Just a spoonful of sugar (or 16) helps the medicine go down (Court)

What's that you can hear in the background? Oh yes, just another round of fireworks! I don't think there has yet been a night (or for that fact morning!) without the appearance of fireworks. Any excuse will do, and today's excuse seems to be International Women's Day (even though it isn't until Saturday, but we will get to that).

Our day started off normally enough. Last night we finally got our next lot of lesson plans sorted, typed and this morning we set off to the printing department to get them printed. Now I am not kidding when I tell you that for our Senior 1 kids we have a total of 880 students, and for our Junior 1 and Gifted Kids we have a total of 715!!!! I thought the printing lady would fall over when we gave her those numbers but nope, she just took the order and told us to return in 40 minutes. Now, that is good service!! We rang Mr Pan beforehand as we had some forms to drop off to him that he needed for our visas. He also gave us back our passports for our trip to Shanghai incase we need ID - no time like the present to do a runner from here!! So Mr Pan tells me that we have to go see Mr Shen, the principle, as he has a gift for me for International Women's Day. Now, International Women's Day isn't until Saturday. However the school seemed to have decided to celebrate today. So we head up to Mr Shen's office, where I am presented with a huge bunch of flowes and a box of chocolates. The chocolates are a large box of Dove chocolates, they look really yummy, and their slogan is "Silken your pleasure moment". Now I don't know about you, but that is what I am looking for in a chocolate!

Of course, random man shows up to photograph generous Mr Shen presenting unkempt looking foreign teacher with flowers. Everything is photographed when it comes to Marcus and I! Then we head off to see the school nurse. I taught a class yesterday where about half the kids were sick, and it seems it was the final straw for my body. I woke up this morning sick with massive golfballs on either side of my throat. We decided that even if I didn't get any worse we should try to get our hands onto some antibiotics - even just to have them in the apartment for any illnesses! The nurse very offically looked into my throat and pulled out two packets of tablets. Mr Pan decided I should buy one particular sort, yet no one could tell me why - Dr Pan to the rescue! Once we were back home I managed to google what they were and turns out we now have a nice trusty pack of "broad spectrum" antibiotics. Sadly there was no official looking Doctor on this pack.

Back at home, Miss Soon (?) calls. Miss Soon is the head of English for Senior 1 students, and seems like a really lovely lady. She rang to invite me to come to the canteen at 4pm, as all the other women teachers would be there making dumplings. How could I refuse! However, Mr Pan had already planned for us to make dumplings together, so we were a bit confused but figured we would just go with it. After lunch we are collected by one of the school's drivers and taken to the other campus for our day's classes. On Thursdays we only have 2 classes in the afternoon, which we love, and which made me particularly happy as I wasn't feeling flash. What is waiting for me on my desk at the other school? Another bunch of identical flowers to celebrate International Women's Day!

I almost have enough flowers to open a shop!

Today we had our final lot of "unknown" classes - so now we have taught all of the kids that have been allocated to us. My two classes today weren't the brightest sparks, and the activities I had planned, which had worked fine in the other junior classes, were a mess in these two classes. My second class was a shambles from the start. I got lost and couldn't find the classroom - much to the delight of the kids. Then I couldn't get them to be quiet, then half of them would translate everything I said into Chinese for the other half. I nearly had a riot break out when I tried to get the class monitor to get the projector working (which never ended up happening and I felt so sorry for the boy as the others were teasing him), then when I tried to get them to answer the question "How are you?" with words other than "fine", every single one of them answered with "fine". By the time class had finished, I had done so much talking that I barely had a voice left!

We got back to our campus just on 4pm, so we made our way over to the canteen. Marcus came with me, as we figured we both wanted to be there even though Miss Soon had said it would be women teachers. I figured they would understand us crazy westerners! We finally figure out that everyone is in the kitchen. My god this place is huge. I mean, we eat lunch there every day but seeing the kitchens is another thing. We pop on our hair nets, and hang around a big table with some other teachers, yet no one is making any dumplings. There is mixture, and the wrappers, and a whole lotta trays of already made ones, but no one actually making. So we chat away for a while, have our photos taken, of course in our new "photo pose", which is a huge grin and fingers in peace signs next to our faces (some of the girls literally will not take your photo unless you are in this pose). Mr Pan then calls Marcus wanting to know where we are, as he is in the upstairs part of the canteen waiting for us. Of course we should have known that this was yet another golden opportunity for photographing those crazy westerners attempting to do Chinese things!!

Everybody just standing around, sadly no one making "peace" signs.

Me and Miss Soon. Raymen's wife, Miss Lu, was watching Marcus take this photo and commented how Miss Soon and I could be twins. Uh...no.

We get upstairs and Mr Pan has laid out a table for us with everything we need. Lo and behold random man with camera returns and photographs our every move. Which was actually kinda funny as Marcus and I made a complete mockery of any sort of tradition that was involved in making dumplings. Another man suddenly is at the table, Mr Pan was telling me that this guy knew his dumplings and would show me another way to make them. I have taken to calling this man the Big Cheese of Dumplings. Ah this poor man, Marcus and I just couldn't get our heads around the last bit of folding the dumplings, much to their amusement and frustration all at once! Of course all of this was photographed...as was us then walking to the serving lines and retrieving already made and cooked dumplings in soup, and then us eating said dumplings. I swear there are so many horrible photos of me floating around this place!!

I had assumed that all the women folk would be kicking back whilst the men fed us dumplings. Clearly I was wrong.

Mr Pan wanted to come over tonight for another Chinese lesson, but we told him that I'm not feeling well and need to go to bed early. Mr Pan never lets an opportunity pass him by, and me not feeling well was the perfect chance for him to make me some Chinese medicine! So once we have eaten our dumplings and wrapped up the ones we made (obviously such poor quality that they were not going to be added to the piles of dumplings waiting to be cooked!) Mr Pan takes it upon himself to drive us to the market to buy some ingredients for a special soup. We went to this awesome street/laneway, about a ten minute drive from the school, so too far to walk. It was packed! People, cars, scooters, kids, animals everywhere! Absolute chaos. Mr Pan parks in his random way and we make our way into a couple of stores, along the way passing this really cute kid...cute that was until he pulled down his pants and peed all over the path!! Not a care in the world as he stood there, no hands, just peeing all over the place!

We had one final stop at the end of the street, to a little stall where Mr Pan knows the lady who owns it. Here we got lemons, mini oranges, Mr Pan picked up some more sugar cane, and we also got some "popped rice". This was so funny, we were asking what it was and Mr Pan just opens up a bag, grabs out a whole chunk with his hands and hands it around to us to try. We ended up being given a couple of chunks for free as a gift from the lady. On the way home we were asking Mr Pan why she would want to give us a gift. He was explaining that it was a friend of his. I was saying how she was very nice, and this is his literal reply:

"No, she is not nice woman. She is normal woman. Not very pretty....but she is very kind".

Ah...lost in translation yet again!!

Mr Pan then came home with us and took control of the kitchen, whipping me up some soup. (I should point out that at home, Mr Pan does all the cooking and cleaning...I'm thinking of hiring him.) The soup consisted of water, about half a kilo of ginger and about an equal amount of red sugar. I could not believe the amount of sugar going into this thing! The whole thing is then boiled and boiled until it turns this really dark colour. I then had to sit and drink half of it whilst it was boiling hot so it would make me sweat. I was asking Mr Pan what it would taste like as he was cooking, and he replied that it would taste very strong like Chinese wine...all I can think is, how am I going to drink a litre of this stuff!! Turns out it was very tasty, kind of like a really hot, flat ginger beer. I have the other half of the saucepan waiting for me to drink before bed.

So there you have it, International Women's Day, Chinese style. The actual day of celebrations is on Saturday, when all the female teachers go to a nearby park and eat and walk around. I am actually disappointed that I will miss it, as it would have been a great chance to get to know them better, but we will be in Shanghai. Oh what a tough life we live!

Last but not least, is a shot Marcus took on the way to the market. I swear when I opened this photo I thought to myself "That's reasonable" then flicked to the next photo. What the?! If I saw something like this in Melbourne I would fall off my chair! But somehow, this scene seems completely normal to me...why shouldn't someone on the back of a scooter hold a suitcase with their bare hands...China is getting to me.