Back into the swing of things (Marcus)

This week has been all about getting back into the swing of teaching after what was a fairly long break - thanks to my good ol friend sickness. Back home when working for Pacific, I used to think how good it would be getting hit really hard by something nasty, getting plenty of those rancho relaxo sickness sleep'ins and the like but well, the reality is that when you're actually sick as a dog, it's not remotely enjoyable. The copious amounts of rest you get don't really count - particularly when you spend almost every night of the week tortuously trying to get to sleep at night, but spend the majority of your time counting down the hours. I felt so awful that I was actually wishing I was well enough to teach. I usually avoid most colds, flu's, viruses etc etc, and back home I don't usually have sick days other than the odd one or two - but here it's all the fun of the fair with the foreign viruses floating around.

It seems that the month of Spring in China is about as typical as the season as you would get anywhere in the world. All those things you'd expect to see in Spring are here - except maybe some frolicking baby deer. The flowers are out in force. The tree's are leafy once more and bushes that were a dark almost browny green have almost completely shed their deadish look and are bursting with brilliant light green and yellows. Likewise the weather is all over the place. I don't think Spring has ever felt so truly seasonal back in Australia. One day it's cold, then warm, then cold. Windy, calm, hot, cold, all over the shop. You'll get a week of mild almost cold weather and then it will rain - and when it rains, it rains. It will absolutely dump down for like a day straight, then stop! I really like the Spring here. I think everything feels fresh and green and new - something that doesn't feel so significant back home. If the pollution would blow away it would be really lovely here, but sadly that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Out front of our apartment, the tree's are filled to the brim with these lovely pink flowers.

Over the last few days we have noticed an absolute heap of very large fish in the lake sitting there with their heads sticking out of the water - almost gasping for air. These were large..I don't know - carp or something similar - definitely not the gold fish variety of which there are also hundreds. I stopped for a while, watching them. I knew there were some large fish in the lake but I had never seen these type before - let alone doing what they were doing.

Today the gardeners had dragged out their big hoses and were shooting water into the lake - almost as if they were filling it up. They couldn't be filling it up..I said to Courtney. With the amount of water that is in the lake, they would need to leave the hoses on day and night for a month and it would still probably only raise the waters depth an inch if that - and there has been quite heavy rain lately.

We were walking back this afternoon from collecting the print-out for next weeks Senior Lessons - a Lesson based around Yesterday by the beatles(Yeah I think we just turned the corner for cliche ESL teaching) - and a nice woman came and introduced herself to us. Turns out she was one of the English teachers who used to teach Junior, but now teaches what sounds like some kind of elective course - using Animation or somesuch - at least that's what she said - I don't know exactly what she was referring to. She said her name and I forgot it before she had closed her mouth from saying it.

I have severe difficulty understanding, remembering and more importantly _reproducing_ Chinese names. They are so damned difficult! It makes me feel really uncomfortable as I politely ask someones name, then 2 seconds later I can't remember it. They are all approximately three words and they are the height of difficult pronunciation. They are not like an easy to pronounce Japanese name - like say - Akira Okinawa or something - they're like..(and this isnt the spelling) - say this out loud- Sheung Shue-aye Foong - Ok that's a totally crap example - but say that out loud, try and put a thick Asian accent on it and you might have half of what I have trouble with.

Anyhow - she seemed quite lovely, and asked us all the typical questions - did we like the campus, did we like living there etc etc - all the usual yes, it's very nice - yes living in China is very...interesting - yes, very very different to Australia - very very!

I asked her about the lake and she said they were pumping clean fresh water in there as many fish had died - as i thought...

We saw a couple of gardeners taking a dead one out of it earlier today - we thought they were fishing as they seemed quite jovial and it was quite a nice day today. It seems that the oxygen level in the water has somehow dropped to levels that are basically killing them. I went out to take a photo of the water shooting into the lake earlier this morning - mainly as i thought it amusing that they'd be filling the lake but I noticed a patch of goldfish carp things also acting strange - like the larger carp - heads out of the water, looking like they were trying to get air.

Poor things ... kind of hits a nerve actually as shortly before coming to China we had an er .. incident, in the fish tank at home where well, it was a disaster! But anyway.

I have a feeling that before the week is out, these fish will soon be known as the fish that used to breathe. Then again - looking on the bright side, at least the wild cat that constantly hangs by the lake's banks trying to catch one(never daring to get wet) just MIGHT get lucky! Go cat!