As we were walking through to the other side of the school, Mr Pan came running up to tell us he had arranged to take the day off and drive us into the city. Yeah right - morelike babysit us to make sure we get back in time for this English Corner. He said we had a 'lesson' to give today - meaning English Corner, and we're like, uh no i dont think so. So that's how we spent the day - in Wuxi City with Mr Pan - who then also took us down to see Lake Tai Hu.
Now skipping to present, we did attend the English Corner. We were told earlier in the day by Mr Pan that there's usually four english teachers who attend, but it sounds like they want us to be at every one - uh I don't think so. We were told specifically before taking the job that we would not be working on weekends - and that includes this fking English Corner.
English Corner itself is not too bad. It's in a small auditorium and there must have been around 70 or so students who came or thereabouts. Those who come to each and every English Corner are credited with 3 points towards what I guess is their overall mark. The group was about 90% female - it's already obvious the girls have more interest in learning english than the boys. It started with the usual - they asked us to say a few words, to which we did - nothing special - on a microphone i might add - and then we were opened up to be asked questions. Insert cricket chirp here. Surprise surprise no-one wanted to ask questions as they are all too shy. Finally someone asked us some questions, some real curveballs that we couldnt have laid money down on in advance such as, "Why did you want to come to China?" and "Do you like Chinese food?"
After questions and answers, which lasted for around three minutes, we played a game that the two english teacher organisers had arranged. This was quite enjoyable. They would call volunteers out who would then stand before us. We were all seated on a podium type thing on a line of chairs - kind of like the way celebs sit when they're autographing. In fact, it felt like we were celebs, and we recieved numerous rounds of applause because we are foreign which means, special. The game was - they would put a word up on the big screen. The student volunteer would then come out and try and explain the word to which we had to guess it. For example - > It is a kind of bird that *makes flapping motion* flies around, and likes to fly in flowers. I guessed duck - swan... then heard, It makes honey - oh, Bee! A point for the kid! etc etc etc
Courtney and I alternated between answering a bunch of explanations each and some of them, the girls in particular, can speak really good english. The whole name of the game isnt really about them not knowing how to speak it - it's about getting them to speak - that's the challenge. Whilst I am answering questions, the other teacher was asking Courtney in the background - what have you prepared for the next activity? Could you SING US YOUR NATIONAL ANTHEM OF AUSTRALIA? HAHAHAHAHAHA no.
Get stuffed! I mean seriously, first we're obliged to turn up to this thing, then it's presumed we'll turn up with things prepared?! What are we doing for next time? Nothing. They can stick it up their ass out of pure principle. Next weekend we are going to Shanghai, the weekend after? Who the hell cares.
I am happy to attend these things IF we are on campus and have no plans. I am not prepared for it to eat into our 'us' time on weekends, our explore time - moreso when they expect us to prepare things for it. Seriously, stick it up your asses. I know that things like contracts mean different things to Chinese, that's no surprise, and I know that we have to expect to have stuff constantly changed on us, that's just how they are as a people - chaotic, but when if it starts to cut into our own valuable time, i don't bloody think so.
Before we arrived we were under the impression we would be provided with books to teach from and a curriculum - wrong! And by under the impression i mean - we were told that. We were told we were teaching 15-17 yr olds - not kids - which is what we will be tackling this coming week - meaning even more lesson plans to create. And we were not told it would be on a second campus either. Most of this stuff we have already accepted and are just dealing with it - but i think what makes it difficult for us to swallow - well this latest English Corner thing, is the way the guy basically forces it upon us. We don't really care for this guy, he has a vibe about him that is untrustworthy. I don't know - he hasnt done anything bad or anything like that, nor is he a prick or anything but very friendly - but some people just give you a bad vibe, and that is what we get from him. We both feel that our own best interests are not in his best interests and that mixing our world up by changing around rosters at the drop of a hat, or expecting us to suddenly do more classes than we agreed to on our letter of acceptance(ie 17) will be unsurprising if it pops up. Naturally though, we will only take so much and if push comes to shove we know what we will do.
Rant over!
After English Corner we walked down the street into a restaurant we hadn't been before. It was well lit and there was a seperator between the two main eating rooms - that seperator were large fish tanks with neon lighting and white plastic plant things. Odd. The bowls on the table were in a little package which contained the soup spoon, a plate, and two small bowls. As we were lead to our table, the waiter unwrapped these for us. Again...weird. Now here was our first real restaurant challenge and I think this was the best place we have eaten yet because of it. Previously, the restaurants have had either photographs of dishes or poorly translated english - the restaurant at this place had ONLY chinese characters. That's it - nothing else, nada. So out came our limited ability and it won the day. The waiter had very very basic english - enough to say he couldnt speak english well. I think if we try to speak chinese, they are more inclined to speak english as they are very shy.
So we ordered in chinese - using the few words we knew that were food. Mifan...rice, nu roe - meat of some kind, i knew it was either pork or beef - either would do. Beef of pork is more of a safe bet as it will likely come out in a tasty dish. Chicken can be a bit dodgy :) And finally we whipped out the trusty translator book and requested the final dish - vegetables. Oh and I finally found a use for one of the best sentences I have known for a long time - We would like to order 2 glasses of beer! Pijiou = beer.
The vegetable dish consisted of bok choy and some kind of dark egg yolk in a type of soup and was delicious. The rice came out, steamed and regular; so far so good and the final dish was in fact beef afterall. It came on a sizzling plate amongst a gravy type sauce with a ring of broccoli surrounding it. It was very very tasty and exactly what we wanted to cheer us up after feeling somewhat shitty after English Corner. In fact this was also our cheapest meal here to date - coming in at I think under ten dollars australian! I will point out our feeling shitty was at the expectations on us from the head and other teachers - the students themselves are delightful. They are the ones who really want to learn and it makes me happy to know they were overjoyed we were there. I'd do it again for them if nothing else, but I will NOT prepare anything. No thank you.
Ok jumping back into the day - we drove into Wuxi City with Mr Pan in his Peugeot. He actually has a really nice car - a lot of the teachers do. Considering their wages, I am not overly sure how they can afford it - but good on him. Next time we do a drive like that, I am going to record some of it. The stuff that goes on on those roads has to be seen to be believed. I was sitting in the front passenger seat and constantly smiled back at Courtney when certain things happened. It's just unbelievable!! They have traffic lights, they have marked lanes, they have zebra crossings - and god only knows why! The drive in the most random way, it's just simply unbelievable. About the only thing that seems to work is their horns and every vehicle has one, INCLUDING push bikes. They toot their horn, and the other driver/pedestrian/or bicycle/scooter knows you're there and somehow doesn't get hit.
It's not just the drivers - it's the pedestrians too! They worm their way across the road and sometimes it's like they just know they wont get hit and just work their way into the thickest cesspit of traffic. There's zebra crossings everywhere and I to date cant work out why as no-one gives way to them. I will upload a photo into this post that Courtney took that is just a classic example of chinese traffic - you will see a car horizontally driving across a zebra crossing. I mean, come on!
So we drove into Wuxi proper and parked then Mr Pan took us into a tea house. Now this place was awesome. This place looked like it had been lifted straight out of a movie. It had a full pond system going through it, with little waterfalls and gold fish and it just had a great atmosphere. It extended off into some very long hallways and all along them were little individual booths or rooms which were full of chinese people. The tea house is an extremely intricate part of the chinese way of life. Some people would stay here for most of the day, eating, playing chinese chess or cards and most importantly, drinking tea.
When you sat down, the staff brought an array of light snacks and fruit and the all important tea order per person. Courtney had some kind of floral tea, I had a green tea which I was told by Mr Pan looked like a tree in the glass with some of the leaves on the bottom, some floating but pointing downwards. Mr Pan himself ordered a type of Red Tea which came with a lovely little tea set. The way he actually used that tea set was completely new to me, the little tea pot then pouring pot both being tiny. I found this very interesting and enjoyed watching him use it - though it's like they can drink an unlimited quantity of the stuff.
The food was an odd assortment. Back in the tea house proper was a buffet with a large variety of authentic chinese dishes. You would fill up a whole bunch of small bowls with individual dishes then bring them back to our table and you had yourself a full fledged banquet. In between this a waiter would randomly turn up with a tray and you could take further dishes of things like dumplings(in soup) and fried wontons. It was really cool.
On an unrelated note - it was in this tea house that I lost my squat toilet virginity. As I said to Courtney, I wanted to 'try one out' on MY terms, when I had a choice, not when I had no choice - if ya know what I mean. All in all I have to say - it could have been worse - much much much much more worse.
After what was an extended lunch - i think we were in there for a good two hours or so, we headed into town where Mr Pan wanted to show us the cinemas for some reason. Now this part of the city was the real centre - we didn't go here when we came the other day. This made us feel a lot better about Wuxi city - this part looked actually very modern with some very modern and western looking shops. It was large, it was completely buzzy with people everywhere - like you get in the centre of melbourne, and it was well, great. It had a great feel to it and I think we're both very keen to get back in there and actually explore, rather than being guided around by someone else. While we enjoy Mr Pan's company greatly - today wasnt what we had in mind. We wanted to come in and just wander around by ourselves. Though if we hadnt gone with Mr Pan we would never have found that fantastic teahouse. Whoever comes over to visit us will definitely be taken there. Hell even the bathrooms were cool - overlooking this beautiful garden with a large goldfish filled feature pond.
From the CBD we went again by car to the Buddhist temple market we went to the other day as Mr Pan wanted to buy us some books for us to learn more Chinese. I have since been looking at these books and they're actually pretty crap! The first is a series of small excercise books for practicing chinese characters. One will be actual chinese characters, the next will be practicing english alphabet characters or numbers. The ones with the chinese characters have a little picture beside it to say what it is, but no description. Some of them are fairly vague as to what they are, so ah yeah. The other is a kit with some flashcards and two vcd's with lessons for learning pinyin - which is the english style way of writing chinese words. The only issue here is it's designed for chinese speakers to learn pinyin, so ah yeah, again not of much use. Thanks anyway PanZili!
One thing that greatly amused me - and continues to amuse me, is the way Mr Pan parked his car when we went to the market. We pulled into this tiny parking lot by the side of the road and he pulled into an empty space someone had just left, which completely parked in this little minivan thing. He does that all the time - parks in the most obscure places. You'll be driving along then suddenly stop - oh wait, we're parked! To get to this park he pulled across the other side of the road, horizontally blocking the two lanes of traffic going the other way. Now this is normal in China - this is where the whole chaotic road thing begins - car A pulls across road - do cars B C and D stop and wait for it to clear? No - chinese solution - go around car A. Cars E F and G follow B C and D until B C D E F G H I J are all now completely over the other side of the road, while bicycles K L M and scooters N O P Q R S T U V are half on the sidewalk, half on the road, half in the freakin river, you name it. If there's a blockage anywhere, the cars all funnel around it. It's an absolute classic. The best part is when a car actually pulls out, the driver doesnt look first - it just pulls out. The scooters and bikes are so used to this kind of thing that they dont even cock an eyebrow, they just go around. Always around. I see Mr Pan turn into a side parking area or something, going through the lanes the bikes and scooters and other misc vehicles use and he never gives them any ground, he just pulls straight in - all the while im mini-bracing myself expecting the bikes to just get nailed - but nope - they just funnel around. They react! I don't know how the roads work over here, as they are insane, but it works. Is this what chaos theory is?
Now the corker with this park that parked the other little van in - when we came back to the car the van was gone. We jumped in the car and pulled out to head down to have a look at the lake. On the side of the road outside the little park was a full sized bus - a tour bus type thing. When we pulled out of this car sized park, both Courtney and I saw the bus drivers face - he wanted the park. What the FCK!!! As we drove off, this full sized bus was now not trying, but DOING - pulling into this park which would basically stop any of the cars down that whole end from getting out. I swear to god, the place is an absolute classic.
So we get to Lake Tai and it's actually very beautiful. The drive down there is along a pretty forgettable, fairly heavily built up road. The day was very smoggy with visibility being somewhere in the vicinity of a few hundred metres. I asked Mr Pan about the smog - feeling touchy talking about it, for some reason I feel that by mentioning how smoggy the air is I might offend them - but seemingly not - they acknowledge the air is dirty, the water is dirty etc like it's just some common everyday thing - and well, it is. So the day is smoggy and I was surprised when he said that today was actually a good day for Wuxi. Uh no - in our book, it's very poor. I guess Wuxi is smoggier than I was hoping it would be. He said the air quality in Dongting, our district where we live is better and I guess that is true. It's typically smoggy most of the time here though we had an afternoon a few days ago where i commented how it was actually very clear. This large building we can see from our room - which must be a few blocks away - is usually half-submerged in the haze, but on that particular afternoon it was basically crystal clear. The smog is depressing in a way. I kept thinking to myself down by the lake - it would look so much better - so so much better if the air was clear and the sky was blue. It really is a shame. China could be such a beautiful place minus this filthy air. Not all of China is affected by the air pollution, but I think nowadays, those areas that are not are ever-decreasing. I have read that even Japan has complaints about the air pollution that is coming from China. It doesn't matter how environmentally concious they are if their much larger neighbor is going to pollute even their skies.
The lake itself - smog and all, was really beautiful. The smog didn't really affect it, making it look like a sort of late afternoon haze than actual pollution. The sun was out(as much as it can be here), and the water was glistening because of it. Many families were down here, walking around, drinking tea, taking photographs, driving paddleboats etc. We walked onto what I think was a small island thing, did a fairly quick circuit then headed for home as you know, we had to attend English Corner. We saw 3 wild cats - which are basically just domestic style cats, 2 of them having a go at a rubbish bin for food. It's really weird seeing animals like this just poking around, wild like this. There seems to be a lot of wild cats in particular about the area. I have also seen quite a few dogs also that seem to just wander around looking for food, homeless. The chinese we think are definitely not cat lovers. Whilst a number of students in class have mentioned they like them, and even Mr Pan said he likes them very much, I think it's a common consensus that the Chinese don't particularly like cats. We asked about the wild cats around the campus here, and were surprised as hell when he said that sometimes in summer they SHOOT THEM, shoot them with a GUN, because they scare some of the younger students with their meowing. Um ok!!!Quick movie I took of Lake Tai. It really is lovely there. Lake Tai is China's 3rd largest fresh water lake, and it is a large source of drinking water.
The tea house - our private little room and our mini-banquet. At one stage, Mr Pan had this bowl of mini-snail shells and he was sucking the snail ...i guess you'd call it meat, from the shells. We uh passed on trying that one.
The tea set that Mr Pan was drinking his red tea from. He kept serving me up tea from the little tall-shaped cup on the far left. I had no idea the little bamboo platform was part of the whole process - it being where you dump your tea if it's gone cold or what not.
Very common view from the car.
Ah yes, Car horizontal on Zebra Crossing. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
One of the things that we liked about the lake - it was so quiet. With a gentle breeze, it was pure bliss.
That's Wuxi City in the background. It's about a ten minute or so drive away - it's not ON the banks of the lake but further away than the photo suggests. Actually, Mr Pan said it was Wuxi City, personally I reckon it was some other district OF Wuxi -we often get incorrect information from the Pan'ster thanks to the good ol language barrier which makes every day tiring.
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