Oh, I forgot to mention…

Yesterday I arrived for my early classes. The ones I hate, because I have to get up really early which is really difficult because it’s really cold.

So there I stand, 500 layers of clothing at 8am, and what do they tell me? Oh, you don’t have the Secondary School classes anymore, because they’re preparing for the exams and Oral English has been canceled.

Colourful expletives shot through my mind and thankfully didn’t reach my mouth - the gist of it was, why the hell didn’t somebody tell me before I dragged my 37 degree body into this 0 degree temperature?

In bounces the Money Man’s Right Hand and says, oh, didn’t you know? And by the way, from the next week you will not have any classes at all. But don’t worry, we will still calculate your salary.

You’re damn right you will.

So down swoops the double edged sword. Chinese New Year is 29 January, and the school starts like 10 days after that which means I will have almost a month and a half holiday. Great.

So I have all this time in which they will pay me the basic of my salary, no overtime and won’t feed me, which means my expenses will shoot through the roof and my salary comes down. PLUS, I will probably have to go somewhere to entertain myself which means I will spend even more money.

I hate holidays.

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A wise old sage once said “Don’t piss where you eat”. Funny how some old sages manage to cross cultural barriers. I guess wisdom is universal.

I’ve befriended a fellow teacher who teaches Pinyin to the very young kids here at school. She didn’t speak much English and obviously had a vested interesting in befriending me. So over the last month or so we’ve spent much time in each other’s company, her teaching me Chinese and me teaching her English.

Her English has improved with leaps and bounds and my Chinese has just been crawling along. It’s no reflection on my teaching abilities mind you, it just points to her determination (and my lack of?). A lot of the teaching has taken place in my apartment *cough* and although it hasn’t exactly been covert, it hasn’t been the most publisized of activities either.

Yesterday, all in Chinese characters of which I understand few, a message arrived on my phone stating something to the effect of ‘do not seduce this woman, she is married. Be warned of a beating. Be careful whilst working in China’. I ignored it, not knowing what it meant, thinking it was a message form the phone operator telling me my credit is exhausted, but later the evening at dinner I had a friend translate it for me and was rather shocked.

Naturally I confronted her about it, and she was as shocked as I am. She assured me that she is not married, never was, and has not had a boyfriend since last year. So now theories abound. King recons it might be another jealous co-worker who’s been caniving like that, but I’m not so convinced of my popularity. Regardless, I will take it easy for a while, or not - depending on how the wind blows. Threats in other languages don’t bother me much (he says, having dedicated half a post to the subject).

I just finished a very good class with my Grade 7’s. They’re 11 and 12 years old and recently, some of them started playing football with Kind and I. What is obvious is that there is fierce rivalry between boys and girls, and the girls do not stand back for the boys; bigger or not. It makes for a fun class, because once you’ve started a game and pit the boys against the girls, the competition is more fierce than on the football field.

They bend over backwards to find the grammar for the words which are involved with the game, so it works well. And they die for games. Any game. Hangman is the firm favourite in any class, and I also have a word puzzle game and Tic Tac Toe game, which are both popular, but not as popular as Hangman.

Shiyan is getting really cold now. We’ve had 2 relatively pleasant days at the start of the week, which were nice - we got our football games going, but since then the weather has turned sour and it has been positively freezing every since. For 3 days now I have worn 4 layers of clothing, and I only have about 4 layers of clothing to wear. I need to shop for winter. Thankfully each day has allowed about an hour of football each, in between the cold drizzle that otherwise decorate the hours.

It snows here in Shiyan. The most snow I’ve seen was in 2003 when I won a trip to Frankfurt. But even so, the snow there was only about 1cm on the ground - here, they say, it snows buckets full. On the one hand, I’m quite excited, because hey, it’s snow. On the other hand, I’m quite apprehensive, because hey - snow is ice, and ice is well, ice cold. So I need some gloves and several more layers of clothing, or 1 or 2 layers of quality insulate. I’m not a winter person.

Last night an ex-colleague, Candy, took King and I to the best restaurant we’ve been to in Shiyan on have an apparently very local dish. The dish is called Chafing Dish, although I could find no reason for the name. You sit down at ‘n regular table, with the exception that this table has a burner in the middle. They then bring out a donut shaped bowl, with soup-mix around the edge, and clear water in the ‘hole’.

They get that going on the burner until you have a boiling broth. You order whatever you fancy, in our case, 22 ducks feet (when in Rome), some beef, cabbage, noodles and an unidentified vegetable, which name didn’t translate into English too well. You go about your business, dunk your piece of whatever in the broth and if it’s too spicy you rinse it in the clear water, else, you chow. Very social. Yesterday was free beer night and there were 6 beers waiting on the table.

Ok, so the beer only had 3.6% alcohol, but only two of our party of 4 drank beer. Quantity I say, not quality. After 4 bottles I was hardly tipsy, although my face was bright red. I’d like to blame the heat from the gas burner. Nevertheless, the evening was a fabulous social event and our dinner lasted for 2 and a half hours. We didn’t eat as much as I thought, because after the not-so-long walk home, I was hungry again.

That’s another thing - recently I’m really hungry, all the time. I have a theory - it’s probably a) because it’s so cold, and b) because I’m suddenly getting so much exercise. We’ve been playing football daily for the last week at least, and otherwise I run up and down the stairs the whole time. My apartment is on the 3rd floor of the dormitory, and the office is on the 4th floor of the school building. And then throughout the day, the different classes are on different floors, and it’s up and down for lunch, and dinner and whenever I’m on my way somewhere.

So I’m chalking up a fair few kilojoules just for energy, and even more to keep warm. In the meantime I’m getting ripped, and loving it. I need more protein for my arms though, because even grasshoppers are making me look stringy.

I haven’t explored Shiyan much, so there’s nothing much to report on the tourist(y) front. Yesterday though we went looking for a remote (King and I) and we stumbled through the back streets and markets which are fascinating places. I eventually stumbled upon a little underground market (literally) where I’ve been before, and I knew for a fact there was a Audio/Visual stall there. So we found a new remote (my ‘new’ one that came with the player didn’t work). At first the guy didn’t want to sell it to me, because he said it wouldn’t work.

Then I saw the same model that I have on his shelf and pointed the remote that way and pushed ‘eject’. That player, and 3 others on the shelf, all ejected their CD’s and after I tested the menu control, which worked too, I was happy, bought it (with batteries) and now Bob’s my uncle.

Some of the senior students invited me for a game of footy, because they’ve obviously seen me display my superior skills opposite the 6 year olds I was playing yesterday and now they feel they have to challenge me. On top of that King has been going around telling everyone that I’m a star basketball player and play for the national team in my country. The fact that nobody has ever heard of a South African National Basketball team doesn’t appear to bother anyone.

Hey, I’m tall, so I must be a basketball player. Anyway, let me see if I can save some face on the pitch.

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Ok, I’ve been getting some interesting referrals, so if you landed here because you were looking for travel related information… you’re sort of not in the right place.

Some time ago, er… August I believe it was, I was at home in South Africa going through all the motions of setting up a travel company. You can read the posts to follow the in-my-head updates, but bottom line… I decided having other people visit far-off exotic places is not what I wanted to do. I myself, wanted to do it.

So, plugged into the net, got myself a job in China and not a month later, here I am. Of course, my purpose here is more noble than just plain old traveling - it’s also escaping from myself. But, now, I’m teaching English and getting to know the culture a bit. The key, however, to the culture, is learning the language.

Yah, as a foreigner people find you fascinating and would love to talk to you… in Chinese. And hands up, who can speak Chinese. Unfortunately, not me. Yet. But hey, I’m working on it. I can already order noodles without worms in it (it’s in a post somewhere) and a selected few other phrases like the ever important “what is this”. I need to get my hands on a nice little English/Chinese dictionary, because you can only learn so many phrases before you need to know what individual words mean.

So as I was saying. My profuse apologies if you landed here looking for something else. If you want to travel, let me know. East of West would have been about Asia, and I am in Asia.

I’ve spent significant time in Malaysia (used to be married, long story, read the posts) and I also visited Singapore quite often. I’ve visited Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong when it was still Hong Kong. Last year I also spent a week a Bangkok, but that wasn’t quite the trip it should have been. I did drive there though, and that in itself is an adventure.

So, what East of West is all about now, is just blogging. I’m torn between getting my own computer or a digital camera, both of which having it’s own benefits. If it’s a digital camera… pictures for this blog. If it’s a computer; more blogging and other things that I could do that I can’t do now, for instance… not sitting here in the office at 23:52. Which reminds me, it’s a school night and I need to get some sleep.

I really should stop drinking coffee after 6pm.

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