“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!
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| 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.
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.
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| Fish and chips - first piece of fish since leaving England! |
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| 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.
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| Lunch with Paul |
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| 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.
"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.
