And then it was November

Time's really flying here, so quickly in fact that I didn't even realise that it's been 3 weeks since I posted anything. Time may be passing rapidly - we're already halfway through the first semester - but things here in the 农村 (nongcun, village) remain as routine as ever.

It was Andre's birthday recently, and I was happy to have finished knitting him the scarf I had been working on since the beginning of term. He seemed pretty happy with it, and it's getting cold fast here so I'm sure my hard work won't go unappreciated.

Maybe if you're lucky, I'll knit you something too.
But not Kishan. That's what you get for insulting knitting.

School goes on - the children are getting ever more used to me, although some classes have completely forgotten my name, and to be honest they're usually the ones I don't like that much, so I don't really care. It seems a bit harsh to say that, but I now understand why my teachers would get angry so easily (well, some of them) or just get fed up with us. Children are stupid, and they're extremely annoying. Especially when they don't care, but don't even make enough of an effort to avoid being noticed when they're doing something else. Imbeciles. Oh, and I have a bike now, which means I can cycle to school. It's the girliest, probably most useless bike ever, but i love it, and in my defense, it was very, very free.

Pink bike as given to me by Ms. Zeng. For some reason she likes me enough
to have lent me her bike for an entire year. I'm not complaining.

I've started business Chinese lessons in town - I don't know why I call it town, as if it's London, but I do mean the centre of Chengdu. My teacher, Sherry, is excellent, and it gives me an opportunity to practice my spoken Chinese to a high level, as well as giving  me a reason to get out of the village on the weekends. I also get to see Charlie, my interim China-lover, which is a huge bonus of course.

I've started applying for jobs again - I applied for one I didn't really want that much first to get back in to the swing of things.... hopefully I don't actually get it, because I feel that would be quite awkward. I'm currently writing up a list of all the companies (mainly law firms) that I want to apply to, I'm on 20-ish now and I want to get it up to 50. Yes, it seems like a lot, but I would actually like a job for next year, I have to start taking this seriously. I continue to watch too much TV, and have also begun to get addicted to a website called memrise, which is essentially a really creative flashcard website that's really good for language learning. Unfortunately, I'm falling behind my fellow teachers, which my competitive nature is starting to smart at. Essentially, I'm doing everything I can to stave of the monotony.

It's almost a pity that China can't go this long without it's annoyances/just being ridiculous. I have two days off this week. Where's the complaint, you ask? Oh believe you me, I'm not upset because I don't have work, I'm upset at the way in which I found out that I didn't have work. Because I did have to find out, you see, I wasn't told. Last week while Chris and I were sitting in the staff room, I happened upon a piece of paper that detailed mid-term exams for the junior school students taking place this Wednesday and Thursday. Obviously, as the exams were scheduled to take place all day, we wouldn't have to teach, and so we rejoiced. But a week passed and no one told us what was going to happen. Giving them the benefit of the doubt (lord knows why), I thought the school would tell us at our weekly meeting this Tuesday - a little late, but informed nonetheless. Nope. Kathy knew nothing about these planned exams, and only after several phone calls, discovered that 'Oh yes the foreign teachers don't have to come in'. So basically, if I wasn't able to read Chinese, and hadn't had the minimum required initiative to ask about it, Chris and I  would have gone into school at 7am, only to find that we don't have work, but maybe we will, so don't go anywhere. Thanks for that, China. I'm planning on writing a letter in Chinese to the headmaster about this - we're teachers too, not ornaments, please treat us as such. It's just rude, you know? It's not as if common courtesy is a cultural difference.

And that's the village newsletter for these 3 weeks. Stay tuned...

The prodigal child returns

Two and a half weeks into my long-term dose of China and, in a shocking turn of events, things have been going pretty smoothly until today. And of course, when I say smoothly, as always, I mean smoothly for China. Basically, we had a bit of a mix up today at the medical centre but.... hey ho, we'll try again another day. For 7 hours. In my usual manner, I'm gonna go ahead and skip the usual blog padding of 'how it feels to be back in China' (I made the choice to come here, I've lived here before, about the same really) and 'what are the people on your course like' (I have made some friends I would like to visit but, as most people are new to China and speak no Chinese with a few exceptions, added to the fact that I'm an anti-social cow, I wasn't really part of the 'gang') and get to the good stuff.

The first two weeks were quite intense and managed to seem both long and short at the same time. The first week was the TEFL course, which consisted of 5 days of never-ending 9-5 lessons with a few American guys informing us of various teaching practices, test answers and China-living tips of varying degrees of usefulness (there was a lot of chat about something called a Class Monitor, which I'm sure I'll get on to at some point), and ended with a test that consisted of just about nothing we had covered. Don't worry, we all passed. The second week consisted of a teaching practice at a local secondary school in Beijing which - despite the initial minor hiccup of wow-these-guys-are-not-as-good-at-English-as-I-was-expecting - was a lot of fun and actually went quite well. Who knows, maybe it went some way to influencing my future career path...

Teacher Edi

Teacher Luke (who also works with me now in Chengdu)

Teacher Faye 

Teacher Fran

Me, Faye and the practice class! 

Unfortunately, there are no touristy photos of Beijing this time around. We were out in the sticks (a place called Shunyi with exactly 1 very awful nightclub) and besides, you've seen them all before now anyway. And when I say sticks I mean it - the hotel barely had enough Wifi to go around, hence the lack of posts.

But you want to know about my new place, right? Well, the school I know very little about so far except that it's called Xindu No.1 Middle School (because Charlotte and Leela will want to look it up) and that it's the second best school in Sichuan, which is pretty good by anyone's standards really. Oh, and they have class from 7:45 am till (wait for it) 9:15pm. No words. No words. I have been informed I won't have to teach past 5pm. Wonderful. Apparently I'll be taking on the Junior 1s (year 7/8 equivalent) which should be nice as that's the age group I had practiced on during my week of teaching and I really enjoyed that level. Some of them may never have had a foreign teacher before and may not have an English name yet (or may just have a gender inappropriate/just plain awful one that I can change for them). In any case, it means that I can break them in how I want, which is just perfect.

As for my living quarters, it's quite cosy now that I've scrubbed it to within an inch of it's life, unpacked, thrown out a load of old stuff, rearranged all the furniture, bought new sheets and lit some incense. Things to know: yes, I have a western toilet; I do have a curfew, but if lessons start at 7:45 I doubt I'll be breaking it too often; yes, I have all manner of internet and have even procured a Chinese simcard despite not being able to decipher a word of Sichuanese. Honestly, it's like a completely different language. Most of the people do speak 普通话 (ho ho, the Chinese lessons are back, putonghua standardised Mandarin), but one market lady got very angry and shouty with me when I couldn't work out what she meant by sisisisisisisisisisisisisisi. Yeah, may need to get a language partner.

Bedroom/living area

Very bad picture of my Kitchen.
I'm not retaking it - you know what a kitchen is.

Bathroom

I have friends! Yes, I am officially friends with the entire foreign population of Xindu district. In other words, 5 English teachers, including myself. For the first time, I'm not exaggerating/being sarcastic/throwing inappropriate irony about. We're literally it.

Left to right: Hubert (UK), Andre (SA), Chris (UK), Luke (UK)
And can I just say they made more of a fuss over this photo than any 13-year-old girls I know.

Oh, and Chengdu/Xindu itself. Xindu is a town in Chengdu btw if you're getting confused - it's the equivalent of saying 'I live in London' 'Where?' 'Croydon'. Well, if Croydon were Northwest of London. Anyway, it takes a bloody long time to get to the centre of town. Xindu itself is a nice little laid-back place, with a few good-looking, appropriately southern-China-feel locations around town. I don't have too many pictures yet (as I keep forgetting to bring my camera out and have consequently had to nick several photos from other people), but I promise a whole bloody montage soon enough.

At the "Tea house of Never Ending Tea"

Street food times

Oh, and I've talked about food before as well right? Sichuan food is meant to be the best in China, and so far it's been pretty good. Very spicy, so definitely my style. I may not have mentioned my rules however, which I kept having to remind the first-timers of every time they offered me something/asked me what something weird was. The main 2 are: 1) I don't eat things that I can't see e.g. buns with filling (unless someone else has eaten said thing and not died) and 2) I don't eat meats that I can't identify by sight or smell. Other weird stuff I can experiment with, but it can get...irksome to say the least when you remember that in China, not everything is how it seems....

WHEN 'GREEN' IS WATERMELON INSTEAD OF LIME* 

*Love the fruit, but seriously, in a sweet? Come on Asia.....