Being British really does
have its perks.....
I have really settled into a
routine now, with working and then at weekends, seeing the sights of the city.
My lectures are going well apart from the small issue of everything about the
multimedia e.g. computer, projector, sound all being in Chinese. Luckily, my
student are majoring in software and they are being very helpful setting up my
lessons for me!
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| Why do Chinese people sleep everywhere! I mean come on....its lesson time. |
On a plus not, I have conquered a bit of the Chinese language barrier
concerning food (of course!). I realised that I want to try all the street
food, so everyday I have been learning how to say what food I would like and
then going to practise my newly acquired skills! So far, it isn’t going too
badly.
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| Pork baozi (bread dumplings with a filling), milk tea and a custard cake |
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| Ro baozi (meat dumplings!) |
I have taken on two other
jobs this week. Firstly, I am teaching English to university students from the
business department, although the lessons are 6.30pm-8.15pm at night, which is not ideal. However, when they
suggested weekends or 9pm ,
I quickly realised that this is my best option. In addition, I was approached (I’m
thinking stalked) by a lady who lives in my apartment building wanting English
lessons for some young children in the area. Being British means you are in
high demand and of course, I have my teacher qualification so she was
practically jumping about in excitement. I met the parents last night and was
expecting them to state what they would like their children to learn, for
example the alphabet or phonics – typical 4-year-old skills. Oh no, these
parents are extremely happy to basically let me play with the children for an
hour. One parent’s response was ‘lots of singing and games’. So every Thursday
I will be leaping about to ‘Hokey Cokey’ and pretending to imitate a frog and
actually getting paid a lot of money for it....excellent.
The one area of living in China
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| Put dry pasta in a pan with onions, garlic, tomatoes, oil and water |
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| Boil mixture just like you are cooking normal pasta until the sauce reduces |
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| Enjoy! |
Today is Thursday, Dean has
the day off, and he normally goes food shopping on his moped. I decided to join
him today after my lessons and we went to Metro. Metro is a German supermarket
but I was told that it has a lot of imported food so I was extremely excited to
find some essential ingredients and I wasn’t disappointed! I found HEINZ BAKED
BEANS, tortilla wraps and even a Halloween outfit. (Yes I am going out in a age
7-9 years old pumpkin outfit).
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| Metro! |
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| Rè gān miàn - hot dry noodles. Made with sesame oil and sesame sauce...delicious! |
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| My metro purchases! (Mandatory red wine and pumpkin outfit) |
The issue with our
spontaneous shopping trip was the transport. The scooter decided to give up on
us when we were barely halfway home, so we had to stop and find a place to
charge it. The mopeds out here run off electricity and so you pay around 10p
and that gives you a couple of hours of charging time. Whilst it was charging,
we wandered down a few streets and found a tiny noodle bar to eat. I decided to
try the local speciality of Wuhan
Tonight, I
am going to relax as my apartment is all clean and my lessons for next week are
all planned. Tomorrow I am going to explore Han Street
xxxxxxx
