I have settled well into my new home of Xintian and have been teaching now for nearly 4 months. It is amazing how quickly time is going here. There is only one week left till Xmas.
I haven't really been doing a lot since I have been here, but have managed to get a way for a couple of short trips. I went to Yongzhou for a weekend back in October and stayed with Jen (you may remember I mentioned her in the Yangshuo post). We and a few others went out for pizza and ten-pin bowling, I know not what you would typically expect one to do in China but I think we were all ready for a 'western fix'. (See photo of the bowling gang).
I also made a short trip back to Yangshuo during the students mid-term exams because I had 5 days off as we are not required when the students are doing exams. They have exams every month for 2 days and so far my students have had exams on either a Monday and Tuesday or a Thursday and Friday so plenty of long weekends for me, not that I really need them as I only work 15 hours a week anyway.
The other trips have been 2 one day trips around the local area organised by the school with some of the other teachers. The first place was to a recently discovered Ming Dynasty ruin (it was only found in October) as well as an old Ming Dynasty village, it was quite exciting to know that myself and Mick (the other foreign teacher here) were the first foreigners to ever visit either place. We had a day full of stares and smiles, the locals can get very curious when they look at you. You get used to people staring at you eating after a while, sometimes it can still be a bit annoying, especially when they insist on walking right up to your table and standing over the top of you whilst eating and just look at you and the food and how you are eating. Many of the locals are quite surprised that I can use chopsticks, especially being left handed, that is almost non-existent in this country. They believe that left handers are more intelligent than normal, so I guess they know a thing or two after all.
Last weekend saw the other day trip take us to a town called 'Stone Sheep' and a place called Buddha Mountain, every hill is a mountain here by the way. After a nice scenic walk up the 'mountain' we went back into town and had lunch with some locals. Because we had a large group we were divided up into groups to go to different peoples houses for lunch. I ended up at one of my students houses and the food was great, the father of the student was trying his best to get Mick really drunk and was trying his best to not get me drunk, I didn't mind so much as I really don't like drinking that rice wine it is way too strong for me and is not very nice either.
I have managed to find a couple of local eateries to eat at that we frequent quite often and they are so good. Even though I don't have very good language skills I still haven't ordered a bad meal yet.
Check out some more photos from my travels and I will post again soon.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Love Gabby
