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.