Tweet twoo

TSo this post is going to be slightly different. It may not be as long as usual. It may not work. But, I had the idea that since I don’t use Twitter, but have experienced a series of comment worthy unusual events, during which tweeting may have been the perfect way to express them, I should put them on here instead. So here follows is the full title of this post: Things I would have tweeted since arriving in China if I actually used Twitter. (I’m using the phrase “used Twitter” on purpose – I have a Twitter account, but I don’t use it).

While I have not mastered the way to insert the tweet box thingies that you see when reading articles that involve tweets (if anyone wants to show/tell me how to do this let me know!), they will still be fewer than 280 characters, as is the real case.

So here you have it: a round up of various interesting things that have happened since arriving in China:

I have been in China for two weeks now, and I appear to have lost all ability to use chopsticks.

“The most enjoy is a person to travel” is the motto on Grace’s shirt today. A philosophy to live by, me thinks.

After the dancing we did with my class this morning, I feel like I’m in an *insert Chinese martial art here* movie training montage.

A man just cycled past with speakers duct-taped to his handlebars, blaring Chinese opera, because why the heck not?

There is a 50ish year old man casually walking backwards on the treadmill. This is not the first time I have seen this. Life goals.

I am become a stereotypical kindergarten teacher. I have googly eyes and pipe cleaners in my art supply patterned tunic pockets along with safety scissors and double-sided tape. I’m wondering how much I can steal.

The class is supposed to be making pipe cleaner ducks. I’ve made a flamingo and called him Jeffrey.

I would have emergency beef jerky in my pocket too but I already ate it. There was an emergency – I was hungry.

According to the general consensus (aka the blissed expressions on the children’s face when I wave my makeshift fan (board game board) in their faces), it is too humid to function. The teachers disagree so on with the sticky show.

I’ve been handed more snotty tissues this week than I have in my entire life before.

It’s so humid, my hair has gone curly. Anyone who knows me knows that my hair detests curly. It stages a protest every time I try. That’s how humid it is.

One of my chores today is pick up caterpillar poo. I’m pretty sure that’s not in my job description.

I’ve transcended my earthly form and entered an entirely new state of being. I’m calling it: the sweat monster.

You know it’s hot and you’re climbing a mountain when sweat is dripping off your chin, and you get to the top and there’s salt deposits on your face.

Electric bikes are death traps on wheels. Electric is good. They run fine. They are silent. I guarantee that at some point I’m going to get hit by one. Probably at night. They don’t always have lights/don’t always use their lights.

George inappropriate action of the day: another kiss on the lips and Rachel headbutted my bum again.

If you’re broody, don’t come to Shenzhen. Children are everywhere. Since the one child policy ended a couple of years ago, folks have gone crazy and started popping out sproglets like it’s nobody’s business.

When it rains in Dongguan, the streets turn into rivers/lakes/ponds and it sheets down like a monsoon. Maybe I could start a new trend – the drowned rat look.

The movie wet in ten seconds vertical rain trope? Turns out to be a real thing. English rain is more commonly horizontal so I am shook.

Clearly my anti-rain song from yesterday didn’t work, so let’s try again today.

George inappropriate action of the day: coughed directly into my face and pulled my top down to look at my boobs. If I die from the plague it’s his fault.

Wheezing is the new breathing.

George inappropriate action of the day: hug attack from behind which meant his face was pressed directly against my bum.

Mosquitos can die in the fiery pits of hell. Brb just going to chop my legs off. That should stop the itching, right?

Apparently having a flabby tummy is hilarious to kids, especially when they slap it. Sometimes however, they tell me I’m pregnant instead. I just need to work out how to explain to my mother that I’m carrying the second coming of Christ.

Reading a story about a family of bears, who are all furry. I read a line and the kids parrot it. Except, they add the occasional ‘a’, so mama bear, instead of being “furry”, is “a furry” which changes the meaning only slightly.

The kids have given me a sticker that is no longer sticky. Not a problem, I’ll use my sweat to adhere it to my skin.

Sometimes, life is like a movie. Sometimes, it’s like a cartoon where Wily Coyote runs of a cliff and keeps running, or I step in a hole and try to keep walking. Moral of the story, even if you’re doing it to order a taxi: don’t walk and phone, folks.

The biggest disappointment of my life so far: I found a bottle of cider. I bought it because cider is rare here. It’s non-alcoholic. I’m just going to go and cry over it.

It turns out it is a bad idea to keep walking 10k steps a day when you have a blister. Instead of the blister healing, it gets worse. Who knew?

While the kids are learning to write in Chinese, I’m learning Chinese.

Sometimes, I get disheartened by the fact that I understand basically 0 Chinese. Then I remember that I’ve only been here 2 months and 2 months ago I understood actually 0 Chinese and I feel a little better.

There was a food festival today. I may have got a little overexcited by the fact that there was beef jerky and it tasted like home, and bought enough to feed a small army. There was also a small army of panda bears.

The food at this festival was very Chinese, and by that, I mean entire animals, oysters (traditional dish of Shenzhen, in their museum there is an entire wall of oyster shells), and unidentifiable things, that I’m reluctant to call meat, as it might not be…

I am now the proud mummy of a cluster of cacti, called the Arnolds. I have taken this big step in adopting them, since I cannot adopt the children…

When the wind whistles through this building during a storm, it’s easy to believe I’m in a horror movie.

Thunderstorms have been really common in the last few days – to the point that I’m no longer sure if the noise I just heard was thunder again, or someone banging something really loudly. Both are equally likely.

I’m incredibly proud of this rubbish photo. I got an actual lightning strike on film!

And that’s all folks, for now. These are not entirely in order, although some follow directly after others. I hope you enjoyed them.

A Day In the Life

Ping: the 4th tallest building in the world

Now that I’ve been in China for six weeks, and I’ve marvelled several times over how quickly the time is going, I figured I should probably explain what I’m actually doing with this swiftly disappearing time.

During the week, I wake up at the ungodly time of 6.30 which for folks back in Grand Britannia, is 10.30 (now 11.30 – China does not do clocks changing so now I’m only seven hours ahead), a.k.a. in the past, but I snooze for twenty minutes, because sleep is precious. We get to school for around 7.30 to have breakfast before greeting the kids with their morning talking time. They get greeted at the by one of us saying “good morning”, then after their daily health check (temperature, check in their mouth and a squirt of hand sanitizer) we’re there to greet them with a question they have to answer in English, normally related to what they’re currently learning in their lessons.

They’ve normally all arrived by 8.30 thankfully as by then our bums are numb from sitting on child sized chairs (this job is great for me to feel like a giant – even more so that I’m the tallest of the British women here!) and we have a chance to go to our staffroom and prepare for the day for twenty minutes. Since we normally start our lessons at 9.00, we head to the classrooms about ten minutes before that so we can set everything up that we need to.

My KA class with their International Women’s Day creations

I have two classes, KA who are 5-6 and very smart, and KC who are normally 3-4 but there’s one or two in their who haven’t reached their third birthday yet, and they are also very smart but more importantly very affectionate. I am not starved for hugs or inappropriate touching (I have a running commentary in my diary for “inappropriate George activity of the day” which includes boob grabs, bum slaps, lifting up my skirt or looking down my top), especially from George himself, who Hannah (the Head of English and class teacher for my KC) says doesn’t receive all that much affection at home. It was his birthday this week, and he was so excited to tell me, in English that it took him several attempts but it was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard, him lisping to me in excited tones that it was his birthday, I had to give him an extra long hug.

Anyway, each week it switches between which class I have in the morning and which I have in the afternoon. KA have half an hour of English class, while KC get 20 minutes. We teach them from a syllabus, Dr Bird, which has them learn classroom English as well as approximately 8 words on different topics every four weeks. But then kids are really smart and so those eight words are normally pretty much sorted within two or at the most three weeks, so a lot of our class preparation is finding new words that relate to the topics, but aren’t too complicated and making flashcards of them, as flashcards are magic and make teaching so much easier.

The teaching itself is not at all how I imagined. My lessons are normally; introduction, a song, (re)introduce the vocabulary, play games using the vocabulary, another song.

The rest of the day we spend the time with the kids in the classroom, talking and singing to them in English. Also dancing the Macarena for a significant proportion of time, or pretending to be a monster. I have become much less self-conscious in general about goofing around, as kids love it when adults (me) are silly and it makes them laugh and smile, and to be honest, that is all I want for them. To be happy and enjoy themselves, and if they learn some English at the same time, well that’s all the better.

Lunchtime is awesome; the kids have a nap until 2.30pm which means, that since we finish at 11.30, we have a three-hour lunch, during which we normally go back to the flat. If we are tired from being foolish twenty-somethings and not going to bed early enough and having to get up at an obscene hour, we can also have a nap. I try not to indulge as it makes me more likely to go to bed too late and not get enough sleep at night, thus perpetuating the nap-cycle but sometimes a little ziz is nice. Until I wake up and feel like death warmed up.

School finishes anywhere between 4.30 and 5pm although the kids can start being picked up from 4pm. We lead them to the gate and say “bye-bye” as they scream and excitedly leap into their grand/parents arms, completely forgetting about their long-suffering teachers.

We have a bit more lesson prep time which is normally spent looking at the clock and counting down until dinner is served. If dinner is something truly delectable, such as chicken’s feet or pig trotters, we skip the dinner and head elsewhere, but otherwise we eat there before heading home for the night.

Two or three times a week, I head to the gym for something to do, and also to get fit and maybe lose a bit of weight (the food here is rice, i.e. carb, heavy and no good for those trying not to put on weight) and I’m actually enjoying it. This is something that I never thought I’d say, as the gym is not a place for enjoyment, but other than sweating enough to fill several buckets, not that anyone would want to, working out makes me feel good, plus it’s a chance to catch up on my podcasts.

On Saturday evenings, I have Dungeons and Dragons, with a load of other expats, which is a lot of fun, even if I spend a majority of my time there confused with little clue as to what’s going on. As I said to the group, “I’m not very experienced, but I am enthusiastic.”

Otherwise, my weekends are spent alternatively doing absolutely nothing, and exploring the local area (see my last blog post for previous adventures). For example, this weekend was a long one, due to a Chinese holiday of some sort, so I have climbed the tallest mountain in Shenzhen, Wutong Mountain, which is 943.7m, and you basically climb it from the literal bottom, and visited Ping, the 4^th tallest building in China, as well as Shenzhen museum. That took two days and the third, I didn’t even change out of my pyjamas. Because I was tired and didn’t want to. And after all that walking, I needed time to rest.

My ridiculously sweaty self after climbing to the top of Wutong Mountain, 943.7m. The last 1,100m is known as the Hao Han slope; it’s steps all the way up and you gain the last ~150m of elevation

Shenzhen International Garden and Flora Expo Park

Last Sunday, Victoria, Lucy and I went to Shenzhen International Garden and Flora Expo Park. Since a picture paints a thousand words, have a selection of those I took.

Our view on entering the park
There were loads of random rocks with Chinese carved into them
Where do the stairs lead…? Another path actually
Old pillars, new(ish) apartment blocks
Explorers Lucy (L) and Victoria (R) venturing into the wilderness
Paths leading to other places
Where does the natural bamboo path lead?
To a Chinese engraved rock
Mix of the old and the new: a reflection of contemporary Chinese society?
There were approximately 33.4 million butterflies in the park, but this was the only one that landed for long enough
Blue lotus
The blue lotus pond
So many half hidden gazebo type things
They were so flattered when I asked for this photo
This could be the cover for a novel or something
Luckily this water buffalo stayed as still as stone while I took a picture of it
Pink lotuses/loti/lotodes?
Pink lotus
I took advantage of this woman having a photoshoot
Kingfisher from afar
Kingfisher from anear
Chinese creature on a building
I would be worried if this fish was a realistic interpretation
Crane
Snapdragons
A view of the pagoda
Lost in the jungle
The approach
Buddhist monks praying
Chinese lanterns are ubiquitous
Ceiling art inside the pagoda
Sculptures inside the pagoda

I had a really good time at the park and took so many pictures (this is 60 of 250 and probably too many but I just couldn’t cut them down anymore). White people are rare, and while I took pictures of people in traditional clothing, they took pictures of us. Sometimes they asked, sometimes they didn’t. One guy asked, then followed us around for about half an hour, and we had to use our super ninja skills to lose him. Creep. Lucy wants to know what he did with the picture, but I really don’t.

We ended the day with pizza at pizza express which was pretty much a perfect ending. Unlike this. Sorry about that…

China – Through the Haze

Now, this is not a political thing, talking about cutting through the haze of Chinese politics or some other hard-hitting article you’d find in some fancy journal or newspaper. I just mean that it’s really hazy here. Whether that’s because of the pollution or the fact that we’re close-ish to the sea, but the hills in the distance may, in fact, not exist. All I know is that they’re only occasionally there, more often than not half-hidden by haze.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is dsc02480.jpg — *There may or may not be hills behind the crane. Their existence is yet to be confirmed.*

Nope, this is just my blog. All about the adventure that is moving to China at the completely unexpected age of twenty-six. Unexpected, since it’s long past my gap year, and I haven’t just graduated, or recently graduated like all my co-adventurers seem to have done. I am the oldest by at least three years. I have real world job experience ‘n’ stuff. Not that it matters all that much. Very few of us speak all that much Chinese. When I say that, I mean I speak literally no Chinese. I can say thank you and hello. And that’s it. It’s kind of ridiculous how incapable you are when you don’t speak the language. Luckily, other people can and they’ve been a great help, but that’s a story for another day. Today is all about pre-China, Before China.

How do you shut down your life in just over two months? The answer is not easily and with many tears. I cried more in those two months than in the entire two years beforehand. It wasn’t so much saying goodbye to my friends and family, although that was hard; it was having them be so proud of me and it was the talking about how big and scary the move would be. It was the prospect of not seeing folks again for six months or a year or ever, when I’d been hanging out with them multiple times a week. They may be on the end of the phone, or a Facebook message away or whatever, but it wouldn’t be the same.

It was also the stress of it all. Putting notice on my job, moving out of my house, cancelling my bills, my subscriptions, and doing my teacher training. I spent an entire day calling various companies to cancel everything, waiting to talk to people so I could do so. It’s not so easy online cancelling stuff, because the companies always want to know why you want to stop their services. Pro-tip: telling people that you’re moving to China is a good way of stopping them from asking you to renew their services with a better deal.

The teacher training was also an added stress. It was 120 hours and I was asked to get it done by the time I left the UK. No biggie. It was only ten twelve-hour days. Except that learning is hard. And ridiculously tiring. I couldn’t work all day like that. I worked for a few hours. Then I would lose all semblance of concentration and just do nothing for a while. I practised a lot of procrastination. I procrastinated by stressing over how much I had to do. I had to do it around visiting my family and having them visit me. I had to do it around packing up my house. I had to do it around doctor’s appointments, vaccinations, time to purchase things I needed, like contact lenses.

Then was the flight itself. I hadn’t thought about it much, just that it was long, and that I had booked the particular one requested. I finished everything two days before I had to fly. I repacked my suitcase the day before, its weight limit being way over both the first and the second time, and not because of the clothes I was taking. We couldn’t find anything more to reduce the weight, so we resolved to pay the surcharges if necessary (it wasn’t, despite being three kilogrammes over the limit). It was then that I started thinking about the changeover in Helsinki. An airport I had never been to. While I have flown many a time solo, this was my first time solo with a layover.

It was surprisingly easy. I didn’t even need to do anything but have my boarding cards. My suitcase was transferred without me. The mild panic that it wouldn’t be didn’t leave until I picked it up from the baggage carousel after the interminable wait to get through customs in Hong Kong. After that it was plain sailing, if an incredibly long day at the same time. By the end of it, it turned out I’d slept less than 3 hours in approximately 34. It was a lot of standing around and waiting. Waiting for our visas to be issued. Waiting for our bank accounts to be opened. Waiting for our sim cards to be set up and issued. As there was seven of us, everything took longer than usual. The only thing that seemed to go quickly was the incredibly detailed medical checks. I had my first ultrasound (my non-existent baby is fine – thanks for asking), I peed ultra-dehydrated pee into a cup, I had a thing pointed at me (apparently it checked my temperature) from three feet away, I had suction cups attached to my under-boobs (supposedly for an ECG), I had an eye test (while wearing my glasses as I couldn’t see any of the board without them),I had an x-ray of my lungs (they weren’t broken thank goodness) I had blood drawn, I sold my soul. I never received the results, but since I’m still here, I imagine that I’m not carrying some deadly disease, and that I am in fact healthy.

After that, it was dinner, failing to use chopsticks, and being introduced to our flat. I got the en-suite, after quite a long time of negotiations between us, and we basically went straight to bed, still somewhat unable to believe that I was actually moving in here, to China. It wasn’t that I was coming to China, that had sunk in, it was that I was now living in China. And even after two weeks of being here, I still can’t quite believe it. That this is my house for the next year. That this is my life now.