Okay, I said I was going to write this blog before I left Liujiaxia, but I guess as most of you predicted would happen, I got busy and had absolutely no time to post until now. I’m currently relaxing right under the aircon in Matt’s room (while he makes me some of his delicious dumplings) since the rest of his and Ned’s apartment is absolutely boiling. Actually, the whole of Jiangxi’s absolutely boiling. I stepped off the train in Nanchang and it hit me like a wave. I’m used to getting off the plane in Spain but this was a whole new experience. After about 10 seconds of being on the platform I was sweating like crazy. That might be too much information for you but I just had to convey just how boiling this place is!
Anyway, I’ll stop talking about sweating now and tell you what’s been happening in the past week or so. I’m writing this off the top of my head with no internet to check what I last wrote about so I’m just going to start with last Saturday , the day after Ellie’s birthday. Jess and Kyall arrived in the morning (surprisingly early, silly people) and we started the weekend with a trip to LXC. We then spent the afternoon chilling in the apartment with Kyall and Matt dressing up in some of my clothes to pass the time (Matt just commented that he’d prefer the term ‘model’ there – what a diva). We then went for a hotpot at the same place we’d gone to with Shirley a few weeks back and I have to say again how much I love that place. Once we were stuffed, we made our way to KTV. Loads of them seemed to be closed but we eventually found an open one and I sent a photo of the entrance to our Chinese friends. We’d counted there’d be 10 of us and when we told the KTV people this, they put us in a MASSIVE room for like, 20-30 people. When I say massive, I really do mean MASSIVE. There was literally room to dance at the front and everything! Once we’d gotten settled, Shirley appeared with her boyfriend and another boy. I recognised the boy straight away – Yogurt, a student in my class 11! It turns out he street dances with Shirley and he danced for us at the KTV. He was amaaaazing! We were disappointed that neither he nor Shirley knew Gangam Style though…
The next day, Jess was catching the 11am bus back to Xining and just as she got on the bus, Nicole’s bus from Lanzhou arrived. We lugged all her things to the flat and then headed out to the Sichuan restaurant for lunch. When we got back into the flat, we very stupidly played a drinking game to Spy Kids (are we old enough for drinking games?!). By dinnertime, I was a tad tipsy, but we made our way to LXC again anyway. After eating way too much food again, we popped into the market to grab a couple of things that Nicole needed and then went back to the apartment again.
On the Monday, I had two classes in the morning but I had the afternoon off. After a quick phonecall from the office, Matt and I successfully convinced Kyall to stay another night and come to a buffet hotpot with us that evening. The hotpot wasn’t quite as amazing the buffet hotpot in Lanzhou, but it was still pretty tasty and I reckon it’s a much better system than the normal hotpot system. 30 kuai (that’s £3 pounds for you) and all you can eat?! Yes please!
Now, I need to back track a little here to explain. There’s a semi-famous (okay, not really famous at all unless you google LiuJiaXia or maybe Lanzhou) place nearby called BingLing Si. It’s Buddhist caves that you visit by boat and it’s apparently meant to be very beautiful. We were meant to go months ago, but the weather was never good enough on the weekends (according to Susie anyway). We then kept asking when we could go and Susie said that the headmaster was going to organise for us to go with his daughter who’d love to meet us and can speak good English. So, we stopped asking and waited. We got pretty bored of waiting eventually and sent Susie to ask the headmaster again when they would take us. She came back to us saying that the daughter was no longer able to and the headmaster couldn’t get time off. That left us with one weekend to go – Ellie’s birthday weekend, so that was a no. Susie then suggested we went on Tuesday (the next day in this blog entry) and told me to ask Shirley if she knew anyone that could help us get there. Shirley gave some advice but it turns out another English teacher had a friend who worked on the boats. After hours of waiting on the Monday morning, we found out that the boats rarely went on weekdays because there aren’t enough tourists. WHAT?! Yeah, I wasn’t impressed. I have to admit that the school let us down a bit here, but ah well, we made Susie let us keep the day off and we decided to go to Lanzhou for the day anyway. We went around some markets, met up with Kyall’s friend Lou Rong, ate pizza and visited an arcade. It was definitely an unexpected fun day!
For the next three evenings, we were taken out to dinners by different people. Wednesday night was a banquet with the headmaster and some of the other school officials, along with Susie of course. That meal involved lots of baijiu and thanking each other for everything, it was pretty sweet. Thursday night was hotpot with Shirley and another woman we hadn’t actually met before. I wish we could have met her, Crystal, earlier since she had such good English and could actually keep a conversation up, but ah well. Next up, Friday evening, we had another hotpot but this time with Susie, her daughter Minnie, Candy, Candy’s best friend and fellow teacher who speaks no English but is lovely, June (English teacher for my class 1 and 2), June’s daughter Holly and us four vols. This was by far my favourite evening, it was just so relaxed and we had such a laugh. Matt and I bonded with the little girls (in Chinese – we called them our little apples) and then ended up being pretty tipsy since Susie force fed us baijiu throughout the night. Good times!
Before I go on to the weekend, I have to mention my last lesson plan because it was the best lesson ever. I decided, last minute, to create a family fortunes type game. With Matt and Nicole’s help, I rearranged the classroom into teams of four and even got out the board that switches from white board to black board so we could spin it around to keep scores (and because it looks cool). I think the students’ favourite question was ‘famous cities in China’ – they got ridiculously excited at that one. They also got excited when I literally showered them with sweets at the end of the class too, aha! Some of my other classes got to make cards to welcome next year’s volunteers but a few students decided to rebel and make different cards. I got some ‘Dear Lorry, I will miss you. Love you, welcome to China cards!’ (yes, the phrases in that order) and Matt actually got himself a proposal card. Oh Chinese students, gotta love em!
The weekend’s up next! Matt, Nicole and I got the bus up to Xining on Saturday morning to stay a night with Jess. We had Muslim food for lunch – have I mentioned Muslim restaurants before? They’re absolutely everywhere and they all serve pretty much the same food. I always have ‘qingjiao chao rou gai jao fan’ which is meat and peppers on top of rice. I always know that’ll be a good’un! In the evening, we went for pizza and then to the same club that I mentioned in my other blog. It was a really good night there again, although a particular person throwing up before we’d even arrived at the club wasn’t exactly pretty… But anyway, it was pretty epic and I’ll definitely be on the look out for a Soho bar in all the places we visit when traveling.
On Sunday, our traveling back didn’t exactly go to plan. The journey is meant to take about 4 hours but it ended up taking nearly 6 instead because of traffic. A huge truck had crashed on the mountain road causing queues on both sides. In case you’re wondering, we don’t think anyone died in the crash, but the truck looked pretty terrible. Sunday night and Monday morning were just rushes of cleaning and packing, making sure I had everything ready. Of course, I’ve already thought of a couple of things that I’ve forgotten, but I’ve got the most important things and that’s what counts.
At half 11 on Monday, I said my goodbyes to Susie (cue my strongest efforts not to cry) and then to Shirley. Matt and I arrived in Lanzhou at about 2pm and we chilled with Kyall, watching a film. We had that amazing buffet hotpot I mentioned earlier for dinner with two of Kyall’s friends then went to a bar to finish the evening. We got back at a reasonable time since we were getting up at half 6 to catch our 9am train to Nanchang. Considering it was 32 hours on the train, it wasn’t half bad of a journey. I even tried the train food for the first time and actually enjoyed it! Ooh I have to add in here another piece of news that will shock my family and friends. I, Lowri Jones, like ketchup. That’s right, after 18 years of hating the sight, taste and smell of it, I’ve started putting ketchup on absolutely everything. Crazy stuff right?! I also tried egg on the train, EGG! I still don’t like fried eggs, but I tried one! China’s made me so much braver with trying new things, you all better be proud of me!
Okay, there isn’t much else to say now. I’m not too sure when I’ll blog next, but I’m hoping to try and update this at every different place I visit, or at least write blogs ready to be posted when I have internet. The next stop after I leave here, Zixi, is Guangzhou. Matt, Ellie and I are there for four nights and I can’t wait. I have to admit that we chose to go here because we had to before Hong Kong and the hostel looked so nice we decided to stay longer BUT it is actually a famous, beautiful city and some of our fellow volunteers went there in the Winter and said it’s amazing. I’m hoping to get some shopping done there too since I’m lacking in Summery clothes due to my awful washing machine that likes to ruin clothes. On our last night in Guangzhou, Alex and Jess join us before we all head up together to Hong Kong the next day. We’re there for 6 nights because we’re not too sure how long it’ll take to get our visas sorted (Alex, Ellie and I all have the visa problem I’ve explained before). It’s going to be an expensive stay since HK is nearly as expensive as back home but we’ve managed to fit Disneyland into our schedule so we’re all super super super excited! I think we’ll be giving a beach a visit too which will be a nice change.
After Hong Kong, we’re staying a night in Beijing so we can celebrate Ned’s birthday and the collect Gweno (one of my best friends from home) from the airport. The same day we pick up Gweno , we catch the train to Xi’an. If you remember, I missed out on Xi’an last time (so did Matt, Ned and Ellie) and it’s the perfect place to take Gweno since it has the Terracotta Warriors to see. We’ll be there for 3 nights before we head back to Shanghai to stay another 3 nights. Then it’s Zixi again to pick up our big cases before we spend 5 or 6 nights in Beijing at the end. We’re hoping to see much more of the sights in the big city this time so I’m thinking it will be a busy few days. There’s a McDonalds near the hostel if I remember correctly from September, so we can refuel easily!!
I have one other thing to say before I dash (I think we’re off to play mah-jong with some Chinese people soon) and that’s how to contact me over the Summer. As most of you will know, I’ve had facebook and twitter for the past few months, but after Tuesday the 2nd, I don’t know if I’ll be able to go on them or if I can, how regularly. If you need (or just want of course) to contact me, stick to e-mailing at lowrijos13@yahoo.co.uk. I can check my e-mails on my phone, although answering might be a bit more of a pain – we’ll see how it goes! So, that’s it for now. The next time I write should be in Guangzhou, but don’t panic if you don’t see a blog. I’ll try my hardest to get back here as soon as possible! Bye for now!