Can't believe I've been here for a whole month, the time is flying by! I think I've nicely adjusted to everything now, the food has grown on me and I actually look forward to the canteen grub haha it's a really nice treat when we go out for food though! The heat has calmed down a lot too so it's much more bearable, I'm sat in the gardens bronzing as I type :) defo couldn't of done this a month ago as I would of just melted! Although it is still 30 degrees so maybe I've just acclimatised.
We all had to trek back into the city last week to finalise our visas, I say trek because when the school takes us it tends to take twice the actual time it should take to get into the city. As we have now discovered a bus that can get us there within half an hour which is nothing. Anyway there was lots if queuing and waiting involved, then when my number finally got called the lady took one look at my papers and then threw them down onto the desk, Chinese Alice rushed over and grabbed my papers, she told me something was wrong and then ran off. Leaving me stood there thinking what the hell! Everyone else was sorted so there was just me left wondering if I was either diseased (as I hadn't seen my medical results yet) or just not good enough for china haha you have to remember this is the Chinese government and they can refuse you simply because you have family members who were ex navy or army so I was a little worried! However all was good and it was simply because Alice had typed some of my information on the form wrong, so thank you Alice for explaining that all to me before you ran off in a massive panic!
It was coming up to the mooncake festival here in china, which to us means we get 3 days off work :) to the Chinese it means gathering with the family to eat mooncakes while looking at the moon. During the lead up to this we all got given a box if mooncakes, they look a lot like pork pies on the outside, on the inside it's like peanut paste which is tasty but Hidden away in the paste are two egg yolks, very strange but nice if u can avoid the yolks! The next day I came into piles of fruit on my desk, another pressie form the school. There were bags of apples, huge melons and some Chinese fruit which I'd never seen before. It was crazy, I had to get all of this home, Remember the three thousand flights of stairs I go up and down everyday haha I dropped one of my melons straight away, splitting it in half! We were very grateful though, we're now addicted to melon, which unfortunately is very expensive here.
On the last day we had a little party for the kids, they filled the hallways with fruit and snacks. Everyone dived into the treats, then I heard Chinese Amy telling them to feed carol. Ok I thought, but then all of a sudden lots of little hands came diving towards my mouth! Yes Amy meant it literally, then Amy took lots of photos of me getting fruit rammed into my mouth haha they're now all over the classroom wall for me to treasure haha.
Now we have 3 whole days off :) we basically got drunk and had a look around the city haha we discovered a cinema, an aquarium, amusements and lots of shops! We found a nice Korean restaurant too which was super tasty :) the night before we were due to go back to work we were bombarded with emails and texts from the school telling us no work tomorrow, you must stay inside for your own safety! Biggest typhoon ever headed our way! Jesus we thought, we checked the net and right enough it was headed right for us. Half an hour later we get a message saying you do have to come to work but no school for kids! Very confusing haha so we just had to do our office hours while waiting for the storm to hit. Two days of this and still nothing, on the third day we were told we must stay at home, but still the worst we witnessed was a little wind and rain, although at one point we thought we were going to wake up with a tree in our bed haha as we are surrounded by them and they were getting blown all over. A few parts of Guangdong did get it bad though a few people died and a lot were injured. U have to remember though that Guangdong is the size of England.
So we had 8 days back at school, because when we have days off for national holidays we have to make them up and that includes the kids too! I still did less hours than I would have in my job at home! And now it's time for 8 days off :) unfortunately we can't go anywhere as the government still have our passports so we're just going to explore Guangdong, so far we've trekked up a mountain ( Baiyun) which we weren't expecting at all haha we thought it was just a stroll in the park but nope trekking in flip flops it was! Good fun though, we got half way up and a Chinese girl asked if she could have her photo taken with me, I was like ok you little weirdo haha I looked a right mess but she thought i was beautiful haha that was the second time we've had randoms coming up to us to take a photo, the first time was on the bus! I'm not sure why, maybe a status thing or just the fact we look so different, we even find ourselves pointing and starring too when we see other white folk as there's not that many of us. The next day we went to a museum and a night market, which wasn't really a market but more like late night shopping. All the shops have big bright adverts outside of them though so it was still nice to see. We went out for tea but it was a bit of a disaster, they messed all our orders up (which is easily done when u don't spk the same lingo) but the worst thing was my big slice of raw/half cooked chicken and Stu's curry which was mainly bones and curry sauce!
Tomorrow we're going to head into the city and check out guangzhou tower ( the biggest tower in the world) and Saturday I think we're heading to Shenzhen with everyone, it's about a 3hr bus journey away, we're going on a hunt for the beach!
Another long one there, sorry!
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Lots of love, me :)
Xxxxxxx
Who would have thought that Halloween would be celebrated as far away as China. Here are some images of my daughter and her class clearly getting into the spirit of Halloween.
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