The 4 stages of living abroad

I’m currently deciding whether I’m deep into stage 3 or bordering on the edge of stage 4, as in I’m already starting to think way too much about coming home. Anyway, too much pondering done....off to sit outside in the sunshine.

1) Homesickness

Homesickness hit me immediately on my arrival in China. I was shown my apartment at 8pm on Tuesday evening and did not see anyone again until the Friday. Why? Because I didn’t know anybody. I must admit, that I looked for tickets back home leaving the following week, and then moved on to promising myself that I could leave in January, if I got through one semester.

Arriving in a new country by yourself is difficult. I didn’t know the language, the area, the locals, my work colleagues or what food to eat. I didn’t realise that changing £50 into yuan would take me over 2 hours because everybody likes to do their banking at 11am on a Wednesday morning. I had no idea about taking the bus because every stop is in Chinese characters (so after trying to learn how to speak Chinese, I then apparently had to start reading it). Nobody told me that learning my address would take nearly two weeks, as it isn’t exactly catchy (Bayi Lu Dong Hu Xin Cun, if you were wondering)

Then there’s the issue of friends and family. Working around an 8 hour time difference takes time and patience. Oh, you can Skype at 6pm? That’s brilliant but I won’t be awake at 2am. And, when you finally coordinate and get on Skype, it usually doesn’t work because Chinese internet has a mind of its own and will happily cut out for days at a time.

However, these issues are the ones that you quickly become accustomed too and once through the homesickness stage, I was well on my way to enjoying my year abroad.

2) Excitement

This stage comes when you realise what a fantastic opportunity you are currently experiencing – 9 months living and working in China. During the excitement stage, I wanted to integrate myself in everything Chinese. I wanted noodles for breakfast and to travel on the subway. I became confident enough to start talking in Chinese and actually recognising some Chinese characters (mostly food and addresses but they’re the essentials).

I loved spending my weekends visiting attractions and starting to plan trips to other areas of China e.g. Xian and Chongqing. The realisation that I didn’t need I.D when I went out to a bar or being able to get really cheap food from the markets was something I loved and I cooked a lot during this stage. Albeit, it was mainly western food but everyone needs a Full English in their year abroad life.

3) Acceptance

I think that I’ve only recently hit this stage, and it was very gradual but really nice to know that nothing much fazes me anymore. It started with how little I now care about people staring. Beforehand, I used to be extremely irate by the time I reached my lecture room because of people staring, but now I barely notice it. Same with their eating habits – I think I’ve become both accepting and imitating as I now think nothing of spitting a chicken bone onto a table. (Nandos are going to love me).

Additionally, doing any form of admin, such as visiting a bank no longer fills me with dread. Yes, going to get my Hong Kong dollars took me over an hour but I was mentally and physically prepared. I took drinks, snacks and a magazine and I waited very patiently. I also prefer eating Chinese food now rather than trying to cook western food. It’s cheap, delicious and usually takes me ten minutes to find something I would like to eat. I think my tastes overall have changed, as I find myself craving things like dumplings and quail’s eggs rather than pie and mash.

 4) Reverse culture shock

Although I am definitely not into this stage yet, I am wondering how difficult I will find coming back to England. I will have to queue for things instead of using my elbows. I can’t shout across the restaurant for the waiter when I need a drink; instead I will have to wait until they come to the table with their pen and paper. Eating out will be a distant memory as I’m pretty sure nowhere in the UK will serve a full buffet for less than £2.

However, I cannot wait for things like immersing myself back into a society of logical people. The Chinese are THE most illogical society I have ever known. For example, they stop at the top of escalators in order to figure out their next move, leading to a human pile up, or let their child use the toilet (floor) just 50 meters from a public toilet, because obviously, that 50 meters is just too far. They won’t sit down on benches without placing a paper napkin down first, but find a lunch of chicken feet and frog on a stick a delicious treat.

It will be a welcome relief coming back home and enjoying things like the normal amount of people piling into a lift (a record of 22 people in the subway lift last weekend – I was practically licking the glass window) and finding a queue where nobody pushes to the front because they are late for a lunch meeting. So as the time draws nearer to my return home, I find myself wondering what I will miss about this strange, mysterious, absolutely flipping mental and wondrous city and what I will happily leave behind in China. 

“I’ll give you an English name....”

I’ve lost track of the amount of English names that I’ve given to Chinese nationals since moving here, but I always enjoy giving them names. Take my children that I tutor for example, 90% of those are names by moi (except the child named orange because that really isn’t a helpful name when learning colours). Anyway, my story is that whilst shopping for a suitcase – which I will explain later – I ended giving the shop assistant a name and she looked utterly chuffed.

However, starting in order, on Monday I went to tutor my mental 7 year olds and it was Bruce’s birthday (I definitely did not name him). I was surprised that I was still able to tutor because no child in Britain would happily sit through tutoring knowing that a birthday cake is imminent. After finishing the class, I was ‘invited’ to stay behind for cake and conversation, which actually entailed physically restraining the kids so they didn’t lick the cake before it was lit and getting asked by another parent “you tutor my child now?”. I don’t know what she was expecting me to do with a 9 year old at 8.30pm, seeing as I was clutching some birthday cake and struggling to keep my eyes open. I muttered an excuse about Skype and ran away before she managed to get a group of kids together!

Chinese birthday cake

Tuesday rolled around and it started amazingly productively, with 4 lessons planned by 11am. This was definitely enough for one day and so I met Brooke for lunch at JJ’s so we could eat delicious chicken and flatbread and salad and GARLIC MAYONNAISE in the sunshine. The waitress, Lucy took a shine to us and we enjoyed our meal and service thoroughly. The only issue was when visiting the toilet, as it looked like something out of a horror movie. It was painted black, with pipes everywhere and a creepy door leading somewhere at the end *shudders*. After stuffing ourselves, we hopped on the metro to Optics Valley in search of a suitcase for my hand luggage on the way home.

A cheeky diversion to H&M later and then we wandered around the mall. It was seriously warm by now (why I wore jeans I’ll never know) but armed with a tape measure, I was a woman on a mission. A 20p green tea ice-cream quickly solved my heat problems. The shop assistants had no idea what was going on as we measured different cases. Before actually finding a suitcase, we also managed to peruse other shops and ended up with those things that you make your own ice-lollies with (we’re making sangria ones at the weekend) and numerous headbands and a key rings. We were pretty tired by this point but luckily, my suitcase was in sight. I found a beautiful red one and the shop assistant loved us. She gave my suitcase and Brooke’s rucksack a discount, and in return, she earned herself the English name ‘Mimi’. All parties happy, we headed to get some dinner.

Optics Valley mall

Ice skating rink at the bottom!

Popsicle maker

My new case!

We sat on some outside steps whilst eating and were amazed, astounded and hilarified (I think I’ve just made that word up) by people in general. One girl was walking along with her boyfriend when she just suddenly stopped, knelt down and proceeded to ‘nap’ whilst massaged by her boyfriend. The shopping was obviously too much to take. Other things included squatting on a seating area – because sitting is unhygienic apparently -  and a guy dressed in a full suit asleep on a bench. How did he even get to a mall? Surely you go home to nap.....

On Wednesday, I woke up exhausted. The kind where your eyes feel gritty and you’re yawning for hours. Luckily, my class was really on the ball at the software school so my lesson itself went pretty quick. After teaching, I headed to Brooke’s house in Hanyang on the subway and then had to follow directions from her because the usual subway exit was inaccessible. Cue me balancing a coffee, McDonald’s breakfast in a bag, umbrella and phone whilst trying not to kill myself in the ghetto that is Hanyang. It doesn’t even have roads. I only just made it alive, we had breakfast, and chilled for a while (it was too much hassle to order two breakfasts so we had to share a sausage and egg muffin – my life). For lunch, we had a fantastic plan to go to Aloha diner, a bus ride from her apartment. We actually got seats on the bus and happily trotted off 15 minutes later.

We were the only people in the restaurant when entering, but that was no issue as we were just here for the food. I ordered an oreo milkshake and fish and chips. Not quite British style but it was boneless and came with vegetables so I was exceedingly happy. During our meal, an adorable little girl came in with her mum and it turned out that she was half-French, half-Chinese. Then, a little American baby came in and was gurgling away. We had to leave soon after before we ended up stealing a child.

Fish and chips - first piece of fish since leaving England!

On the subway home

Our plan after this was to be culture vultures and head to see some historical monument but instead we went back to Brooke’s and within 5 minutes of a film going on, I was dribbling all over myself and napping on her bed. It was fabulous. After waking up, I got myself back home in a daze and the nap obviously worked wonders, as I had a super productive afternoon of planning and life organising.

Thursday started with a nice lie-in and then it was time to get things done. Washing, cleaning, planning and then printing from a local shop. However, their computer didn’t take a shine to my travel insurance documents and out of the 23 pages, it only managed to print 4. I obviously didn’t want a segment of my document and so cue lots of Chinese irateness before he finally understood that I wasn’t paying for half a document. Ellis 1: Man 0. My tutoring that night was a completely mixed bag with the first half being completely mental (think children opening balcony doors and ‘pretending to sleep’. However, the magic of a story solves all problems and the second half was so calm and serene, I actually felt like Miss Honey from Matilda. The parents also enjoyed my talents as I was offered a savoury donut for the ‘difficult’ journey down the stairs to get back home.

On Friday, I met Paul for lunch after class. We went to JJ’s again, purely because it was close for both of us and sat outside in the sunshine, whilst I helped him with a few things. After a quick trip to his apartment and a gift of guiyuin flower oil (from his recent trip), we headed to my work before I walked home. It was so humid and hot I felt horrible in my clothes that were suitable at 7am that morning. I had an amazing shower and made sangria popsicles ready for imminent summer. I was going to go out that night but everyone was staying in, so I did the same with a pizza and loads of catch-up TV.

Lunch with Paul

Enjoying my food in the warm weather

On Saturday, I woke up at 7am, had a word with myself and then managed to sleep in until 10am, before getting up. After a chilled morning, Marie and Brooke came over and we worked on our scrapbooks for our year in China. I lovingly prepared sangria and sangria popsicles, and Christmas pudding and German spiced biscuits – what an excellent array. Brooke arrived early and Marie super late but we sat at my dining table for 7 hours – dedicated scrap bookers. We did have a small break for eating dinner, at a local restaurant, before I ran home because it had started raining. The meal itself was amazing as always, and we got the same dishes because the food is that good.

German biscuit

Sangria ice-lolly to cool down

Waiting for our food in the restaurant

Oh dear...

Scrapbooking

Hard at work...

About to try her first ever Christmas pudding

It was even better in April

The Christmas pudding did not go down well and neither of them were very keen, but luckily they both liked the German biscuits. After a busy evening I went to sleep completely exhausted. On Sunday morning, Brooke Skyped her family from America and I spoke to them as well. The questions I was asked were hilarious including:

"What's the difference between dessert and pudding?"
"What is a Yorkshire pudding?"
"When do you have tea?"

I loved answering these questions and they seemed to enjoy my incredible (awful) knowledge of America. After Skyping, another round of scrapbooking and watching some TV, we walked down the hill to get lunch. I ordered what I always have - vegetable noodles, but instead I got this pork noodle medley. It was just as good so I ate it! Brooke then had to leave because she's teaching this afternoon and I walked back up to come home. I stopped off for one carrot (yes, just one carrot for 13p) and then relaxed before tutoring in the afternoon. 

It’s the Alright Wall of China....

We were both exhausted after our trip to Beijing! On the Saturday afternoon, we met Brooke at Mann for waffles and relaxed for a couple of hours, before heading to eat mala xiang guo. Adele left me and Brooke to do the food selecting and we went all out, with everything from lotus root to quails eggs for our stir fry. After ordering, we went upstairs to sit down, until one of the staff members asked for the receipt. After showing her, she said our food was ready downstairs.....she could have brought it up to us! The food was delicious and after finishing that, we went to Mr Mai’s to volunteer for a while. The students we chatted to were lovely and told us lots of information about the upcoming tomb-sweeping festival. I’m glad we were heading to Beijing instead as brushing sand across a grave didn’t exactly thrill me. When I told them that Adele was a languages teacher, they got very excited! We both came home after that and fell asleep ready for our Beijing trip the next day.

Enjoying her waffle

Mala xiang guo - supersize!

Our journey to Beijing started off with a 30 minute walk in torrential rain at 6am. By the time, we reached the subway station, we were dripping wet and my suitcase was suitably soggy. I think it took me 4 hours to dry off my wool jumper – smart move for rain I know. We arrived at Wuhan railway station and saw a sign for McDonalds...however; this restaurant was extremely well hidden as we ended up with a variety of biscuits for breakfast instead. Even the train marshals had a breakfast than us – they all boarded the train with steaming hot baozis. The 5 ½ journey went remarkably quickly, helped by the fact we slept and ate throughout it. One woman was so comfortable that she missed getting off at her stop and was stuck on the train until the next stop. Now these trains don’t stop very often, so 45 minutes later, she finally exited the train!

Arriving in Beijing, I was expecting there to be a different culture here, and there to be fewer bad habits from the Chinese. I did see hundreds of other laowis, which made me happy but I also saw a woman holding a child to wee right in the middle of the subway station – what a treat. After dodging the ever spreading pool of urine, we caught the subway to near our hotel, however after choosing exit C, I was all out of directions. We found a nearby hotel, called the Regent and asked for help, and this man ended up walking us through that hotel to reach ours! Brilliant, a tour of a hotel that we weren’t even staying at. Finally at our hotel, we checked in and were asked to provide a Chinese credit card, which funnily enough, I don’t have (mayo credit card). The man then changed his mind to 500 yuan, again something we hadn’t bargained for in our cash allowance for the trip, so instead we offered our passports. However, after a quick discussion with the manager, he decided that he no longer needed anything and sent us on our way with our room key. What. A. Faff.

Our hotel room was beautiful and within five minutes of entering, we’d both half-heartedly unpacked, found all the freebies and put our complimentary slippers on to relax in for a while. We had a xiuxi (rest) and then wandered out to the Wangufujing area of Beijing, famous for shopping and the food market. This area was amazing, everything from Ferrari to Aston Martin, Cartier to Tiffany were located here. I spotted Forever 21 a mile off and before I knew it, was buying a new outfit for Hong Kong....needs must.

Look at our room!

Found this straight away

We then found the food market and entered a bizarre world full of both strange, weird and inedible foods, nestled amongst souvenirs. Seeing scorpions still wriggling on a stick next to a half-dead starfish was like something from a badly kept insect world and not what I expected at a food market. We weren’t brave enough to try these foods and settled for some fried dumplings instead. After eating, we haggled for a few souvenirs before heading back to the hotel for baths. Oh the luxury of a bath!

Entrance to Wangfujing food market

They were still wriggling!

Which one to choose?

Inside the food market

I felt a bit funny and blamed it on the travelling until I realised that it was hunger (this emotion doesn’t really happen in my world). We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner and when brought the bread, I managed to ping the butter onto the floor. After living in China for so long, I think I’m immune from illness so I scooped it back up and continued to eat. My pasta bolognaise was lovely and full from dinner, we got the lift back up to our hotel room and went to bed early.

Waiting for our food

Pasta bolognaise

Nasi goreng

Our alarm on Monday morning at 6am wasn’t the best part of our day and we stumbled to breakfast bleary eyed but excited to go and explore Beijing. After living in China for 6 months, I’ve come to have no expectations when it comes to western food in China, but I was pleasantly surprised to find (hidden amongst the egg fried rice and sushi!) lots of bacon, eggs and pancakes. As for hash browns and croissants – come to meeeee. Funnily enough, the pea salad and Singapore noodles didn’t quite take my fancy I think I waddled out the hotel that morning but I was about to endure a very long trek up to the Great Wall!

I had written down directions for everything before coming to Beijing (I near enough planned our toilet trips) and knew that we needed to get bus 877 to the Great Wall. We found the stop and were waiting for about 15 minutes in freezing cold weather until this man randomly ripped the 877 sign off and started walking off with it. Brill. Cue me and Adele running after this man in a blue outfit until we saw another stop saying 877, however on closer inspection, these buses didn’t start until 10.30am. 2 hours wait...I don’t think so! We walked around the corner and saw this other bus saying 877 and a woman herding people onto it so after a quick check that it was definitely going to Chang Cheng (Great Wall) we got on and crossed our fingers. I didn’t relax until we saw the wall appear in front of us!

Such a beautiful sight

We planned to get the cable car up – my trainers were only to give the impression that I’d climbed up - and followed signs to catch the cable car. These signs led us through twists and turns and even an indoor market before we reached the terminal! On route, Adele couldn’t hack the freezing temperatures of Northern China and ran to the first fleece she saw and demanded to own it. She looked glorious in a giant grey fleece and trotted off happily in her new warm purchase! We bought our tickets and hopped onto the cable car which swooped us up to the wall. The first thing that hit us on seeing the wall was how vast it was and how many people were there. Now, I’ve been to visit it before, but it looked much more majestic than I remembered.

At the Wall

Unimpressed by the addition of the new fleece

We took lots of obligatory photos and were happy wandering around in the sunshine. With all the foreigners on the wall, it almost didn’t feel like I was in China until on the way back to the cable car where I was greeted by a boy being held over a plastic bag, by his granddad, so he could have a dump. The grandma was holding the bag – talk about group effort. That brought me back to reality straightaway! We walked back down the sloping hills and stopped for lunch, in what can only be described as a Chinese ghetto cafeteria, ordering baozi and pulled chicken pittas. These were delicious...our surroundings were definitely not!

Ghetto cafeteria

We then felt ready to start haggling for souvenirs, and the shop owners found my idea of haggling hilarious. They would say 50 yuan and I would say 5. In most situations, I won. I bought an obligatory Great Wall t shirt, scarf and good luck charm, and I think Adele bought the whole scarf selection before we headed back to find the bus. This bus that we got on was like something from a shanty town....it had three seats on one side and two the next and the aisle was so small that you had to enter the bus sideways! I think we took the local bus home, as people were scanning their metro cards and we were also the only laowis – a rare sight it seemed from the excited look on the other passengers faces!

There wasn't an 'I got the cable car' t-shirt

My dubious plan to get this bus worked out fine and we arrived back to the same start point! We then got back on the subway and made our way down to the Temple of Heaven, situated inside a beautiful park, which we wandered around. There were people playing card games and a random set of seven stones, which we have no idea why but we took photos of them! Well, Adele asked a man in Spanish for a photo in the middle of China – hilarious.

Trying to figure out the park

Locals playing card games

Don't touch the tree!

Temple of Heaven

No idea what these are...

So we obviously just took loads of photos of them

Our final stop for the day was the Hongqiao pearl market, a place selling everything and anything, alongside pearls (you’d never guess). Within 30 seconds of entering, we’d already made a purchase and after spending up, we made our way back to the hotel for a rest. For dinner that evening, we went to the famous duck restaurant, ‘Da Dong’, conveniently situated a 2 minute walk from our hotel. The restaurant was stunning, with pools of fish and impeccable service. We ordered the famous roast duck and some rice and enjoyed it all. We even got some complimentary strawberries for dessert. Heading home after, I think we were both asleep by 9.30pm!

Da Dong restaurant

Egg fried rice

Condiments tray for our duck

Our amazing roast duck

Duck pancakes

On Tuesday, we went down rather excited for breakfast after a reasonable lie-in, however, the restaurant was much busier and noticeably fuller with more Chinese people, who literally have no idea what to do in a buffet style restaurant except get in the way. No Chinese lady, you cannot cut in front of me to try and take the last hash browns as I am armed with tongs and I will hurt you. Adele had to do a quick sidestep dance in order to manoeuvre two cups of coffee around a Chinese man. Breakfast done and having successfully not hurt somebody through hanger (hunger anger), we checked out and left our bags with the concierge. FYI this meant leaving our bags behind a desk attached together with what appeared to be a shoelace – all the security in the world.

We traipsed down to Tiananmendong station and went across to the Forbidden City. This place was also forbidden to get out of as we simply could not figure how to exit and ended up walking down a street full of construction and confused locals staring at us. We did walk around a beautiful lake though so all was fine. The Forbidden City was really pretty inside and I particularly enjoyed the Chinese tour groups wearing matching hats, especially the Burberry hat group! We then tried to get across to Tiananmen Square but were faced with more security. By the end of our trip out, I never wanted to scan my bag or my body again. It was worse than an airport, with the staff smelling water in plastic bottles and checking ID cards of the Chinese nationals...thank goodness we were foreigners, as a quick look up and down seemed to be enough.  

Outside Forbidden City

Really enjoying the Chinese tour groups in their matching hats

Took a wrong turn and ended up by a lake

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Tower

We were officially cultured out and headed back to our hotel area, Dengshikou to have lunch. We definitely underestimated the portions and ended up with a plastic tub full of food each to take on the train. However, they only had one set of disposable chopsticks so I swiftly acquired a restaurant pair and we made a quick getaway! A cheeky Starbucks later to revive us, and we were on the way to the train station to start our mammoth journey home.

Our incredible peppered duck

The subway journey was straightforward, as we were now experts at the Beijing metro despite not being able to pronounce any of the stations, hence tingtutong being the name for each one! We went to our waiting room for the train and I spotted empty seats. I asked a man sitting between two empty seats to move up, which he gladly did, yet tried to move whilst his drink had no lid on. He spilt the majority of his green tea everywhere and I unsuccessfully tried to save it with my hands. The cleaner woman saw the spill and threw sand under Adele’s seat to mop up the mess, a first for us both!

Sand solves all problems...

Finally, we got on the train to find a bizarre woman next to us. Firstly, she wasn’t even in the right seat and moved soon after, and also left her McDonald's filet o fish to go cold for an hour before eating it. Bleurgh. She finally moved and we counted down the minutes of the tedious train journey....it seemed to take much longer than the way there. Arriving back to near my house, I treated Adele to a scooter ride for the final part of the way, which was hilarious as she had to hope her scooter stopped when mine did! We both made it back to my apartment and stumbled into bed, exhausted after travelling for 9 hours. If we had done that journey back home, we definitely would have made it into a different country within Europe.

Ready to go back to Wuhan

Wednesday’s alarm for class woke me up and I went to teach one lesson before coming home. We didn’t do much for the rest of the day, instead chilling, packing and trying to weigh her suitcase (me stood on my spare bed struggling with 23kg of luggage). In the evening, Adele chose her favourite food to have for dinner and the man in the restaurant was obviously new, as after repeating our order four times, he was still unsure. However, we were still laughing from the way down, as a woman pushing a bike was so busy staring at us that she dropped her bike and then fell over it. Hilarious doesn’t cover it. We ate our dinner and climbed into bed for a nice long sleep (I swear we’re 22 going on 72), before Adele had to travel back *sob*.

I woke up on Thursday morning with Adele’s voice saying “My flight’s been cancelled!”. Yep, her flight from Paris to Birmingham had been cancelled. We had to get my mum on Skype so she could try and call France to speak to somebody from Air France (don’t think my Chinese sim card would enjoy that call), but because it was midnight in France, nobody was answering. Adele and I decided that her going to the airport early would be the best thing, so after writing a few helpful Chinese phrases on a post-it note – all the essentials such as ‘customer service’ and ‘Air France’, she caught a taxi and started her journey home. She ended up taking a completely new route home, which took 14 hours longer than expected and I was instantly lonely after her company for nearly two weeks. I had to console myself with washing and cooking instead.

On Friday, I did absolutely nothing of interest and I think 2 weeks of sightseeing took it out of me, as I sat in a comatose state watching catch-up TV and devouring my Easter Egg. Yes, the whole thing, including the mini eggs at the bottom. Saturday was much more productive, as I did planning, washing, Skyping and started my scrapbook full of photos from this year in China. I think it’s my new obsession. I am also definitely getting old and boring as a particular highlight of my day was being able to hang my washing out in the sun to dry – what a thrill. Tomorrow, I have to teach kids and adults so a lazy weekend is in order before I take advantage of the beautiful weather and plan some trips in the week. Rumour has it, that I’m heading back to Aloha diner and visiting another historical place of interest.....