On friday I had officially been in Deyang for a month, china for 5 weeks. Can't quite believe it! At some point during that time I have passed from a stranger state to one of normality. I can now quite frankly say that Deyang feels like home, and believe me in the first week I thought those words would never escape my mouth.
As if to celebrate this event the weather changed from showers to glorious sunshine this week. We are currently enjoying a pleasant 17-21'c. Not bad at all for mid-march! I'm sure my compatriates back in sunny England would agree where I believe it is currently residing at a chilly 5'c.
I have embarked on a campaign of name learning this week. With over 1600 names to learn its pretty difficult lol! Also bare in mind that half of those dont have english names. Assigning people names can be quite fun and my classes seem to enjoy it. I make sure that I have at least one 'Bob' in each class because for some reason the kids love saying it. I have also come across some rather perculiar names. For example: 'Strong', 'Lemon', 'B.O', 'Fillet' and I also had a kid, who is one of my best students btw, that had been called 'Simon' by his teacher but had been told to pronounce the 'i' as an 'e'. I'll leave you to experiment with that! As I had planned to play 'Simon says' that day (we had been learning body parts) you can imagine quite how ridiculous that lesson turned out especially as I had to explain to Simon's teacher why it couldn't be pronounced that way lol. Barry, Scott and Kim thought it was hysterical. Aside from names I had been teaching movies and clothes this week. I have had lots of teachers sitting in on my lessons this week. It is because the teachers are often as keen to learn as the students. Often they take part and write notes, unaware of the fact that they are heaping extra pressure on you.
I have a pair of teacher trainees, Carter and Tracy who are 28 and 23 respectively, who attend my lessons at No.6 middle school. They are both really nice and keen to learn english and teaching technique from me, which is kind of ironic as I am only 18 and have only received a weeks teacher training myself. Tracy is heading back to Guizhou university on monday so I said 'goodbye'but she gave me heart shaped soap as a farewell present which made it slightly awkward.
I have officially broken into the staff football team. I went on my first away match on wednesday to the nearby city of Mianzhu. It was good as I got to see a different city, even it was almost identical to Deyang, and I also got to know some of the staff better. We lost the match 2-3 but no one seemed particularly bothered. The ironic thing is that after the match everyone lights up their cigarettes and chains it for the rest of the evening. Pair that with the post-match dinner and drinking session then you really have not got any fitter lol! The dinner was good though, with toasts a plenty. I kept on getting compliments from a pair of 30-40 year old women, which would have seemed strange a few weeks ago but I have become numbed by about a million 'handsomes' and 'beautifuls' over the last few weeks. Apparently its the eyes (blue) that bowl them over. Perhaps the oddest thing was when on the return journey the bus stopped and everyone relieved themselves against somebodys house! The weird thing was that they didnt even blink an eyelid about it, I on the otherhand was expecting some shotgun wielding farmer to emerge at any time.
We have recieved so many invitations for meals this week that it is unbelievable. We are saving money though lol! We have had 'Over the Bridge' Yunnan noodles which were really good. These involve throwing all your ingredients into a bowl of boiling water and see it cook in front of you. We also went for hotpot last night with Kim and some of her university students, namely Adam, Humphrey and Nelson (who me and Barry named personally). We sampled one new ingredient this time, which was fox stomach!!! It was rubbery if you're interesed but didnt really taste of much, which I will be eternally grateful for.
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