Smog and Other Miscellaneous Things (Courtney)

A couple of random things I thought to mention...

1. Smog. It's everywhere. And slowly making me forget what a normal sky looks like. Today was around 23 degrees. Quite warm and alarmingly humid, but with a cold breeze. Yet when you open the window, you are confronted by this...






Yes, it looks like it is about 5 degrees and foggy. But that ain't fog folks, it's smog! I asked the kids today, what is the weather like today? To which I had a chorus of "sunnies"! Sunny?!?! Sunny?!?! Where the freaking heck is the sun?!!? The air is so thick out there today, with such limited visability. You can almost feel it in front of you, and if you think about it too much it will turn you into a paranoid mess, because you know all of that is going straight into your lungs. I am convinced this is why I've had such a sore throat, and now that Marcus is sick all you can do is try to breath outdoors as little as possible. People had their windows open tonight to get the warm air...thanks but no thanks, I'll put the heater on and contribute to global warming rather than breath that crap in.


In the photo you can see I have circled the vague outline of a building in the distance. This building is normally mostly visible, depending on the weather. Today, you would barely know it is there. It is now dark outside and the building is normally lit up like a Christmas tree. I can confirm that I just stuck my head out the window and I can make out none of its lights.

This one looks in the other direction. The circled bit is where you can normally see buildings. Today..nadda! Just grey and more grey.

2. Losing Weight - China is really great if you feel like losing a few pounds or getting fit...well, that is if you discount the dodgy air quality. Since ditching the car and switching to foot power, Marcus and I have lost a combined total of 9kg. This probably has something to do with the food as well. Whilst neither of us eat badly, China has certainly seen us up our daily intake of vegetables by at least double. That is probably due to the quality of the meat we are served at the canteen, nothing like pig fat and hair to make you stick to the vegies! I have never eaten so much bok choy in my life. We seriously eat bok choy every day, sometimes in numerous dishes. I think I would eat the equivalent daily of one of those little bok choy packages you can buy at the supermarket - you know how it comes in lots of 3? I would eat that at a minimum each day. It is slowly getting to me, and I relish days when I realise I have not eaten any. I dare say by the time we return home I will never want to eat bok choy again.

I'm sure we could get even fitter if we used our bikes...





Yup, they have been sitting in the under cover bit of our stairwell for the last few weeks. Check out how filthy they are, that's what is floating around here.





And our next door neighbour's scooter...absolutely rotten!



3. There appears to be a girlie bar next door. I know this sounds odd, considering we live in a school and all. Next door is this large building. Originally I thought it might be a very small movie cinema, as they seemed to have movie posters out the front every so often. Then Marcus points out that one section up top you can see into, and it is a gym. People in there running on treadmills and the like. Then we walk by the other day, and there are more posters...but girlie ones! Then I walk past the other day and there is pumping music coming out of the place...I don't know what is going on in there, but it's certainly an interesting combination.



4. A new Kedi has opened up down the road from us. A Kedi is basically a 7 Eleven, and can come in handy for all sorts of things. Yet at a Kedi, rather than salmonela chicken rolls, you can buy take away bento boxes and sushi. I'm yet to be game enough to try either of these, as all I can think about is the quality of food at 7 Eleven, and think the probability of SUSHI being better is just not possible. Anyhoo, we stopped at this new Kedi the other night on our way home for a couple of things. Turns out the music to signal that someone has entered the store is a full rendition of "London Bridge is Falling Down." Seriously. Every time someone walks past the sensor, out blares the music. Working in a Kedi has to be a pretty boring job as it is, throw in that many renditions of London Bridge is Falling Down and it's not long before someone goes postal in there.

5. Today I had a mortifyingly embarrassing moment in class, which as an English teacher should not have happened. For one of the activities I had to write the alphabet on the board. I forgot "W". Yes, I've probably been able to say the alphabet since I was 4 years old...and today I forgot a letter. One of the students kindly pointed this out to me. He he..that reminds me, the reason I wrote the alphabet up was for an activity we did on cats (!) and adjectives. The kids had to work together to come up with an adjective for every letter of the alphabet. Eg, the cat is hungry, ill, jolly, messy etc. When I yelled out "What did everyone have for D?" What was the response?

Delicious...

6. It has now been 5 full days since I have seen Mr Pan. To say I am worried is an understatement...where are you Mr Pan!?! I have seen his wife, so clearly all is well...but I'm starting to get a complex that he no longer loves us...

Suzhou and Qing Ming Festival (Courtney)

As the title suggests, China is currently celebrating Qing Ming Festival, or Tomb Sweeping Festival. We have had the last four days off (well, including the weekend!) and headed up to Suzhou. There is a Chinese saying that goes something along the lines of "Earth has heaven, China has Suzhou". I know that's not verbatim, but you get the idea. We have constantly read and been told that Suzhou is akin to a paradise, the "Venice of China", and were curious to see for ourselves. Having read so much about it, then witnessed the surrounding area (eg, where we live!) we found it kinda hard to believe that such a gorgeous place could be so close.

However, Suzhou did not disappoint. Whilst I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a paradise, it was a beautiful town, in a very Chinese way and I'm already looking forward to going back and exploring some more. It is definately a town in China that I would recommend people not miss if they ever travel here. Whilst it still had all the usual Chinese suspects - grey skies, smog, dirt, rubble - it was a very charming place. Suzhou is known for its canals, bridges, gardens and silk..and I can safely say we covered all areas! I wont write a huge post..as I'm sure Marcus will hit you with one of those, but I thought I would put up some photos for anyone looking for their Monday morning blog hit. So here goes....

Our first sight of beautiful Suzhou...and oh what a shithole it looked like. This is looking back at the train station. As we left Wuxi I made comment to Marcus how China didn't feel as overwhelming as it used to. That all changed when we got to Suzhou. The train station was one huge melting pot of sheer chaos...the people!!! Everywhere, there was so much noise and so many people, it was crazy. We had to fight our way out of the place, then were followed around by touts trying to get our business. All we wanted to do was find either a taxi (a legal one) or the main street Renmin Lu. We ended up finding the street after buying a map from a little old lady. It was like nothing I had experienced before. Suzhou is a lot busier than Wuxi, I think because of the holiday, and also it being a tourist town. Whilst it is an international tourist town, it is also a Chinese tourist town, and the place was packed. Bumper to bumper traffic, scooters and bikes everywhere, you name it. Whilst walking along Renmin Lu we were constantly hearing "Hello, hellloooo..", all manner of guys wanting our business and to take us places. Being stubborn idiots we refused all of their offers...and proceeded to walk for an hour and a half to our hotel. By the time we got to the hotel we had been on the go for three hours - might I point out the train ride took 15 minutes!!! Of course then the hotel had no record of our booking (or of me having already paid)...but we eventually got it sorted and collapsed in our room.

Even the beggars in Suzhou were more abrupt (that's not the right word, but definately more in your face). Here we had beggars grab our arms, push their begging bowls into our stomachs...for a little while I found it pretty confronting. But, that is what happens in a tourist town. There is so much poverty and despair that us Westerners are viewed as the money ticket. We try to give, but there are so many people and so many problems. We literally could have given money to every person we saw and come home with not a cent left...and it still would be the tip of the iceberg. I gave this guy some money then asked to take his photo, which of course required me giving him more money, but that's no different to a lot of places! On Friday night as we left the hotel we were approached by this young kid, who claimed to be 15 but who knows. He was clearly not well and just rambled and rambled at the speed of light in English about how we should help him and give him money. I'm not sure how he learnt such good English, but think a lot of it was just a very well practised speel and beyond that he probably couldn't say much more. He decided that if we helped him we could be his second parents...sorry kiddo.

On Friday night we walked to the Garden of the Master of the Nets, which wasn't far from where we were staying. During the nicer months they have nightly performances of traditional Chinese art (done in a completley touristy way of course!) We couldn't refuse seeing one of the gardens at night, as they all close by 5pm. The garden was really gorgeous, and was so much quieter than others we visited during the day. We kept catching up with tour groups which was frustrating as we were happy just wandering around by ourselves, and even sometimes having a section of garden to ourselves! These two guys above were so cool. After their performance off came the masks and they sat along one of the walls deep in conversation. They looked so cool I asked to take their photo. They ran and got the masks, thinking I wanted to get them in costume, I tried to explain but to no avail.

However I went back later and managed to snap them! How cool is the guy on the right in his Justin Timberlake/trilby hat?! To me he looks like he should be hanging in a bar in New Orleans, playing the blues...

Of course, we found ourselves "backstage" where I snuck on one of the masks...it stank.

In one section of the garden was a large lake with a quaint little path around it. Hanging from the roof of a little pavilion was this beautiful string of lanterns. I took so many photos trying to capture them, then Marcus comes along and trumps me with this great shot.

Saturday was garden day. I had mapped out our plan of attack. A couple of guide books mention the "Couples Garden". Much smaller and less visited than the big tourist gardens, and supposedly quite beautiful. I made it my mission to find said garden...with absolutely no luck. We caught a cab in the vague direction. I didn't think the cabbie knew where I was pointing, and turned out he didn't as he took us to the zoo. But the garden was supposedly down a street nearby. I checked with a fruit stall owner and he motioned us down this street. Well we walked and walked down this little alley which was strewn with rubbish and broken stones and this bumpy road, thinking to ourselves, hmm...doesn't look like the garden is down here, but Lonely Planet did say it was off the tourist track...turns out we never found the garden but I loved walking down the street. It was great to see Suzhou from a different perspective, I doubt many westerners ever stumble down this little street (going by some of the looks we received!) and we got to witness people just going about their lives. Washing clothes in the canal, little shops, and check out the two cuties above and below! The lady had a spectacular (and unexpected) laugh, a real chuckle, and her husband just has the best smile. The two kiddies below were "playing" with their bucket of water, so cute.

Back onto the main street...and of course vendors doing what they do best!

What's this you ask? Yup, we were finally brave enough to jump into a bike/rickshaw thing. (Alternatively known as voiding our travel insurance!) Marcus has been keen, me not so much. We ended up using a few of them throughout the day, and somehow each time we ended up with an impossibly old man. I felt so sorry for them lugging us westerners around!

Marcus and his new love, Zhen Zhu Nai Cha.

Beautiful old rooftops in the Lion Grove Garden, originally built by monks. Of the gardens we saw I enjoyed this one the most. It was mostly rocks, which had been hand placed to form steps, caves and all sorts of areas. Some of them were so smooth after years of wear, you weaved your way in and around them. Or over and on top of them as the Chinese did..

My fave building in the Humble Administrators Garden. This jutted out over a lake, and was just a large room with these wonderful windows, parts of which were a deep blue. It looked like such a great place to sit in summer and watch the lake. This garden is gianormous and packed to the brim with tourists. There were parts where it was virtually impossible to move, and the noise! The gardens were beautiful, and would have been even more amazing if they could have been enjoyed as originally intended - in peace and quiet where you could meander along and contemplate. However, there was incessant yelling, phones ringing, cameras shooting, people pushing past, people climbing over things (no need to stick to the paths here)...it was madness. This is what I mean by Suzhou being beautiful in a very Chinese way.

Again, me and my desire to see "different" things. I had also read about a night market, which was on the other side of town. It wasn't marked on any map, but I had read that it was a lively place full of great buys and food. Throughout the day we had seen so many things we wanted to buy, but we told ourselves to wait until the night market, rather than buying from the touristy stores outside the gardens. We passed up amazing ink paintings, embroidered pictures (sound weird but were very cool), fans, the cutest silk pj's that I wanted to buy for May...so many things. We caught a cab to the market, armed with cash and a willingness to spend it. What did we find? A street with food. Lively yes, great to look at with its pretty lights and bustling vibe...but not a thing to buy anywhere! Sigh...It was probably for the best though as Marcus seems to be coming down with my illness and it started bucketing down, so we headed back...and ordered room service!! He he..I've never done that before, and it was good!

And finally, Leonard hanging with an old friend in downtown Suzhou.

I wish we could have stayed longer, sadly it's back to teaching tomorrow! On an unrelated note, I had a disturbing realisation in Suzhou...I have a favourite type of squat toilet. Yes, I never thought I'd see the day where I preferred one type of squat toilet over another!

Ahh holidays (Marcus)

Day 1 of 4 days off, and what a beautiful sunny day it was(initially). After lazing around for the morning, we set out to take next week's lesson to the printing room to have 880 copies printed for Senior 1 next week. En route, we were going to take some photographs of the campus as it's really quite pretty now that Spring has sprung.

You can see our apartment across the lake, it's the small squat building in the front to the right. It's separate from the main blocks of flats because we are foreigners and carry massive amounts of prestige with that birth-right - right?

The bamboo behind the apartment - we have a lovely view of this from the bathroom - pity we don't spend more time in there.

We were however, accosted by two women, a man and three absolutely cute as hell babies. It turns out two of them were little twin boys, the third being, I don't know what. We wanted to take their photos but kept going - until distracted I stopped to photograph the local gaggle of geese who were nearby in the lake. Well the party caught up to us and soon they were thrusting babies into our hands to photograph US with the babies! As one was being thrust into Courtney's arms, she handed the camera over to me, and it got caught between us then fell hard to the ground. It was alright, but the damned door that holds the battery and memory card broke, meaning it now has to be permantly taped up or it flashes the 'door is open!!' alert and we can't do anything. Annoying.

Anyhow after initially being phased by that, as I to date had taken such good care of the camera, it was quickly forgotten by the major cute factor that was those kiddies. And again, another situation where being able to speak Chinese would have been wonderful. The memory that will remain with me however is the decidedly wet patch beneath the kid that I held for the photo...erk.

How cute is this baby? Seriously, it's making me clucky. There were three of them like this, to which I would happily steal them and bring them home and raise them as my minions.

Seeing the day was so nice, and we are spending the next 3 in the tourist haven of Suzhou, we decided to catch the bus into the city again. Today we trekked down to the Grand Canal. I was really wanting to see it from day 1, but was never actually sure where it was. I saw it one day briefly as we drove past it en route to lake Taihu with Mr Pan and have wanted to go back there ever since. Well today we went down there - about a solid 15 minute walk from the centre of WuXi in I guess a northerly style direction. Actually I have no idea what direction it is in, but like that really matters anyway.

The Grand Canal if you do not know is one of those 'big important cool things' that's part of China's history. I find China's history and cultural tidbits absolutely fascinating. The Canal itself is huge and is actually the largest of its kind in the world. The oldest parts of the canal actually date right the way back to the 5th century BC - yeah, it's old alright. It begins in the tourist city of Hangzhou (where Marco Polo was reputed to have governed once upon a time(IF Marco Polo actually existed - that's apparently still up for debate)) - goes through Suzhou, WuXi, a whole bunch of other cities and eventually ends up in Beijing. It does not go through either Nanjing or Shanghai, which are the other two very large cities in our province, Jiangsu.

The canal is still a massive source of travel today, with an almost constant stream of barges in either direction. They are laden with goods of every description and are either so full they're almost taking on water, or empty, returning home for another load. We plan on packing a picnic and heading down here to watch them for a stint one day - it's quite relaxing, and thoroughly interesting. At the place we found the canal, there's a nice little Pagoda setup which is just crying out to be chilled in. Across the canal was a mountain with another large Pagoda on it. This looks like it's one huge park network, complete with chair-lifts. We plan to hit it in a day trip in the near future.

Leaving the Canal behind us, we headed back into the city where I basically impulse bought a new camera. An Olympus FE-340 which is effectively the most recent model of what I was already using. This camera will address my biggest issues with the previous camera, and is already working a treat. The other camera's flash litterally blasted faces to hell and back - whereas this camera is much newer technology and is much much better. It also allows you to adjust the white balance and ISO, and is 8 megapixel opposed to 6. It was 2100 rmb initially, they offered a deal of 1900 and a 1 gig memory card. We ended up bargaining with them and getting it for 1900 with a 2 gig card instead which in my opinion was good value. I was going to try and get it down to 1700/1800 with the 1 gig card, but I am happy with the 2gig. 1900 rmb is approximately 300 Australian dollars which really is cheap. The camera is also much smaller, has a larger LCD and can detect faces and all these other funky things, so yeah, happy days. We'll let it loose in Suzhou, then punish you with a massive epic blog entry.

Nothing to see here, just your typical street-smart WuXi local etc etc though this one is particularly windswept and handsome.

One of the larger canals that passes right alongside the city centre. There are numerous bridges of this style dotted along their length. Now that the tree's have their green coats on, it makes for a really beautiful view when the sun comes out.

The Great Courtney before the Grand Canal - or the Great Channel if you're Mr Pan, to which I keep correcting him and he continues to call it Great Channel. Whatever. This bridge we were on was quite large and was a shocker. There was a constant stream of busses and trucks across it, and each time they went over a joint in the road - where the surface joins onto another big flat chunk, the hold damned thing rocked!! Now I distinctly remember reading several articles about bridges in China collapsing - one where a large boat clipped the bottom of it, knocking several cars into the water below, and another which was still being constructed somewhere out whoop whoop, but a lot of workers were killed. I was thinking about both of these every time this thing MOVED. It's probably safe as hell, but still, it unnerved me, and I was very glad to be leaving it.

Barges of every description pass by - it's very relaxing to watch. Most of them sport the brilliant red Chinese flag on the rear of the vessel. One had an almost black Chinese flag as it was sitting right above an exhaust pipe. The barges are like floating homes - most have washing hung all over them, one even had a motorcycle on the back.

This old woman was dropping a bucket down into the water, hauling it up then washing her clothes in it. If you could see the water in better detail - or smell it, you would be able to appreciate just how ..interesting that is. Imagine washing your clothes in the Yarra in the middle of Melbourne - or better, Kannanook Creek in Frankston. See if you can spot the cat in this photo; cat's make us happy.

See you after Suzhou!

Those quirky Chinese (Marcus)

Today was a good day. Wednesday is usually the 'end of the teaching week' in my mind. Friday is when we launch our first Senior 1 Lesson, and Wednesday are the final two classes. Monday and Thursday are solely Junior 1, and I don't count them in the weekly 'lesson stress' as the younger kids are just so damned awesome that we can literally teach them anything and the class will be fine. We could walk into class with no preparation, a bottle of orange juice and a pair of mittens and somehow make a class from it. If in doubt with the kids, play games! Senior 1 is a different story. These guys can make it really awkward if the lesson doesn't work, so Friday = day 1. 4 classes for me and a chance to test the lesson out. It's then used another two times on Tuesday, and a final two times on Wednesday.

Today however I had to head into WuXi City with Mr Pan to urgently post off some documents so got out of teaching my last class of the day - which also happens to be my crappest class of the day. A certain kid, who we call Mr Fuzz(due to his formally fuzzy afro style haircut *note - very rare in chinese)), and his sidekick, Mr Never fkng shuts up in class kid.

So yeah I missed them today. But my earlier Senior 1 class is usually also difficult - but today, 200% fine. I also noticed the class was approximately 85% female...which i havent noticed before. Usually there's a group of guys who just piss around at the back, but today I had everyones attention, and couldnt really spot any muck-around guys. So I don't know if they changed the classes around or what.

I also taught my second, final and favourite of the gifted kids today. Tuesday is gifted 1, Wednesday gifted 2. When I turn up to Gifted 1 - there's usually a welcome wagon of kids waiting to greet me - this makes me feel wonderful, no matter my mood. Wednesdays I don't get that, but the class is simply adorable. Wednesday has names such as Jeep, Hill, (Fat)Tom, Gerry and of course the male Betty, who I will be having words with next class over name choice. Also in this class I teach Mr Pan's daughter, Dellia, who is an absolutely lovely little girl.

So I launched a new game to these guys and it was a massive, roaring success. It was a cross between Tic Tac Toe and Hangman with the class divided into two teams. In order to 'capture' a square, they needed to guess the word, letter by letter. If the word didn't contain the letter they guessed, it was over to the other team. Man the noise that came out of them, the roars, the cheers, the massive rapid discussions and pouring over textbook trying to work out the themed words of first clothes, then animals. Ahh a great day!

To cap the day off we went out for dinner to our favourite Korean BBQ place(we think its Korean anyway), then went for a short walk down the street.

It really is a cool area here when you get to know it a little better. Cool is probably being too nice, but sometimes, it just has an interesting, happening vibe. As we walked down the street we saw a huge crowd of Chinese by the road, all looking into something..a store or somesuch. We were going to turn around, or cross the street, as we would quickly become THE main attraction, not whatever they were looking at, but our curiosity had us, so we went and had a look.

The crowd was all standing around what looked like a store that sold mobile phones and electrical entertainment items, like televisions. In front of the store - in the window, was a medium sized widescreen TV setup. Outside the store, two speakers. The TV was playing the movie, Golden Compass, obviously pirated(and a crap movie too if you're wondering!) and well, the crowd was gathered to WATCH the movie. Just standing there on a thursday night, on the sidewalk watching a movie. Classic. I love this kind of randominity(tm) that you constantly discover here. The whole place is a classic.

Other things of interest were several late night pharmacies/clinics. All open-windowed, allowing easy viewing in to passers-by - inside, various forms of chairs and the like, with people sitting there with drips in their hands.

China, the land of the IV drip. Food poisoning? Drip. Vomiting? Drip. Bad flu? Drip. Did you just cough? DRIP. Got change for a fifty? DRIP!!! DRIP DRIP DRIP. If you even look in the window you'll have an IV on you so fast you cant even say the word drip.

On the way up the street, we saw a man taking a leak on the sidewalk. On the way back, another man taking a leak on a different sidewalk. I think before I leave China, I think I am going to try that. Gotta live life to the fullest eh.

And finally, and completely unrelated, I walked around the apartment stuffing toilet paper into all the cracks of the windows, blocking the holes. The mosquitoes in the apartment have been practically non-existant since, granted it has been cold the past few todays. It was warm today however and so far so good.

Cute Alert! (Courtney)

So today I tried to get some pics of my Gifted Kids. I wanted to get a pic of the class then some photos of small groups. However, when you pull a camera out around here EVERYONE wants in on the action.

So below are a couple of pics of my gifted class. They are adorable. I actually had the option of not teaching them today (to go do some urgent business in the city with Marcus and Mr Pan) but I couldn't go a week without seeing them! Today we made name tags for everyone, and the names just get better and better. There is now also a Shirley, a Peter Park, a Park, four Sky's (all spelt differently), a King and a NAPOLEON!! I love them.

I don't know why they all wanted to put their name tags on their heads...

Chaos!!

Yi, Er, San, Si... (Courtney)

As Marcus mentions below, today was April Fool's Day. Sadly my classes were no where near as inventive as Marcus'. One class got into the spirit, even if it was misguided. I think they thought it was try to inflict pain on each other day...as 40 minutes was spent attempting to throw things around the classroom without the teacher noticing. Uh..guys, if you don't want me to notice, then don't throw things at the blackboard!!! One boy did have tadpoles in his water bottle which I'm sure had a purpose for one of their classes. You have to give it to Marcus' class though for somehow getting their hands on a turtle!

Yesterday at the junior campus we took some snaps of the gardens and lake. Whilst this school is much older and more rundown, the gardens are quite pretty, especially now that spring has arrived. Well, it claims to have arrived, but going by the 12 degree temperatures, spring is kinda letting us down on its end of the deal! When I got into my second class, all the kids sat down to do their eye exercises. This is my favourite part of the day, as 55 kids all sit there quietly poking and proding their faces. It is funny stuff to watch. As I was watching them I realised - I've got the camera!! So I like to think I've topped Marcus' ninja photo skills with this one, as I whipped out the camera and put it onto video mode.

There are some sounds and smells in a country that will stay with you forever. Of my time in Barcelona, the most vivid memory I have is of guys selling things on the beach. They would walk up and down yelling "Aqua, fanta, coca cola, coca cola light, beer - very cold beer my friend, patata..." and so on. It's one of those things that you always remember. Well, eye exercises will be another for me. The music and words will never leave me, occassionally I find myself humming the tune as I wander around. So I wanted you all to share with us eye exercise time...enjoy the video!

yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba!

(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 for the uninitiated)

The original golden apple...could do with a polish.

The lake running through the school is quite beautiful. It has this quaint little pagoda and zig zag bridge.

Taken from the pagoda looking back the other way.

The lake is absolutely brimming with goldfish! I sometimes wonder how they all have room to move..

Lastly, we are sitting in the office between classes when I notice this coffee mug. I look at the pig and think, hmm, that pig looks really familiar. I figure I'm just losing it. Until I turn to my right....

Oh yeah! That's right, I also sit next to the pig...

April Fools! (Marcus)

Well who'd a thunk it, but the Chinese students knew it was April Fool's Day today. They didn't know about Easter last week, but they know about April fool's, go figure!

One of my three classes, the morning class at 11:50am tried to get me. I think they partially understand the concept of it. While getting me to try and look out the window to see a UFO, they also planted some paper thing above the door, trying to have it fall on me, I had something squirted at me, and the most elaborate...


Yep, on every teacher's desk is a box of chalk. My dear students had taken the chalk from the box, on the desk and along the blackboard and hidden it. In the chalkbox they then put 1. A turtle, and 2. Tadpoles (?!?) They covered this up, HOPING I would reach in there to pick it up - sorry kids, I'm way too seasoned from 33 years of April Fool's to fall for that shit! I had to give it to them though, the fact it was a turtle and tadpoles cracked me up.

The offending class!