Chance

I had a really interesting Skype call with one of my online English students this evening, Pratap. He is from Bangladesh and told me that him and his friend are planning to set up an NGO to enable more children to be educated in Dhaka, at the moment they both self-fund 15 children to get an education. They pay for a teacher to teach them in a room beneath a temple which they have been able to use free of charge. Pratap has asked me to get involved with the project, see if I can help in anyway and of course I would love to. I love how just by chance, I have come across someone that thinks the same way as me, and I get to be his English teacher.  I really do want to be able to help as many people as possible across the globe, I know one day I will look back on my life and know that I achieved my goal. Even now, sometimes I just sit and think about what I have been doing with my life over the past two years and it really does make me happy, to know I have made a positive difference to the lives that are the future of our humanity.
For Larabanga at the moment, I have been in touch with an NGO based in Canada called BooksMatter. They ship books over to Ghana to benefit disadvantaged schools. Larabanga Primary School, is totally under resourced so for us to get this opportunity is amazing. Fingers crossed by the end of June, the school will have recieved lots of books! Just the organising to do, getting the books from Accra to Larabanga and finding someone with a camera so we can send photographs of the presentation to BooksMatter. We have to pay for the transportation of the books from Accra, which is a really long way, we weren't sure if we were going to have the funds to do this but a friend of mine, that I used to work with, Chris, is doing a sponsored expedition next month and told me he is going to donate his sponsor money to Larabanga Life Project. This will really help us to get the books. We're really lucky to have lots of people to support what we are trying to do.
Another thing that happened by chance. Here in Changsha, Hunan province of China, I've met a Ghanaian!! I was out with friends at a bar, I got chatting to a couple of people and we were telling eachother where we were from, when he said Ghana... I was so happy, literally all of my memories came flooding back. We met again the next weekend, it was great to be able to talk about Ghanaian stuff like... Jollof rice, Shatta Wale, Al Qaeda dance, CHARLIEEEE and Fufu, he actually told me that he makes Ghanaian food here.. Definitely going to have to try some. Ghana always follows me, homeland.So I got a call from Quame and he invited me to a seminar on Saturday which is being held by members of the Ghanaian embassy. It's going to be about gender equality and the empowerment of women. I'm so excited to go and meet people that really know what they're talking about, I love how opportunities like this are so random but mean so much.

Aunt Shao in Zhuliangqiao

So to try and cut a long story short... Frederikke (my flat mate) was in Beijing three years ago and met a Chinese girl who is now studying in Frederikke's city in Demark and she has been in contact with Frederikke's mum. Wang Lee found out that we were in Changsha and insisted that we visit her Aunt here, we agreed of course. Nothing better than actually knowing Chinese people and getting to know the real China. It was the Sunday just gone. The sun was shining so we were in high spirits anyway, we got picked up from our school by Aunt Shao's nephew and his Fiance. They told us it was going to be an hours drive North of Changsha to the countryside, I was sooo happy when they told us. The city can get really tiring sometimes and we both needed some fresh air at least. We arrived after driving down some really narrow, winding country roads. We pulled into the drive way and came face to face with the whole family, I really felt under dressed and out of place... The "house" was so fancy, I've never seen anything so grand. Aunt Shao is an architect who designed the whole house herself, she and her husband also own 14 properties in Changsha that they rent out. The country house is only for the weekends. So posh!
We were served tea the traditional way at a table with a thousand tea pots and minute cups. Soon, we had met every member of her family and had seen the whole house. As we were being shown the house, I was in complete amazement. Everything was so "show home" like, it didn't look lived in at all! We were told that Aunt Shao had arranged activities for us in the afternoon. One of the activities was digging up bamboo shoots. It was much harder than it looked and they had to end up taking over from me and Frederikke, just not got the strength. The bamboo shoots that were dug up, were cooked and served to us at dinner time, they were so good. I'd never had bamboo before so I wasn't sure what to expect but it was so delicious! And so fresh.
Aunt Shao and her husband were eager for us to play cards with them, a Chinese game of course and it was definitely a step up from what I'm used to (Snap), it took me a while and a lot of help to get the hang of it but we ended up playing outside for around an hour, in the sun. Then there was also their Mahjong table "machine", they thought it was great that we sat at the table so they decided to get lots of pictures of the white girls playing Mahjong ahah.
Before dinner, we went for a walk around the village, it was so peaceful. We were introduced to some of the other people in the village although there only seemed to be around 5 houses in the whole village so everyone knew eachother. We were served tea at each place we went. We ended up refering to it as the "tea crawl".

Changde

Hopefully this is not a really boring account of my weekend and will actually be an enjoyable read. After two quite challenging Grade 3 classes at a public school on Friday morning, I was so ready to get away for the weekend. Our Friday afternoon though, was full of creativity on mine and Frederikke's part. We were making musical instruments from reused items ready for the second part of our environment lessons. Not exactly how we wanted to be spending our time but we also didn't want to have to worry about it over the weekend. In the evening, we went to Changsha Cultural Evening at Orange Island, there was awards for various things, like photography. There were performances from many acts from around the world, lots of talent so it was a great evening! Then of course, we headed to Crave, met some more new people. Then to Hawa, I spent around an hour talking to a guy from Cote D'Ivoire, I was actually able to have a coversation in French. Although I did fail my French A-Level, I really want to improve. It would be really strange if I actually went home from China having improved my French more than my Chinese. My Chinese is going "ok" I guess, it is really difficult but I am able to ask for the things I would really need, like directions and how much something costs. As long as I am able to get by, I think thats ok for me. After speaking to my new Ivorian friend, I really want to concentrate on getting better, I shocked myself with how much I do actually know, but my grammar is pretty bad. So getting back to the apartment at around 3am, we had planned to be at the train station at 6:30am, this didn't happen. We agreed that we would leave at 7 and get the later train. We woke up, still feeling slightly light headed and went to the train station. We asked for the tickets but were told no and that the train timetable we had seen online was wrong. Thanks China! We left and were approached by a random guy asking if we were going to Zhanjiajie, so we said Changde and he whisked us off to some random place behind the station. Probably not the smartest thing to do of course but yeah. We couldn't believe it when the "bus" pulled up, it was a mini-van. The door opened and there were no seats to be found, just a few plastic stools that definitely weren't suitable. We just got in and laughed and laughed about it amongst all of the random Chinese people that weren't even phased. Even Tro-Tro's in Ghana had seats... Half an hour later, the van stopped and we were all told to get out, there was a coach waiting for us to get on, what a relief! 2 hours later, we were in Changde! But then we needed to get to Taohuayuan for the Peach Flowers we planned to see. We asked a few people at the station about the buses to get us there but had to go to a different station. When we got there, we were directed outside to a "car park" full of random little buses. We found the one going were we wanted and asked if we could get some food quickly, she said yes and we went. Two minutes later, we turned around and heard beeping, they were leaving, so we had to leave the food and run back to the bus whilst it was moving... We never seem to know what the hell is going on but that's all part of the adventure right?
Taohuayuan, was a really peaceful, there was a Lake right in the middle and one side, the Peach Flower mountain/garden and then our accommodation and food places on the opposite side. We dropped our things of in the room and went to the Peach Flowers, I think we were actually too early or too late... Although, we had been told that this was the right time to go. There were some and they were really "pretty". We also didn't realise that we would be basically climbing a Mountain. On the way up, there were some cool things, there was a guy who was writing peoples names on weird scribes and he wanted to take pictures with us, that part of living in China is getting really annoying but his voice was quite soothing so we didn't mind so much.
At one point, we entered a Buddhist temple and were given incense sticks to "offer to the Gods" I guess. Then we had to kneel down and pray in front of the statue. It then took a turn, there were maybe 5 guys in the room and then me and Frederikke. We were about to leave and they called us over to a table with a book to write our names etc. Then he said "Money", as clear as anything, the only English word he knew, we told them that we didn't have any and there response was "You're from Denmark and no money?!" (in Chinese of course), we got a little freaked and just left as quickly as possible. Then there was more hiking upwards! I had 2 hours of sleep the night before...
Zhangjiang- we went here in the evening, we weren't sure what there was to do there but it was one of the closest places to where we were staying so we got on a bus and were shoved off when it was our "stop", we looked slightly lost when we got off so we were approached by a lady who spoke English. She turned out to be such a lovely person and her English name was Amy... Basically sisters! Asking where we were from, she thought we were Russian as that's what someone on the bus had said... ahhaha oh! She recommended a restaurant for us to try so we went, when we eventually found it, we sat down and they only had a Chinese tick menu. It was pretty hard trying to use our Mandarin to order but then a girl must have overheard and she came over to help, we just ordered some random stuff but it turned out to be really good so alls well that ends well.
We realised that there was a river in the city, we went off tto find it in the rain, it was dark and smoggy... not exactly the perfect setting for appreciating the aesthetics of a river, but we tried. We got back to the hotel, extremely tired and fell asleep to a really enthusiastic Chinese talent show. When I woke in the middle of the night I managed to turn the tv half off and then I vaguely remember us waking up to the sound of the heavens opening. Sunday! Sunday was a great day. We got to Changde, after an uncomfortable bus ride, I sat next to such a sweet little family. A young couple with their baby daughter, they were kissing and cuddling her all the way, I got a picture of her, it's lovely to see how much they cherish their children here. Another difference between here and Ghana. Not that I'm saying they don't love their children but they're born and raised with different ideas. I find it quite hard to get my head around the fact that our reasons for living can be so far apart yet we can all end up being so close to eachothers lives.
The first walking street of the Hunan Province is in Changde, so sure, we had to go and have a look. It was really quiet and there were just a lot of expensive shops. We wanted to find something really good for breakfast/lunch, Frederikke saw a sign for coffee, not actually sure were the sign was pointing but we walked into the nearest door. What happened next is quite cool. There was no coffee, only a piano school and an English tutoring school... We looked so confused, then two people came from the English school and asked if we needed help. We told them we were looking for some food and it turns out, Habby (one of them) has studied in Newcastle, she was so excited because I'm from Northern England, so yeah from here, we spent the whole day with her and one of her other teachers. Who is Chinese but lived in Vancouver for 10 years. One of the things I love about travelling, is just that. We wandered into a random building and ended up meeting some really cool people who actually made our trip. Chances? They shown us the Poem wall, hundreds of poems written by famous Chinese poets and there is even a famous line from Shakespeare featured there. I really had such a meaningful conversation with Habby, I won't write anymore than that on my blog. I will just say that, being able to relate and impact on someones life within two hours of meeting them really is something. She gave me a Times magazine issue that I had really wanted to read, although it was from November last year. We got in a car back to Changsha around 6:30pm, we decided that we needed another massage (Chinese massages can be addictive), when we got back, we went straight to a "spa" and had a very strange experience with a hollow glass ball and fire... on my feet and oh a wooden tube stuck to my foot. It was really good though, they are so good at it here, they actually make a difference to your body. This concluded a really weird/fun weekend spent in and around Changde.

The week that was Beijing

Although I haven't been in Beijing for five weeks now, I still haven't wrote about my time there so I thought it was about time I did. My trip started with a stressful drive to Manchester Airport with my mum, as we're both not great with directions, we aren't exactly safe to be on the roads together but anyway we arrived with time to spare, not much but some. I hurried through check in and security, this also involved a panic that I'd lost my passport. Of course I hadn't, it was just in my other tray but it had to be scanned again because I'd forgotten about the liquids I had in my bag... Oops! After that drama I headed for my gate so I could board my flight to Heathrow. This was the flight that I managed to book for around £3.00! It's crazy what you can do if you just spend an extra 10 minutes searching different combinations of flights. Here's a tip for anyone booking international flights with stopovers: Don't book the flights all together, this is automatically more expensive because they are sending your luggage to the other plane for you but it's really not neccessary as they ended up doing that for me in Moscow anyway. I think all in all I saved about £80.00 just by making seperate bookings, not bad!
So, I got to Heathrow in plenty of time to charge my phone (which was dead from using Google Maps on the way to Manchester) and also to meet Beth, we had spoken on Facebook a couple of times and it turned out we had booked the same flights and were doing the same thing so why not meet up? Once my phone had turned itself back on, I had a message from Beth telling me where she was in the terminal so I got my things and went on a look out. I found her straight away thanks to her very practical choice of hoodie colour! (Bright red). We went to get something to keep us going, food wise, when we got to the self-service checkouts, I was about to put my things down and then I noticed that the customer before me had left their card in the machine. Even my stomach sunk. I was just thinking about how gutted I would have been, arriving in a foreign country and realising that you don't have your card. Stuff nightmares are made of...
We then boarded our Transaero flight to Moscow, not such a good airline but thats what discount prices get you, could've been a lot worse though. Of course because we had booked seperatley and checked in at different places we couldn't sit together but it was ok as I had 3 seats all to myself. That has to be the best feeling, when you get on your flight, anxiously wait for that really smelly snorer to arrive and then they never appear. Bingo! Apparently, transaero have been branded the Russian easyjet so I guess that explains a lot. We arrived in Moscow, Beth told me a few things to expect which were grunting and zero smiles, I kind of expected this from Russians but this was something else. Because I found it so uncomfortable, I kept laughing. We were standing in the queue for passport control and it was so awkward. Literally nobody cracked a smile... Me and Beth kept laughing, we felt like we were naughty school children or something, so morbid. When I got to the desk, I was told in a mixture of English and Russian that I was in the wrong place because I didn't have a Russian visa. I did have a little panic at this point as I wasn't exactly expecting a really smiley person to meet me at the help desk. We tried to go through another part of the airport but I didn't have my boarding pass because I booked the flights seperately like I mentioned before so of course, the foreigner card was played and they pointed to a desk. A really grumpy looking lady emerged from a door and another member of staff explained. She actually turned out to be really helpful which I counted my lucky stars for, she was patient with me as I tried to explain that my luggage would have been taken of the plane and not transferred like it needed to be. She made a phone call, gave me my boarding pass and of I went, just holding on to the trust I had to put in the airports hands. I kind of started to mentally prepare myself for not having any luggage to collect in Beijing. One funny/awkward/stupid thing I did actually... We sat down in the terminal so we could decide what we were going to do and I looked at the wall and said something along the lines of "look at that guy", Beth just looked at me, I genuinely thought that it was a man looking at the shop window. Turns out it was just a painting. Awkward, I was definitely breaking the ice hahha!

Oh yeah and guess how many hours we had to wait in Moscow? 11. Yes, such a long time. There was so much lighting... all night. I really hate artificial lighting at the best of times, let alone when I have to try and get some sleep. On a cafe's sofa. We looked so homeless. Throughout the 11 hours, I think I dozed and slept for not very long at all. I had my hand through the strap of my bag for the entire time. I felt so rubbish by the time we were waiting for our flight to Beijing.
Me and Beth got to know eachother more, it feels so weird writing about her at the point when we had just met eachother because now, lets just say we're very close friends (Beth, you know what I mean haha...). When we were at our gate, we saw that Sierra, had posted in the Facebook group, asking if anyone else was in Moscow. I commented but couldn't seem to recognise her from her pictures. There was one girl that we thought might have been her but we didn't want to risk it. Yes, it was her in the end and it turned out she was thinking the exact same about us. Ha! Nevermind, we got there in the end. The flight from Moscow to Beijing was pretty bad, again it could've been worse. I was sat next to a middle-aged Chinese guy, we didn't converse but I offered him a mint which he refused and he showed me how to recline my chair. It was such an uncomfortable flight, all I wanted to do was sleep but I just couldn't. I was so relieved when we landed in Beijing, so relieved. We had to take a train to the baggage collection area, I'm actually still quite surprised at how straight forward everything from this point seemed to go. We had to fill in an immigration form and show our visas. I thought there was bound to be a problem but there wasn't. My luggage actually arrived!!! It was gift wrapped too... I'm not joking either. I couldn't believe that it had arrived. After hearing Alastairs story about his luggage, I wasn't ever feeling optimistic about it and I really didn't want to end up wearing someone elses underwear ahhha. (Soorrrry Mr A)
This marked the two nights no sleep stage as now I was 8 hours ahead of England. There was a hilarious sign at the airport toilets though, it read "Please close the door for your convenience", it's ok here for you not to close the door and sometimes there isn't even a door to close. We were preparing to wait for our 6am pick up as we had been told but when we walked through arrivals, there was two lovely Chinese girls waiting for us! Gloria and ViVi! We got to the hotel at 5am local time after having to keep my eye out incase my bag fell out of the open boot of the taxi. I was happy when we found out that me and Beth would be sharing a room whilst we were here, we went up, showered and slept. We set a very ambitious alarm of 8am but we definitely didn't take any notice, we woke up at various times but for real at about 3pm. It was ok though as this day was just dedicated to arrivals. We went down to the lobby in search of some other TEFL'ers.
We rounded up some people and headed out for some dinner. We were "shooed" out of one place but came across another and were made very welcome. She lead us upstairs, we thought we were going to end up in her living room or something but it turned out to just be more tables and of course a smoke filled room of Chinese people smoking and drinking. They had picture menus which helped and of course, the very basic Mandarin we knew alongside our phrasebooks. We ended up with a lovely meal actually, strange but good.





On the Thursday, we had our orientation presentation. It was very useful and informative. We then got split into classes for our afternoon activities which were Tai Chi and Calligraphy. The Tai Chi instructor was brilliant, of course at the end of the class we took some pictures together. During Calligraphy, ViVi wrote my name for me in Chinese characters, which I've kept, a good souvenir. I ended up drawing a guy with glasses and a few more squiggles. In the evening, we had a "Welcome Dinner", the food was insane! Although, they left the ducks heads on the plate. Great chance to get to know people more! My class had the Friday morning off so we decided to get a group together and head to the Summer Palace. I ended up being the only girl but I had such a laugh with the guys. It was quite a treck in the end but it was really worth it, wish we had more time though but we had to rush back for Mandarin class. Thankgoodness for Mark! He was a great navigator and photographer!

It was also Zayns birthday so we went to the place I mentioned before, again. I was also told by Jess that Carmex is addictive... Interesting evening, lovely food again. Happy Birthday Zayn... (Next to me in the picture) I hope he won't mind me writing this, but when he told me his reasons for coming to China, it gave me goose bumps. He is from South Africa and worked for a very good law firm there but it just wasn't making him happy and he had always wanted to write a novel so he has given himself a two year goal to write it. For someome to just completely quit their life and to persue their dreams is really inspiring, you can do it!
Our Mandarin lessons were really good I thought, we had 3 different teachers who were all really sweet! Wang, was the best teacher in my opinion. She was so much fun, when lessons are fun, students really take more interest. We also took a trip to the Forbidden City, (link to my Flickr album) when we were walking through Tiananmen Square to get there, lots of people were stopping us to take pictures. There was one mum who wanted me to have a picture with her children, a boy and a girl, the boy was fine and just stood there whilst they were snapping away but the young girl was frightened and was running away. They persisted with her even though she was crying her eyes out, I had been told about them losing face if you walk of so I stayed for the photo. SO mean! We had to leave the Forbidden City from another exit so we weren't sure how to get back, I asked somebody (tried) and we ended up on a bus, we got of were there was lots of shops and people. As we got of, we were approached by a Chinese guy, he came across really cool and could speak lot of languages so he and Ricardo were having a conversation in Spanish. The others had gone to Pizza Hut and we didn't see them again that night. As this guy had approached us we thought he was thr right person to ask for directions to the subway station. His next line was "Yes, this way. I also have an art exhibition next to the station." We quickly realised he was a con man as we'd been warned about art exhibitions. They take you there and don't let you leave until you buy something, thank goodness we had been warned because if we hadn't I probably would've gone with him. We then found the night market... Here I ate two scorpions. I had to do it and I'm glad I did, they aren't bad at all. Nothing to it really, like fried chicken skin and when you bite into it, it pops and liquid goes into your mouth. Sounds worse than it is. We saw so many weird and wonderful treats, from starfish to seahorse. It was pretty touristy but everyone wants to eat weird stuff when they come to China don’t they! 

We went on our tourist day trip on the Sunday that we were in Beijing. So I can officially say that I have climbed The Great Wall of China! It was pretty tough but I made it. I can't believe I wore my thermals... They came of at the top, I have to admit. Such a huge achievement for me. When we were on the coach on the way, our tour guide "Alice" told us that Chinese people call themselves a real hero of China when they have climbed it. There were 80+ year olds climbing it with ease and there was me having to stop for breathers every so often. The view was sensational. I got my first polaroid picture too!! Farrah had a polaroid camera which was pretty cool so she printed a picture for me. On the way down, me and Alastair thought we were ahead of everyone else, we even stopped to get keyrings engraved with our names on and everything. I think we were just too engrossed in conversation as we only realised we were holding everyone up when the guide came looking for us whilst we were leisurely taking pictures at the bottom. I stopped and bought a T-Shirt too. I was already late so I begged the guide to let me buy one haha and persuaded Beth to get one as she had come looking for us aswell. Typical tourist souvenir and I don't even feel guilty. When we finally got back on the bus, I did feel quite bad, as it was really hot and nobody looked impressed.  I said "I got a T-Shirt!" and nobody thought it was as good as me... Oops, my bad. It had my name on in Chinese though... probably says fried rice or something hahaha

We saw so much this day in Beijing and there was still so much I didn't get to see, maybe another time. We went to a pottery workshop, there were lots of women working there, everything was done so intricately and perfectly. We also went to see the Olympic stadiums. They did look pretty impressive from a architectural point of view but me and Beth couldn't help but think about another dimension of it. People go there in there thousands everyday to see all its glory but a huge amount of people were actually displaced in order for it to be built, I'm sure they don't see it in the same way most other people do. Beijing as a whole, everyone things its all "bright lights, big city", don't get me wrong, its a great city, lots of prosperity but on the other side, the side that not many people see... There are lots of very run down areas, children with no shoes in the freezing temperatures. That kind of thing. Shocking right. I know, when I came, I wasn't expecting to see anything like that. It's crazy how your expectations can be completely influenced by the media. In the evening, we went to an acrobat show, it was so intense, all of the performers had incredible talent. The closest thing I've seen before was the Chinese circus, once in Southport with family and another time in Manchester with school.  But this was something else, absolutely mindblowing. They got 8 motorbikes into one of those balls like on the Simpsons Movie. When it got to 4, we were like ok one more that it but they just didn't stop coming out. All of the acts were insane, I was on the edge of my seat for the entire time, gasping each time one of the performers didn't fall of the ceiling high stack of chairs or the bicycle that had 15 girls on.
Part of the TEFL training includes a weekend course which I had done in Liverpool in the Summer but most people hadn't done theirs so did it in Beijing so I joined them and did it again. One of the trainers that was in Beijing with us was James Jenkin... He is a pretty top guy in the TEFL world, he co-wrote the book Essential TEFL and was in most of the online training videos, a really nice guy too! Him and Alison joined our "mingling" evening. It was definitely a good idea to reinforce what I had learnt in the summer as it was quite a while ago I guess. I also had a good laugh during the two days actually so yeah it was worth doing it again! 40 hours practical training under my belt too. 
I had some practise bargaining too in Beijing, I went to the silk market. I was going with Beth who had already had practise and was a cold, hard haggler. I did get a pair of shoes from 380元 to 90 元, not bad actually. I also had to buy some socks too as clever me over here only actually ended up packing 1 pair. Luckily Beth came to my rescue so I was wearing hers for the majority of the week. Thanks Beth!


On the last evening, it was Alastairs birthday so we went out to a club called Liv, quite interesting as, because we were foreigners, we got everything for free... Literally and then after you went to the toilet, people wearing tail coats would wash your hands for you. I stayed pretty sober which I'm glad about, it helped me to get two very drunk slut droppers home. One being the birthday boy and the other being the room mate who sworn to soberness just a couple of hours before because she was leaving at 5am for her train. I have to thank them though as it was very entertaining.I miss Beth and Alastair!! They did come and visit me in Changsha last weekend though, we had so much fun but I am going to write about that soon, keep your eyes peeled.
Before this, we were all so anxious during the week to find out our placement details. There were so many theories floating around about how they would decide but none of them turned out to be true. It did seem to be completely random. Some people were over the moon and others not so much but everyone seems to have settled now. So my placement was Tianhua Boardng School, Primary aged
children, in Changsha (Hunan province). I was placed with 3 other people from the other group that was in Beijing so I didn't know them at all, I asked someone if they knew who they were and I was introduced to Frederikke and the Jo Bros (Greg and Josh). Frederikke is Danish, and the Jo Bros are South African. We left at around 2pm on Thursday to go to the train station, we were all pretty tired, I had 3 hours of broken sleep at the most so we didn't really talk much on the way there, although I got to know the boys a little more. We eventually got onto the sleeper train after 3 hours of waiting, it was pretty cool. Really small "room" with 6 "beds" in, 3 on each side with maybe 40cm between each side. They weren't the comfiest obviously but it could've been worse. So we took up 4 of the beds and we were soon joined by two other people who had the top bunks, they didn't say much and just slept. It was lovely to look out of the window and see all of the fireworks. There was one really gross thing though, in the aisle there were designated spitting pots. That is one noise I will NOT miss, the sound of people violently clearing their throats, I've been trying to work out why they need to do it so much and the only thing I can think of is the really bad air quality, maybe they feel the "smog" in their throats, I really doubt it but I really want there to be a good reason why they do it. On the buses too... Why?! There was a bit of a panic when getting off the train too as we didn't know when our stop was going to be so when we got there we had to be so quick. They had to hold up the train for us, Greg couldn't find his shoe, I went back on to help him look and also realised that my IPod was still on my bed. Thank goodness for Greg losing his shoe.
Definitely a week I won't forget.

Reflection makes sense

Life has changed, again. When I last posted on this blog, I had just arrived home from my trip to Ghana which you can read more about here at Larabanga Life Project. Now, I have been living in China for one month and three weeks. I came to China with the intention of being able to make a comparison between teaching here and teaching in Ghana. I will definitely have achieved this goal before I leave in summer, I have made lots of observations of the different aspects of education here, from learning styles to daily routines at school. You can read more about my teaching experiences here in China on my I-to-I blog. I want this particular blog to be completely open, I want to be able to write about everything that is going on in my life and not have to categorise each experience because I am experiencing so much each day and I think I need to have somewhere I can write freely.
Starting from today. I had a really powerful realisation whilst I was on my break at school, all of the other teachers had gone to sleep of course. I was searching through some pictures from Ghana, I came across a picture of me and a little girl that I had carried around the village on my back for days on end the time I changed my flight to go back to Larabanga with Madi, I really felt a connection to her but then I didn't see her, I didn't know what had happened. I then came across a picture on my phone from the trip just gone. The
picture was of a young child called Auntie, when I was outside in the village, she would stand and just look at me in a really curious way and I would say hello and wave, after a couple of days of this, she began to come over to me and look really innocently into my eyes. Of course, all of the children were curious about me because I was the only foreigner there but she was acting differently and now it makes sense. She is the little girl I was carrying around the last time I was in Larabanga, she had recognised me after almost a year. It's really strange that I have only just realised now but better late than never. It really hit me today actually, that I have made an impact on at least a couple of lives through the work I have been doing. I hope I have directly or indirectly made a positive impact on many but it is just as incredible making an impact on just one.
Something else that I found really powerful recently... I went to Xiangjiang River in my city of Changsha with Frederikke and Sophie, my flat mate and my new Chinese friend. We decided to buy Chinese lanterns and set them of together, we tried to do it but the wind was too strong so two of them didn't work and actually ended up in the river. So we moved a little further down to do mine, a really lovely Chinese guy helped us to set it off and it worked!! I was absolutely over the moon, I guess it's the little things that mean the most to me. I had wrote a special message on it so I was very so happy as I watched it float of into the distance. Chinese lanterns in China... Tick that one of the bucket list haaaha.
Sophie is such a lovely person, I met her whilst on a school trip. I teach at her younger brothers school and her mum had organised a tree planting trip. She is currently studying for her TOEFL exam, so I am helping her to improve her English although I personally think she is already at a very high level. Chinese students never seem to be happy with themselves, they always want to go one step further.