A weekend in Shenyang (part one)

Having arrived in Beijing three months ago, its strange to think that I haven't left the capital even once. The weeks I have spent here have been action packed with very few dull moments, what with the sight-seeing, partying and the occasional English lesson. I have not really felt the need to travel elsewhere, besides travelling to any other part of this unbelievably gigantic city can at times take almost as long as a journey from East Yorkshire to Birmingham.

In fact if it hadn't have been for a chat with my friend Charlie on Skype, the idea of heading to Shenyang in the North of China would possibly never have crossed my mind. She had asked me to travel up for Trent's birthday (Trent was my room mate during orientation in the first two weeks). Unfortunately that trip never materialised but having spoken to some of my fellow teachers in Beijing, the trip was back on but instead of a train ride on my own, I'd be joined by four friends (Nicola, Lauren, Cat and Dee).

So on Friday 20th April, five of us were booked on the 17.47 Beijing to Shenyang Bei train. The plan was to meet at 5pm at the main entrance to the station, and as my taxi hit traffic, I began to panic. I was going to be late, luckily I arrived at 5.10pm. Sadly though I was the first to arrive. Nicola arrived next and we'd both heard off Cat and Lauren, who were stuck in traffic and gave an ETA of 17.40. Well, 17.47 approached and at 17.45, Nicola and I made the decision to climb aboard and cross our fingers that our three friends would make it. The sound of the train doors closing rang out and as they did, Nicola's phone rang. "We made it" Cat told her, they'd managed to jump on just in time, Dee however made it onto the platform a couple of minutes after our train had departed. We hoped she would travel up later that night or early Saturday morning, at this point we were not sure if we'd see her at all.

The journey itself was fairly uneventful, we drank beer and played musical chairs (taking it in turns to sit by one another and listen to each other's iPods), we were quite loud throughout the five hour train ride possibly annoying all our fellow passengers, all of whom were Chinese. One of which was on the receiving end of an open can of beer to the suit courtesy of clumsy old me, Nicola had to clean him up on my behalf as I couldn't prevent myself from literally rolling in the aisles... I am a bad person, I know.

When we finally arrived, we jumped in a taxi and met our host Charlie outside what looked like a strip club. We were told that it wasn't but let me promise you fellas, I did witness striping that night, and I took pictures for your viewing pleasure, wahey!

The first hour flew by as we sipped Western priced beer and caught up with Charlie and two other teachers from the program, Erica and Shauna. As the bar emptied, not long after midnight, a rather large Chinese man approached us and took a shine to the girls, and in particular, Nicola. He was a peculiar individual, rather jolly but he was donning a sexy silver set of pyjamas. For the purpose of this blog, I have nicknamed him Mr Jolly.

L-R: Cat, Lauren, Erica, Shauna, Mr Jolly, Charlie, Nicola, a barmaid and me

Me and Mr Jolly's buddha belly (phwoar!! topless pics as promised!)

What started out as a bit of fun, us taking photos of Mr Jolly posing with the girls and his Buddha belly protruding from his now open pyjama top, soon escalated. He danced with Charlie and Nicola, who appeared to be having a wonderful time and from somewhere (possibly thin air) he produced a couple of phallic shaped instruments (possibly toys) and proceeding to stick them in his mouth and then attempted to stick them in Nicola's mouth. It was at this point, I felt someone needed to step in but instead of coming to Nicola's aide, I did what any good friend would and decided to capture as many images as I could using my camera....

Mr Jolly with Nicola, who looks ready to go home...

To be continued....

Hong Kong Phooey

Last week, we had 18 students visit from a Canadian International school in Hong Kong. They were here for a few days and stayed with students from my school, joining them in all their lessons. What this meant is I had several children fluent in the language taking part in my English lessons, at first I was not too keen as the Chinese teachers told me to give them special attention, almost to the point of not actually teaching my class any English. Fortunately, I managed to strike the right balance between making them feel welcome and part of the lessons whilst teaching the Chinese kids some English.

And despite my initial reservations, I actually grew to quite like the Hong Kongians (is that what you call them?) and enjoyed chatting to them between lessons. I didn't get off on the right foot with them though, taking an instant dislike to one child, who, unlike all his mates had been placed with my Grade One class (six year olds) instead of children his own age (8-10 year olds). I walked in to the room to teach this class and there he is, sat towering over them, first thing he says to me is, "I am totally fluent in English and you can say anything to me, I'll understand it". Maybe I was having a bad day, maybe I am a horrible person but as he said that to me in his little smarmy North American accent, I thought 'right then you little bastard, lets see....' and proceeded to spit out "antidisestablishmentarianism", he looked at me, "do you know this word?" I queried, "not sure, you said it too fast" he lied, so I repeated, "yeah I know it, just cannot remember what it means..." "annoying when that happens, isn't it?" I replied, before heading to the front to teach my lesson. Funnily enough, I couldn't remember what it meant either (though I have since googled it).

This young man was brought down a peg or two later on in that lesson not by me, but by Nina, my star pupil in Grade One. In a game in which I pick two people at a time to come to the front, and then show them a picture to which the person who shouts out what it is first, wins a point for their team. The picture was of a birthday cake and Nina was in there a split second before him, he then wined that she had cheated (not sure how that is possible...). I was proud of her, not only because he was a cocky little so and so but because this girl, who has been learning English for two years tops managed to put him (a fluent English speaker) in his place. I imagine it made her feel pretty good in the process.

That kid aside, I found most the other Hong Kongonians very pleasant to speak to and a couple of things they said have been deemed funny/interesting enough to warrant their very own blog post (this very blog post to be specific).

During one lesson, I had the class finding words from something I had written on the board. A classic activity that you will all have done at some point in which you have to construct words using the letters of the words/sentence on the board. One of the Hong Kongish students put his hand up and said "Abuse", I thought I'd misheard him so asked him to him repeat, to which he replied, "you know, abuse! As in, child abuse". He was right, that word could be made from the other words, still felt a bit wrong writing it up on the board though.

But the classic, and possibly one my favourite moments of all came on their (the Hong Kongers) last day before heading home. I'd heard a rumour that Alex, one of the Chinese students had started 'going out' with one of the girls from the Hong Kong school, I then saw him talking to one of the girls and handing her this toy (made of plastic that can be manipulated into various shapes), I went over to her and said "Are you Alex's girlfriend?", her reply was priceless - "What? No! He is not my boyfriend! I just want to play with his thingy!!" One of the other English teachers was in earshot and like me, burst into tears with laughter much to the confusion of all the students.

The kids said good bye to me on their last day and said they had enjoyed the lessons as it had been one of the few times during their stay that they had the opportunity to speak in English to someone outside of their own group, which I can relate to as incidentally this has been the case for me during my time in Beijing, so far.

Some of the Hong Kong kids gave me this hand-made card on their last day

As the module was on food, most of my classes during the week in which the Hong Kongals were at the school usually began with me asking the question, "what did you have for breakfast?" as you can see from the card above that three of the kids made me, it was somewhat of a catchphrase!

I am not sure if you will be able to read all of it, but the bit in pencil says "the games were awesome, thank you for bringing back English to our minds!". And they did a little doodle of the Hong Kong Skyline. Not sure if they are trying to be funny calling me Danielle, but I am not laughing.... Only joking, it was a pleasure to teach them, though I didn't imagine I'd be saying that when they'd first arrived.