Mama Huhu (Courtney)

So, lo and behold the couch has arrived.

Why is this not followed by a long line of "!!!!!!" you ask?

Well.

You see, the couch is a little odd. I can't speak for Marcus, but this is kind of what my overactive imagination had settled on...

Or maybe even something along these lines....

Or even this....

Bizarrely, this could actually have been an option. We went couch searching one afternoon with Mr Pan and we saw these exact soccer ball chair/ottoman combos in a store. Mr Pan actually recommended this as a couch option. And he was not joking. He even sat down in the chair and gave us that smile as if to say "see, how great is this!"

But no, here is the new couch...

Strictly speaking, to look at, there is nothing wrong with it. But sadly, it isn't a huge improvement on the original wooden one. It's certainly softer, but not really comfortable. Which was the whole point of us sounding like spoilt westerners when we asked if there was anyway we could switch the couch. If the wooden one had have been comfortable it would not have been a problem. All I want to do is be able to snuggle up on the couch. Maybe slouch a little in the corners with a book. But you'll note that this is still not possible because this couch also has wooden arms. Not snuggle inducive. Also, it's impossible to see in the photo, but the bit that you actually sit on is on a steep angle. It's not flat like a regular couch, it actually slants down to the floor, to the point where the edge of the couch is almost touching the floor. So there is no slouching to be done at all, as you feel as though you are just going to slide off onto the floor. Apart from the stunning vinyl (which strangely reminds me of my brother's bedroom curtains circa 1985) you can only sit incredibly upright, as though you are in a dentist waiting room. Marcus believes that we should try and procure some bricks to put under the front section to even it out. Yup, our couch is soon going to resemble a Cranbourne car wreck front yard.

Oh well, it's better than the park bench ;-)

And of course, how else would the couch actually be delivered other than on the back of a three wheel cart. The ubiquitous three wheel cart strikes again! We gotta get one of these. Here is our old couch being taken away.

Oh..and mama huhu means so-so. It's my fave Chinese word.

The day our rears broke into song! (Marcus)

A phonecall from Mr Pan this morning announced that at 1:30pm today, an hour and a half from now, the new couch would finally..finally, be arriving. Hoorah!

We both showered early as 1:30pm Chinese time can be litterally any time in the hours leading up to it. We're both highly excited as the wooden monstrosity we currently have has been increasingly uncomfortable. Courtney's been experiencing a very sore back from using it.

I just don't understand how anyone - even someone from China, could look at the wooden skeletal structure which is supposedly a 'sofa' and think ANYONE would be comfortable on it?

The ONLY explanation I can think of that explains it, is in a lot of the traditional houses/gardens we have visited, there are always the traditional chairs.

A traditional style chinese seat. There are usually two of them, I assume one for the husband, one for the wife, both facing the same direction on either side of a table.

Comfort to the max really.

So then we have our own actual couch as seen below. I am sure a chiropractor would argue that it is really good for our backs - just like our bed was before we bought a soft mini-mattress thing made of memory foam to more 'Australianise' it(ie: we're pussy's!), but in all honestly, if a chiro truly wanted to argue that point, he could stick it up his ass! Bring on the new couch made of 'material' according to Mr Pan. What it looks like? As of this point god only knows, but you can be assured it'll be on this blog before the night is out. Deep down we're both hoping it's a Hello Kitty couch, but the safer bet would be a disgusting floral pattern - whatever it is, we don't care, it can't be worse than our current one, and as long as it's soft, our poor little botbots will be singing happy tunes.

Oh how we're going to miss you. Not. SPIT!

Happy Birthday my little monkeys! (Marcus)

Well this week heralded the end of the semester and the entire school year and that is something we are both quite stoked about. From here we have approximately 2 months holiday, at least 4 weeks of that being travel all around China.

For our seniors this week we have been basically doing a 10 minute speaking warm-up then finishing by just watching a 25 minute episode of Mr Bean - called, The Curse of Mr Bean - where he goes to a swimming pool, get's too scared to dive off the board, runs around naked as he lost his swimming shorts etc etc. Until present I've always thought Mr Bean to be stupidly unfunny - though in reality I had never actually seen him. Now after watching the same episode 9 times in one week I have to admit he was pretty amusing - particularly a scene where he's making a roll out of miscellaneous goods from his coat.

It was fun watching the senior students watching it however. They genuinely enjoyed it - comedy of the most simplest form. The reason we said to them that we were playing it, was because it was the last class - something fun - and the fact that the entire semester we had been trying to get them to talk with varying degrees of success. Mr Bean was someone who communicated with action rather than words, so it would be novelty for both them and us to watch something that was the opposite of what we had been trying to drag out of them all semester. It was a successful, easy and enjoyable week.

On Tuesday I held my first of two birthday classes. Tuesday was also Abby the kiwi's birthday. We went to an american bar named Rockies in the New District of Wuxi. In total, we had 3 americans, a canadian, an english woman, 3 new zealanders and us making up 2 Australians. It's cool being part of a completely multi-cultural bunch, all with the desire to ho down burgers, pizza and beer, all being over over-boiled vegetables that make up our respective school lunch menus.

Anyhow the birthday classes were a complete joy, and a complete success, with all credit going to Courtney's tireless work putting everything together. I personally can't claim anything here other than making sure Courtney didn't draw the tails on the donkeys(which she would have done, i swear it!)

My first class is easily the most boisterous of the two and really tired me out. The hardest part of the lesson was geting them under control for a game of pass the parcel...45 player stylez. It was the first game and they were SUPER excited that something cool was about to happen.

Firstly I had to scream my lungs out to get them into a circle that involved them standing next to each other. In these classes, the boys and the girls are very very aware of each other. Whenever a circle is required, there is a gaping chasm between the two sexes. I had to grab and force them together. In class two I decided to tell them to just outright hold hands to bring them together. Unlike western kids, they have no issues holding hands...unless it's with the opposite sex! I saw one boy holding a pen top whilst one of the girls held the pen that went into the pen top - sure i could drop a joke about a boy and a girl holding a pen sliding into a pen top right here, but these are junior kids, so i won't! (teehee)

Pass the parcel was played to the Chinese favourite, Backstreet Boys. I have had the freakin song "I want it that way," in my head so utterly bad this week that it's driving me nuts.

Next up was Pin the Tail on the donkey which likewise they thoroughly enjoyed. The first class completely mobbed the donkey and took over, running it themselves. The second class was a little more orderly, but still just organised chaos.

We had bought 3 large bags of chuppa chup style lollipops to hand out to every kid at the end of each class. When I brought out the bag and told them that there was one for every kid - well sure as shit they didn't believe it and I was mobbed like I have never been mobbed before.

The first class just insta attacked me and I could barely see through the hands that were thrust in at me. God I wish I had filmed or photographed this! The second class - the one I said was less boisterous, was even worse! When I said there were lollipops, I couldn't even get my bloody hand in the bag that I was holding!! In amongst this, I actually had kids requesting flavours, or wanting to swap their flavour for something else. All the while I am trying to not give multiples out to the same kids and am watching for double dippers, which I am sure there were a few of the bastards!! No matter how much you emphasise there is one for everyone, I don't think they believe you - they must be used to just having to fight for things like that, being so many of them.

Class 1 - while Pin the Tail was being played, the class broke down into Backstreet Boys chaos. Kids were all over the class enjoying themselves. Whenever I tried to film them doing their thing, someone would either get up on a damned chair or in the second class, be throwing the parcels around so much that I thought they'd burst open. I'd pick up the camera, press record then have to thrust it back down and get control back. Bloody kids!

Pin the Tail in full effect! Who needs a teacher here, really?

Class 2 on Wednesday - special mention to Naiger for the random pig face. It's good to be able to show you guys back home a little piece of what we experience in our classes. These younger student classes are very different to the older students - hopefully we'll get them on film one time- just so we can remember them when this is all over and we're back home with our multiple TV channels, comfortable couch, bed that's not in a net, dishwasher and air that's not full of mosquitoes! Wait, did I just squeeze a whinge in there??!


Every tuesday before class these three guys come and escort me to class. They run their little hearts out to get as close to my apartment as possible so they can walk the whole distance. This last class they were almost at the apartment. On the left we have Paddy, in the middle, Parker(formerly Gordon) and on the right, my original escort(ie: he used to come by himself) Taylor. I love these three kids, I am looking into adopting them.

On the left is Stephen, the penultimate Backstreet Boys fan. It was for him that I decided to choose them. The whole class had a sing-a-long during pass the parcel. On the right is Victoria. While in hang-man, as a sweet little girl, she chooses words like 'Lucky Star,' the boys go for words like, "George W Bush," "Allah," and I had "Hitler" the other week.

It was actually Victoria's birthday this same day, I gave her a handful of leftover lollipops by way of present; she beamed.

The name of the kid on the left I forget, but he's bugging me each and every class for a turn at hangman, bringing up massive words he's found in the dictionary. I have had to bring in rules such as 1. you must be able to pronounce the word, 2. You must know what it means, 3. The class must KIND OF know what it means!! The boy on the right is guilty of this too - his name is Jeep. When he picked the word 'Oxygenism" I picked him up and put him on the teachers desk(he's tiny you see, I try and show off my super strength whenever I can). I then made him try and say the word and tell the class what it meant. It was all in good fun incidentally, I'm not like, vindictive or anything..mostly!

Mr Harry Potter is another cronic Hang-man badgerer..but a good kid all the same.

This is Mr Pan's daughter, Delia. She's in my wednesday class and is a really sweet little girl. Both Courtney and I like her very much. We bought her some gifts - like a funky pen, some Hello Kitty hair clips etc, as she bought us the Pig Cups(tm) and does random things like stuck some flowers in our apartment door.

No clue who these two are!

This is Gary - a good kid. He looks older than the rest by a year or two, and is one of the tallest, if not the tallest, in the class.

This is Annabella, who the kids call Annabella Umbrella.

I did know this kids name but I've forced myself to forget it as he's a total pain in the ass!!! He sits RIGHT beside the teachers desk - obviously because he's naughty or something. He's always talking in class, always doing anything but the work I ask him to do and is constantly badgering me to play games of which he just mucks around in anyhow. Bleh! He's a nice enough kid I suppose, but I ain't gonna miss him, that's for sure ;)

All in all it was a fun yet deceptively tiring week. The two party classes were absolutely exhausting and they only went for 40 minutes each! The humid temperatures in the classrooms had both Courtney and myself dripping with sweat by the end of them. I think once the students start moving, the heat levels go through the roof. We don't think we will be teaching these guys next semester, but we have asked to, and fingers crossed.

Worse comes to worse we'll have some new gifted students and they'll be even better! At least this time round, going into the new semester after a long break, we'll be infinitely better teachers as like any job, as the months have gone by we have learnt a lot.

That all being said, the lesson plans remain a constant pain in our asses.

Cheerio!

Courtney, why does Class 2 have a big horse? (Courtney)

All semester I have had the idea of doing a birthday themed class with the Junior and Gifted kids. As the weeks went on I came to my senses and realised trying to pull this off for 700 odd kids just was not a good idea, so we decided instead just to do it with our Gifted classes.

We've mentioned the gifted classes a lot on this blog. Marcus teaches two classes and I teach one. They are really smart kids, but that isn't what makes these classes enjoyable. What makes us love them is that they are such confident, happy, easy going kids. We can throw anything at them and they willingly do it and enjoy themselves. Our school has this whole gifted department, which I think is quite an experimental education method. Whilst the kids are intelligent, I think the teaching method really pays off. The highlight of my week is Wednesday. I have developed connections with most of these kids, I know their names and little bits about them. It's just a great environment.

So, I had this idea to do a birthday class. Basically a big party, with pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey, music, lollies...you name it! Pulling this off with 150 kids was going to be infinately easier than 700! This week is our last week of teaching for the semester (woo hoo!) so we decided that our final gifted classes would be the birthday party. Then we got told on Tuesday that non core subjects have ended for the gifted kids, so we would not be required to teach them. But we pleaded our case and were allowed to teach as normal - who would have thought a couple of months ago we would be begging to teach a class!

So Mr Pan's wife Oolan relayed down to the kids that they would still have their Oral English classes this week as we had something planned. Well Marcus teaches Class 1 on Tuesdays, then Class 2 on Wednesday, then I teach Class 3 after Marcus on Wednesday afternoon. Well, by the time I got to my class they were fully aware that something "special" was going on and I was bombarded with children and questions trying to get into the classroom, I literally had them hanging off me.

Question of the day was started by Skye (I have four Skye's in my class, all male and all spelt differently) who met me outside the building. "Courtney, why do class 2 have a big horse?" Which was obviously the donkey pinned up to the board. The rest of the class were eagerly awaiting me, and I was caught in a maelstrom of 12 year olds all trying to figure out what was going on and what was in my bags. They aren't shy these kids! What's in the bag Courtney? Why do you have a big paper? Ooohhh, big paper! What is it? What are we doing? Why do class 2 have lollies?

Once I got them settled we got down to business and we had a ball! What a blast, the kids were just nuts and by the end of it I was exhausted, absolutely boiling hot, and had a croaky voice. Oolan came in at the end of the class and said to me "I think today they are a little crazy"...ah, yeah, just a touch!

And of course a birthday party wouldn't be complete without at least one lot of tears. Half way through Pin the Tail on the Donkey I noticed one of the Skye's had gone back to his desk. I went over and realised he was crying his little heart out, but for the life of me he would not tell me why. He didn't appear to be hurt so I figured it was because he wasn't getting turn at the donkey. All was soon solved with a lollypop!

So below are some pics from my class. Obviously I think my kiddies are the best, much cuter than Marcus'! I'll let him put up pics of his class so he can regail you with stories.

The beginnings of pass the parcel...

Which soon turned into a nice little pile of pressies.

We decided each class would need their own donkey as they would want to put their names on it after their turn.

Some of the winners of pass the parcel.

Chaos on this side of the room!

Pin the tail on the donkey (or big horse) was a huge success. I lost control of them about 30 seconds in. At this point Westlife was blaring in the background, kids were going nuts and Skye was crying...ah, the joys of being a teacher!

This was as close as I could get to the action and I literally had to fight my way in!

George, with not one but two lollypops on the go at once. By the end of the class he had somehow gotten hold of about 4 lollypops and I have no idea how, even though I was the one holding the bag!

Wendy wanted her photo taken. She's a really sweet kids, and draws me pictures. She's incredibly tall for her age, she turns 13 next week.

I know I shouldn't have favourites but I do. I love all the kids, but these guys...I wish I could bring them home with me. This is Kobe on the left and Jimmy on the right. Kobe looks about 9 years old, he is tiny and has the cutest, squeakiest voice. Jimmy is just the happiest kid you could meet. The look he has on his face is his permanent look. Doesn't matter where you see him, he is just HAPPY! And generally has his pants pulled up under his armpits.

At the end of the class all the kids wanted to say goodbye and ask if I would be teaching them again next semester. I truly hope we are, and we have told the teachers as much. Some of the kids wanted to give me their email addresses, so I have a nice little pile of funny bits of paper and another drawing to add to my collection. The best was Napolean though. Yes you read correctly, in amongst the Bettys, Peter Parkes, King, Outman, Oscar, Ricky, Daffy, Piggy, Shirley, Wendy, Cindy etc, I also have a Napolean. So he comes up to me and just presents me with this....

Just his name, nothing else. I asked him why, to which he replied "So you do not forget me". I said to him "How am I going to forget you when you have the name Napolean!!"

It was with a heavy heart that I walked home!

Happy Birthday Simone!

As the title suggests, today is my good friend Simone's birthday. And it's not just any birthday, it's the big 3-0!

So because presents are hard to come by around these parts, Marcus suggested that I get 45 of my closet 12 year old friends to help me out.....

Happy birthday Simone!

Vote Team Wuxi! (Courtney)

Hi all,

So a number of weeks ago I entered Marcus and I into a photo competition that I saw on an expat site. And then promptly forgot about it. However, I had a look yesterday and lo and behold, both of our photos were chosen! Not as the winners mind you, but as finalists.

So this is where you all come in, our beloved readership! The competition is to win a sizeable chunk of travel funds, not much by normal terms, but by Chinese terms it would seriously help out our dwindling travel fund! Photos are judged by you the people....so pretty please, we need your help.

Below you will see the two photos we submitted. The theme is photos that make you smile. If our photos manage to make you smile then please vote for us!

Voting opens July 1st, but we thought we would put the word out so you all have time to tell everyone you know ;-)

Submitted by Marcus.

Submitted by me.

Here is the link...

http://tui.cn/en/photogallery.php

Click on photo gallery, and you will find us under "2nd week top photo entries".

Vote Team Wuxi!

Teaching shenanigans (Marcus)

We are getting very close to the end of the semester - and end of the schooling year for the students of China. It's weird to think it ends here, as the end of the school year in my mind remains firmly in December - but we're not complaining. We are on our second week of 3 day weeks, and next week should be our last week teaching for a whopping 2 months! We suspect we won't have many more classes period, as the students are about to enter an exam phase, but at this point we don't really care.

The weather of late has been a mixed bag. After going through an almost straight week of China downpour, it's back into disgustingly muggy. Today was one of those days that was around 27 degrees - though due to the humidity felt around 41(according to the website forcast). I had four classes today and while they were quite nicely air-conditioned, I have had a sheen of sweat on my back and legs practically all day. Sometimes, we just cant get back to the apartment and it's air-con fast enough. The walk to down the road and back for dinner was bad enough - the heat just saps your energy.

Over the past few weeks we decided to try some games with the senior students in class and they worked really well. It's a little awkward at this point in the semester as we have been running pretty dry classes to date(ie no games), but they really enjoyed it. If we get new students next semester, we will definitely add a lot more games in. Not only does it break the ice between teacher and student but they enjoy it and in turn participate more. The only problem is finding games that can involve 55ish kids!

The internet is full of ESL games for the classroom, but not all of them are appropriate to classes of that size. With the juniors, we've been playing things such as hangman(to the point that some kids are as over it as we are), an advanced team form of hangman, Simon Says, I Spy, Bingo, a race where they had to draw clock faces etc.

Courtney put together a really good game which we tried with the senior students. She put a lot of time and effort into creating some huge cardboard dice which worked an absolute treat. As soon as we revealed what they were from the bag they were hidden in, the whole class basically cheered. They LOVE dice.

They're a little beat up - they've been to hell and back!

The game involved four teams and four empty bodies on the blackboard(just a circle on top of an oval). They would they roll the dice, and do things such as 1 - nose, 2 - mouth, 3- arm x 1, 4 - leg x 1 etc etc right down to 6 - ears x 2. Once rolled, the student would then answer a simple trivia question which we put together, ranging from 'What is the capital of France?' to 'Who is the tallest person in your class?' - these they also enjoyed. If answered correctly they could then draw that part of the body. We encouraged them to use as much creativity as possible, and basically have fun.

It really worked well. Like always by the end of the week we were over doing the same class umpteen times, but the kids enjoyed it, and we enjoyed running it - hell felt like a bit of a gameshow host there!

'ENZA' is what they call one of their Chinese male teachers. Note the mobile at the hip and the stocking'd foot. They're not overly different from western kids sometimes... Team 'I Think' comes from the teacher Enza always saying, "I think.." or, "Do you think this is right?" They're all over the various little teacher mannerisms. I have to watch what I do in class as they mimic my gestures all the time.

Case in point - here he is using his arm to hide the...boobies :)

I don't know what the hell it is, but any time we say 'Yeti', they all piss their pants and love it. Naturally this class had 'Team Yeti Hunter," "Team Yeti Killer," "Team Yeti Farmer" and "Team Yeti."

This was the effort of class no.1. No.1 & 2 are the senior 'gifted' classes - ie all the very damned smart kids.

And in an unrelated note - above is my weekly escort. I teach two Junior gifted(ie smart kids) classes, Courtney teaches one; something I think she's actually a little jealous about! I have talked about them numerous times, but I love these kids - they are just so awesome fun to teach and I swear I am going to bring at least half of them home with me. Above is my 'escort'. Every week before class no.1, 3 kids come and meet me halfway to class. It started with just the one kid named Taylor, but now there's three, Taylor, Paddy(heh!) and Parker. In our weekly conversations on the way to class, I learnt that Parker had actually changed his name - he was originally called...Gordon. Above is Taylor and Paddy - note the umbrella - they come to me rain hail sleet or shine. This was taken two weeks ago.

This was taken this past Tuesday. I couldn't believe they came to greet me as it was ABSOLUTELY PISSING DOWN!!! Initially all three were crowded under the one umbrella - when they saw me, two broke rank and charged me shouting, 'SOS! SOS!" We actually taught the senior class idioms today and 'raining cats and dogs' was on the agenda. I was inclined to teach them 'pissing down' but refrained. Actually it wouldn't have surprised me if they already knew it, as one of the junior gifted students said to me a few classes ago, "Teacher, may I be excused, I need to take a leak."

And of course in utterly no relation to the above post, we went out for dinner to a Pizza restaurant with Matt and Abby on I think it was Tuesday night. It actually wasn't bad and very reasonably priced. The pizza I ate was a hawaiian and in what was a pizza first for me, it had slices of banana on the pizza along with the hawaiian. While the pizza tasted great, it sent my guts to hell and I was happy to get out of there and home lickedy split to my old friend the toilet. This was one of the menu items and definitely massive in appeal, ice-cream chicken salad, mmm mmmh.

Weeding (Courtney)

Below you will see a picture of some kids out the front of our apartment. This happens frequently. A little while ago whilst walking with one of the teachers we asked her what the kids were doing. She replied that because they live in a "city" (not quite so sure whether I'd go calling Dong Ting a city!) they don't learn any farming skills, so instead they learn some here at school. Hmm...I don't see much farming going on, but I do see a heck of a lot of weeding!




Now, whilst the pic really just shows a whole bunch of kids milling around, and who blames them, it is about 40 freaking degrees today, they do actually go and weed sections of the school. Whilst this might seem boring, it's gotta be better than being in class.



But what truly stands out in this photo, and the reason for it being posted, is that you can just see a blue car parked. Well that car belongs to their teacher. Oh yes, whilst the students have walked over in the heat, to then weed, the teacher drives over in air conditioned luxury! This is endemic of this school, we see people driving to the most ridiculous places. For example, we see teachers drive from their office to the canteen at lunch. But even more ridiculous than that are the teachers who drive from the library to their offices....couldn't be more than 100 metres at a push! Ah, it's like the novelty of car/scooter ownership is yet to wear off around here.

Cats! (Courtney)

Here are some pics of cats we have met so far in our adventure....

Lots of little kitties at the market.

Hunting for food at Tai Hu Lake.

Resident Blue Bar kitty. There is a pure black one too, loved how they sat at the bar.

How could we forget this little fella!

School cat, haven't seen him around for a while now.

Another school cat, this guy is constantly dirty.

And the newest kitty on the block. This isn't as timid as the others, and man can he miaow! He is very chatty. Today he was hanging around so I went and gave him some food, I thought he was going to eat the plastic container as well!

What's brown and has the consistency of liquid? Brown Liquid (Marcus)

We’ve been having this lovely issue of brown..stuff, dripping from the roof of our bathroom. It’s quite obviously a broken pipe or somesuch in the ceiling, and the brown…stuff is obviously rust – well, so we hope anyway. Over the past few days it’s gotten worse. It has also rained for the past few days so we are not sure if it is coincidental or not.

The stuff is just everywhere, leaving pools of disgusting brown crap everywhere. It’s in the shower/bath, all over the shampoo bottles, the little mirror thing – you name it, brown.

So today we thought to get Mr Pan to come over and actually take a look at it. Beneath the apartment – beneath the bathroom, the entire roof is crusty brown and not in a good state; very much like along the wall outside the bathroom. There’s definitely some leaking pipe action going on in there and we’d rather they look at it before we go to sit down on the toilet and instead end up crashing through the floor as it’s rotted out.

So Mr Pan comes over and co-ordinates one of the school’s maintenance men to come over at the same time. He has a quick look, then runs some silicon seal around the edge of our bath(where water has obviously been leaking for some time – previously it was just a black hole.) Satisfied with that, he then goes up to the apartment upstairs and does likewise. Whether this fixes it or not, god knows, but at least we have done our bit. It did crack me up though how absolutely no concern was given to the state of the roof/wall(*see below). In an Australian household, fixing the mess/ruined plaster would be one of the first considerations - here however? Eh! What ruined plaster? Like the time Mr Pan came over and I squashed a mozzie on the wall in front of him - he loved it! Couldn't care less that the flattened corpse now adorned(and continues to..)the wall.

Outside - beneath our bathroom - mmmh mmm.

While Mr Pan was here we showed him our travel itinerary and he offered to help buy us train tickets. We were mostly interested in him showing us how to ask to be in the same carriage..ie we’d rather not be sleeping in different parts of the damned train! The Chinese don’t seem to understand this concept – going by every time we’ve taken the bullet train into Shanghai we’ve been seated apart. We also told him about our mobile phones and the inability to sms most people back home. For some reason I can send and receive all sms to Kerry, but hardly anyone else – lucky me huh Kerry?! J He also said the couch had been ordered, and it was ‘cloth so should be very soft,’ – one can only hope!

And last but not least, the mosquito body-count must been in the hundreds now. I still have no idea where they’re all coming in. We bought what we think is surface spray so I might do the rounds with that on the weekend. Courtney actually saw one fly out of the kitchen sink – but that doesn’t really explain things anyway as we have been diligently blocking all three sinkholes since someone suggested it. The only positive to really come from the mosquitoes is the fact that taking them out with the electrified tennis racquet really never gets old. We plan on buying a second one soon so we have one each as we’re constantly going to get it off whoever has it as there is always always always a target somewhere in the place at night.

Visitors (Marcus)

So I had been having an ongoing discussion with one of my students whose name is James. He approached me at the end of one class and wanted to know the names of some Australian universities. I gave him Monash and Melbourne, those two being the main ones.

It is always quite an effort for a student to come and speak to us like this as it’s crossing what is a really quite significant personal barrier. I find that I really respect the students who do it, as it shows their curiosity or rather, their personal interest has won the battle against their shyness and they have broken down what can be a large barrier between teacher and student – particularly in our situation where we’re basically like aliens to these kids – so utterly different.

So before the next class, I printed out some information I found on Monash’s website for James and took it in for him. I found a page that was actually in Chinese as Monash seems to have strong ties with certain countries – one of them being China. I gave this to James along with my email address and said he was welcome to email me if he had any further questions. I also offered to look anything up for him should he wish it, as I know they have extremely limited access to computers – around twice a week total.

So James emailed me, nothing special, and then in his second email he wanted to arrange a face to face meeting. I didn’t reply to this as it was the weekend. During the week he came down to me before one of my classes that was somewhat near his classroom and asked if I had gotten his email? I feigned ignorance – oh no, which email? He then mentioned he wanted to meet up and asked if I was available at 6pm that night? I said no, as I didn’t really want to bring any students actually home to our apartment without Courtney knowing – that’s not really fair on her. So I said, how about tomorrow? He was ok with that and said he would come to our apartment. He sounded quite urgent about this meeting. He said his mother was arranging things for him to possibly go and study in Australia next year – so I assumed that was the urgency, him wanting information or somesuch. In a previous email I had told him that he would want to possibly look at 1. Melbourne, 2. Sydney, 3. Brisbane as his options. Melbourne first due to my bias – it being a great city, and cheaper to live than Sydney. Then the other two are obvious.

So 6pm the next day rolls around and I see James and another student heading to our apartment. I greet them and let them in. They seat themselves on our most comfortable of couches and Courtney joins us. The other student turns out to be one of Courtney’s, so that was good.

What ensued was a general question and answer session on a range of topics. Firstly they had brought along a student booklet for Monash and wanted to know some questions about Melbourne, it’s population, weather, how close the campus was to the city etc etc – standard stuff.

We spoke about different things, about Monash, Melbourne Uni, about Sydney vs Melbourne and a bunch of other things – scholarships etc etc.

Then we branched into the meat of the conversation which was about Courtney and myself. This I found really, I don’t know, endearing possibly. These two guys..they must be around 16-17, maybe close to 18, are just so innocent to everything that is Courtney and I. The wanted to know if we could use chopsticks, if we ate Chinese food at the local restaurants, how much we paid for it, whether we liked the canteen food, what we did on our weekends, what we did when we weren’t teaching, what time we got up, what time we went to bed. Everything! All these basic personal questions that they had obviously been dying to know.

Part of their questions were lead up to them bringing over 6-7 dvds(pirate of course). They thought that we might get bored here, not being able to watch TV and not being much to do in the area – moreso seeing we weren’t Chinese, so brought us some entertainment. They proceeded to go through them and give some mini-reviews which were a pisser – again, so innocent.

They asked if we had eaten dinner(it being 6:30pm+) and we said we hadn’t. This is quite late for not having dinner over here, Chinese always eating around 5:30 or so. They politely then offered to go, but made it clear that if we were happy to not eat just yet, they would love to talk with us some more – so we did. Finally it was getting on (almost 7pm!!!) and they left – returning to class.

Courtney then got into cooking up some risotto – which was great, and we chilled for the rest of the night.

I really enjoyed this exchange with these two guys. The innocence of the Chinese students is somehow almost overwhelming. It is so refreshing..as I said, so endearing. It makes you want to just reach out and help them – moreso when you then think how hard these kids have to work – how long they are in class for. We were sitting watching TV last night after what was a really long day(having gotten 200% soaked in the rain), and at 9:15pm or so, when the students start all heading to their dorms, it’s just unbelievable to think how much time has passed in the day and all of which has involved them sitting in their classrooms doing school work.

I can’t really imagine what it’s like for a student such as James to move to a country like Australia. It must be extremely hard, suddenly dealing with a sort of freedom.

We went into the city tonight for dinner and as we were walking through the school to get to the bus stop, we encountered one of what I think was a gifted student (aka younger) though I am not sure. He said hi and tagged along with us for a while – commenting on things such as how beautiful the lake was, and how he liked to play table tennis and badminton but couldn’t right now as he didn’t have the equipment for it. When we first saw him he was just standing there looking out over the lake. He followed us then we left him in the centre of the school and he just sort of drifted away – aimlessly. It was before 6pm and he didn’t have to be back in class till 7pm – we think they get extra time off after dinner on Saturdays – how lucky for them…. Anyhow, it was like he had this extra time but literally didn’t know what to do with himself except wander around by himself.

It’s all so different to how I remember school and my fellow students.

Today's disturbing statistic (Courtney)

Since China launced its bid to host the 2008 Olympics, 4104 children have been named "Aoyun".

Which of course means...Olympic Games.

Is that better or worse than Chardonnay??

Spot the celebs! (Marcus)