianne, David, Mike, Shane and myself.  It was probably the best group of people that we could have gone with.  We all get along very well.  Anywho, Amanda and I have our last block off on Friday and David didn’t have to work that afternoon (he doesn’t work at the school, he’s Brianne’s boyfriend) so we decided to leave a little early to get to the station to tell the others where to go, since we were going to cut it close for time.  We are out of school at 3:40 and our train was leaving at 5pm.  The train station is about 45min away with traffic.  So we get in one of the ‘black cabs’ arranged for us outside of the school and start driving.  Halfway to the station the cab driver takes a second look at our ticket and starts yelling at us in Chinese.  We have no idea, but he get saying Wuhan.  I translated it as we’re going to the Wuhan station right now and we need to be at the other station across town, and we had already been driving for 20min in the wrong direction….great :s  He keeps shaking his head and pointing at the ticket and pointing at the time, pretty much saying that we are not going to make it.  It was awful.  Meanwhile we are on the phone with the others and the cab and they are now about ten minutes ahead of us even though they left 20min after us….great.  So, they call at 4:50 saying that they are at the station, we start to freak out a little.  We then see the station and start cheering to ourselves, but the cab driver shakes his head and kind of signals that we have to go around to get to the station, and to boot the road had massive craters throughout it so we had to go super slow and still ended up bottoming out several times.  We finally get there at 4:55…and SPRINT through the station, David looks at me and say, “It’s like we’re in Home Alone!”  We made it with literally 1min to spare and the other half of our crew just hanging out in the door to see if they could kind of hold off the train if we hadn’t made it.  Haha, as soon as we got on the train the whole thing was just hilarious, but as it was happening it was not fun at all. 

            The train was a crazy experience.  It had a speedometer inside the train.  The fastest it went was 348km/hr.  It was nuts.  You didn’t realize it when you were sitting down, but if you got up and looked out the doors while standing you really noticed how fast you were going.  Guangzhou is approx the same distance as going from Vancouver to Saskatchewan.  We got there in just over three hours, without any hassle (besides the cab ride). 
            The city was a nice change from Wuhan.  As we were driving through there were more lights, nicer roads and a more modern city in general.  Our hotel was nice on the outside but a little sketchy on the inside.  Once we got our rooms all settled we were off to wander.  We were right by a little boardwalk by the river so we took a little stroll.  We were all super hungry so we were also really anxious to find a restaurant.  We ended up finding a place that had dim sum!  They don’t have that here.  The whole meal felt like home to me.  It was like going to Popo’s for dinner, or out with the John family, so it was really comforting to me.  Robyn kept laughing at me because I had a huge smile on my face the entire time, it was that good.  Haha. 

            After that we didn’t really want to go out, but we did step into one club, they put us in this VIP area.  We weren’t really feeling it, but there was this crazy bartender doing crazy juggling which entertained us for awhile.  Like I said, we were all pretty pooped and wanted to get up early and explore the town so we headed to bed.  I got to share a MINI twin with Amanda.  I have no idea how we fit on that tiny bed, it was ridiculous.  I’m not making this up, this bed was the tiniest thing I had ever seen. 
            The next morning we got up nice and early for an all day adventure.  The front desk led us to this street with a whole bunch of shops. In-between these shops were these little bargain mall/stalls with people calling you over to buy all their stuff.  We learned very quickly that you could basically pay whatever you wanted for anything no matter what the initial price they gave you was.  For instance, Robyn and I got sunglasses, he asked 80 kwai, too expensive…I think in the end we paid 20, haha, it’s pretty fun to bargain with them.  In the end I bought 4 pairs of shoes, a tiny asian cell phone, watch, sunglasses, socks, belt, bunch of clothes, Chinese dress and more for about $300 Cdn. 
            After the shopping we went to get pedicures and our hair done.  They do a really good job here and we love getting our hair washed and done.  It was kind Mike and I’s birthday going out weekend so we had to do it up.  So all the girls got their hair washed and curled so we were ready to go out on the town. 

            Mike saw a good seafood restaurant earlier in the day so he took us there.  It was a crazy experience.  You got to get up an pick your live seafood that you wanted to eat.  The boys really wanted to have crocodile, so we ended up trying it.  It tasted like really meaty white fish.  We had tons of food, and way too much beer at dinner.  The club that the hairdresser suggested turned out to be just around the corner so we went there.  It was kind of weird because at first they didn’t want to let us in because Mike and Amanda were wearing sandals, but they seriously took two seconds to change their mind.  Once we got inside they brought us to a stand up table and gave us a menu for bottle service.  The boys treated us for the night.  The music was awesome and we danced it up.  What a fun night.

            The next night was extremely rough.  We went out for lunch and didn’t really want to move.  We shopped around a little more and then took a rickety van back to the train station.  Well, let’s just say that just when we thought we weren’t hungover we were immediately reminded of it.  Once we got to the train station we were all in a bad state again.  The actual train ride was good, and we were very glad to get back to Wuhan.  I had already thought about this before we left, but I knew that once we got back I was going to be anxious to get ‘home’ which is now Wuhan.  We all felt a little weird about this, that we have now accepted this place as our home for now. 

            The last few days at school have been a little rough.  I got to school being very very sick (not from the drinking mom…don’t worry) but like cold sick.  My sinuses were all clogged up and I had the worst head cold ever.  The next day at school was even worse.  I kept getting light headed while teaching and had to take moments to sit down and get myself together.  Not fun.  Today I felt a little bit better. 
            We finally booked our trip to Sanya.  It’s on an island and is super pretty and there’s a pool J  I am so excited about it.  I can’t wait to finally relax.  I know that we’ve only started the year, but the last few weeks have just been so crazy it is going to be a much needed vacation.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had a real vacation. 
            We work on Saturday this week in order to have an extra day of vacation.  So we leave for Sanya on Sunday night!  I really cannot wait.  Three more teaching days and then we will be off to paradise.  There is a tropical rainforest and hot springs around the resort we’re staying at so we can go explore there as well. 
            Whoa, long one this time.  That is all for now!  I will update again soon.

My Birthday and the last few days

This week has just flown by.  I cannot believe it’s already the end of my birthday, in China.  We are celebrating the Canadian part of my birthday when we go on our little trip tomorrow to Ghuangzhou.  I got to talk to quite a few people from home today, so it made me pretty happy.  I do admit I was a little sad last night thinking of my birthday and not being at home with my close family and friends.  I may have had a moment of homesick then and again while my mom sang happy birthday to me over skype with a cake and candle.  It was too cute.  My students also sang me happy birthday today in the class and they were all so friendly today.  It was a good day.  We went out to a restaurant which was quite far away, about 40min or so.  It was called Aloha Diner.  They had American food, owned by Americans, so it was just the right taste of home that I needed.  I had been craving Mexican food and cheesecake, and I got just that.  It was amazing.  We were all quite satisfied when we left the restaurant.  Tomorrow is going to be the real fun part.  I cannot wait!

The last few days at school have been pretty funny.  These kids are really starting to grow on me.  They are coming out of their shells and using their English more.  I am also starting to catch on to more Chinese things, so it’s pretty funny.  Their English is still really weak, but some of the things that come out of their mouth is just too funny not to laugh at.  I feel bad laughing at them, but I just have to sometimes.  The other day I didn’t straighten my hair because I was too lazy, so I just left it curly.  I had not worn my hair to school like this yet, and all of my students were shocked that my hair was like that.  You should have seen and heard their reactions when I came into the classroom.  One of the students yelled, “Whoa!  You now become beautiful!”  My favourite though, which still cracks me up:  “Ms.Coupland, your hair is sex.”  I say, “Pardon me?”  He repeats, “your hair, it is sex” then another student pipes, in, “Sexy, it’s Sexy”  Either way they were both inappropriate things today, but I couldn’t help but laugh. 

It’s still freakin’ hot over here.  I run at 5am in a tank top and shorts and I’m already hot before I even start.  It looks like I’ve showered by the time I’m done.  This morning while we were walking across the courtyard to the school you could barely breathe it’s that kind of humid.  You forget it every once in awhile because you’re always in an airconditioned building. 

Anyways that is all for now.  I’m sure I will have more after this weekend and travelling around another area in China and taking a Bullet Train! 

-Taryn

The Flood!

Friday came so fast this week. We were all talking, saying how we didn’t even remember Monday the whole week was such a blur. I guess this is a good thing, as it means we’re starting to get into our ‘groove’ at school. We still have yet to know what we’re doing for sure in ever subject, so it’s still very up in the air in that sense.


Friday was ‘teacher’s day’ and the students has a whole little presentation for us. It was really cute. They presented us all with flowers in front of the school and played a game with a few of the teachers. At the end a couple of us got little gifts, I got a little set of boxes to put some of my school stuff in, at least I can make use of it, unlike the other random gifts they were giving out.

After school we were all obliged to attend a masquerade which was being hosted just down the street from the school. It seemed pretty lame at first, but once they started to bring out the hard alcohol everyone got into the spirit a little more. It was hosted outside by this gorgeous outdoor pool. It made me miss being in the water sooooo much! The whole complex that we were in was so nice. No one had ever seen houses like this in Wuhan, they were massive. They took us on a tour of one of them, it was so nice. Apparently translates into about 1.2million back home. Anyways, we did some dancing there and then headed down the street to a night market to get something to eat.

We hung around the night market for a bit and then went to Vox to meet up with everyone. Amanda and I weren’t really in the mood for being all hot and sweaty inside so a little group of us just sat outside and had some street food and beers. It was a pretty fun night again, and seems that Friday is the night where we all go out and party together after a long week of work. Again, I will never work on a staff this young ever again in my life.

WELL, we get home and I go to the kitchen to get some water…and I call to Amanda, “Ummm…there’s like 2 inches of water in our dinning room!?!” It was awful! What happened was that the hose while let from the tap to the laundry machine on the deck had blown off. There is a drain out there but the hose with drains from the laundry machine was in the drain from when we do laundry. Anyways I go out there to turn it off, and when I open the patio door more water rushes into the house. So we had a flood from the patio, to our dining room, all the way into the kitchen :S It was a mess. It took us almost two hours to clean it up, and we got home at 1:15am…so this was the last thing that we wanted to do! When we woke up the floor is all bubbled, so it’s pretty much ruined at this point, even though it is clearly not our fault. Oh China.

The next morning we went on the bus that takes us places. We asked to go to Mau Mountain which is not that far from here. It was a really pretty national park. We walked around for a few hours and had lunch there. After that we went to a market and got some more groceries for the week. We were so pooped that day we ended up going back to the apartment, having a nap, and then watching a movie and some episodes of Glee.

On Sunday we went out to look into train tickets for the weekend. We’re going to this city called Guangzhou, which turns out to be right by where my grandparents grew up. There’s lots of shopping around there, and we get to go there by bullet train, so we’ll have a good experience. It’s also my 25th Birthday on Thursday, so it’ll be a way to celebrate. One of the guys we’re going with has his birthday on the 15th, so we’re going to have a little joint celebration. I’m getting pretty excited about it.

Anyways, I should get back to work! Hope all is well back home.



-Taryn

Night Market and Mall Trip

I’m already starting to get a lot of marking, so it’s getting hard for me to blog, so I’ll try to give one to two updates a week. On Tuesday we went to the night market down the street. It is located right by the university which is down the street. It’s just so crazy that it becomes so lively at night, and then in the day you would never imagine that it was the same place that it was the night before. Eight of us went out for dinner at this little place on the strip before we went exploring. When we get to the restaurant they don’t have pictures on the menu. It’s really hard to eat if you can’t read the menu, or even communicate in the same language. They also put us in this random back room all by ourselves so we couldn’t even try and ask people around us. Luckily a bunch of university students came by and we called them over to see if they could help us. One was really nice about it, and he was so nervous. He was shaking the whole time he was talking to us, and explained that this was the first time that he had communicated with foreigners. We asked him to order us some food and he did quite nicely. We got vegetables and potatoes, and we also asked for Chicken. It took so long for the chicken to come…when it finally did, it was quite the sight. It looked like they had literally slaughtered the thing outside, put it in a pot with some potatoes and cooked everything but actual meat. It was all the feet, neck, insides, head…I’ve seen it before from banquets but everyone was so freaked out, Haha, too funny.


After that we went exploring and I was able to find another pair of cute shoes for 55 kwai, which is like $9. I also bought How to Train your Dragon for 5 kwai. It was a good night. Haha.



The next day we wanted to go to Carrefour to buy some groceries and what not. We shopped in the mall for a bit first. I bought a cute dress to wear to school on my birthday next week for like $6 Cdn, along with some a cheap headband, scarf and hello kitty socks, haha. I also got a nice hello kitty thermos to bring my tea to school. It was also super cheap. I love China for that. Anyways once we went to Carrefour the lines were insane. They went halfway to the back of the store going down every aisle. So, we decided that it was clearly not worth it.



Anyways, I’m starting to get into the rhythm of school. I’ve been running regularly, it’s still hot as ever though. There are also bats in the morning because it’s always dark at the beginning of my run. It’s kind of scary but I’m slowly getting over it, because I know if I don’t go running in the morning I will not do it. The school days are long, but I’m starting to remember why I entered this profession in the first place. The kids are finally starting to warm up to me and I’ve been having fun in class. They start to get my sarcasm and I’m able to make them laugh, which last week I thought would be next to impossible. I know that by the end of the year I’m going to love it here for that fact.



Clubs start next week and we already have 25 girls signed up to join cheerleading. I think it will be really fun. Apparently last year the dance team was really popular. Hopefully these girls know what they’re getting into, and we won’t just be jumping up and down waving our arms around in the air.



Tomorrow is Friday, and I can’t believe that we’ve been here for three weeks now. I think the time is really going to fly by. I know that next week is going to be a tough one for me though. I know not being home on my birthday is going to be rough. I know I’m old, but birthdays have always been so fun for me, especially because of sharing it with Dawn all the time. Just seems like a big family thing that I am going to miss. Hopefully I won’t be too bad, since I am surrounded by so many people.



I’ll write another update at the end of the weekend. We have a masquerade to go to tomorrow, so we’ll see where that takes us :s.

Another Night Out...

Well today was a rough day. Last night we all started our night at our ‘hipster’ friend Chris’s house for a dance party. You should see him, he’s literally like a character from a movie. So hilarious. Anyways, we did a little dancing there and then we headed to the Jeep Bar, which is located in the same complex where a bunch of the teachers live off campus in Vanke. They have ‘north american’ food. Robyn and I shared pasta that tasted like Chinese food with penne noodles instead. It was pretty funny. We planned to head in early because we were all so tired, but Mitch challenged Robyn to a shot gun rematch, and if she lost we had to stay. So, she lost and we ended up staying. From their we headed to Mitch and Annali’s apartment where we did some more dancing and getting ready to go out. We then headed to ‘The Vox’ which is a big club. There was a dj there and everyone got their dance and drink on. It was awesome. Everyone was sooooooooooo sweaty there though, ugh. It was a fun night but I don’t know if I can handle doing that every weekend :S




This morning was rough, we got in super late last night. Every Saturday a bus comes for all of us who live on campus to take us shopping somewhere. We went to this super huge Walmart first. We found a dvd store just outside as well. I bought all the seasons of Desperate housewives, gossip girl, how I met your mother, glee, parks and recreation, and three Disney movies for 108 yuan (so $18Cdn). So, that made me pretty happy. After that we went back to Metro to do some grocery shopping. I finally bought stuff for salad, and made food that I used to eat at home like everyday, made me extremely happy to have a meal that didn’t include rice. That took up pretty much our whole day, and we’re all way too pooped to even think about going out tonight. My plan for tomorrow is to get up early, go on a run, and then spend the day planning for the week.



Rewind- Thursday we had a trashy TV night. I downloaded the Bachelor Pad. So awesome. Our neighbor across the hall, Mike loves it as well so the four of us had a good night of watching awesome reality tv. Hehe. On Friday after work they knocked on our door and were like, Friday open door policy is in order. Haha, so we have an awesome ‘Friends’ like situation going on here. The three of us have the bigger cooler apartment, and we go over and ask them to fix things for us. It’s a nice little bond we have going on.



That’s all for now. Ready for a fun day a planning tomorrow :S

First few days of teaching

Yesterday was our first day getting to meet our students. It was pretty interesting to see the level that they were at compared to back home. My first class was extremely painful, and it was Drama, and the first block of the first day of school. I’m hoping that when I have them in the afternoon today they will open up a little more. My English 11 and 10 classes were a little better. They are all so quiet at the moment, which is way different than when I did my practicum back home. I would compare their English skills between grade 5-8 back home. So they’re pretty low. The worst part of yesterday was our opening ceremonies. They had to play the anthem for China, raise the flag, Canada, and then the school anthem. We were outside in the heat for 50min, which was awful. I was wearing a dress, but the guys all have to wear a suit and tie. People were literally dripping with sweat. I was uncomfortable, I can’t even imagine how the boys were feeling. Everyone had some amazing sweat stains on them coming back into the school.
We went grocery shopping yesterday, and we’ve started trying different snacks that they have here. So far my favourite is these mini waffles, and candy. I’ll probably do the opposite I did on the way here and bring back a bunch of China candy to Canada 
Today was our first full day of classes. I like to get to know my students a little better so we did a get to know you type of activity. So they could get to know me more I answered the same questions I was asking them with a powerpoint slideshow. The best was the opening picture. I put up a picture of mom, dad, dawn and I in front of the Olympic flame. When I explained that this was my family, they had no reaction, then I pointed, this is my sister, my mom and my Dad…then they were all shocked. All three classes that I showed were in awe at the fact that the tall while guy was my father. It was funny. Then there were tons of conversations happening around the class, and I had no idea what any of them were saying. I think this is going to be one of my biggest issues, not being able to understand all of the side conversations that are happening around me in the classroom.

It was a long day today. School starts at 7:40am every morning and the last class ends at 3:40pm. It’s 5:15pm and the office is still full. I think it’s going to be like this a lot. Now I’m happy that we are staying on campus because then we can just walk across the courtyard and plop ourselves on the couch at the end of the day.

Anywho, that is all for now. The weekend is coming up, I’m sure I’ll have more to report on after that.