Wednesday 29 November 2017
Friday 24 November 2017
Wednesday 22 November 2017
Friday 17 November 2017
China - Day 663
Well I am pretty excited. I managed to get two pairs of tickets for World Cup matches, one in Moscow and the other in Kazan so I stayed up most of the night arranging travel and accommodation for June 2018. It is phenomenally expensive to stay in these cities, at least round about the world cup it is, so we are doing a whistle-stop tour. Fly to Moscow on June 16th, see a game, overnight train to Kazan on the 19th, see a game, then fly to Harbin (via Dubai and Beijing) on 22nd. All this of course, heaps the pressure onto getting a visa for Yingying. We have applied on line and are going to go to the visa application centre in Shenyang in a week or so to doff our caps at HM Gov and see how it goes
Thursday 16 November 2017
Saturday 11 November 2017
China - Day 656
The heating is on in the apartment even though it is still above freezing outside, I call it autumn, the leaves are falling, Yingying tells me it is winter. The heating is on at school too so I wear my shorts when I walk to school. The cold is a relief. The locals are amused.......everybody wins
China - Day 655
The torture of trying to learn Chinese continues, sometimes I am energised by it, more often I despair
Thursday 9 November 2017
China - Day 654
When the class finishes one level and moves on to the next, we have a graduation ceremony. This is the youngest class I teach. They are not yet at school but in order to progress with the course they are meant to be able to read so they can learn phrases like 'what is your favorite subject?' and terms like 'social studies' and 'math'. However learning the alphabet and beginning to form words is outside the course pre-supposes that they are picking up these skills at school. We do our best................................
Sunday 5 November 2017
China - Day 652
It's come to that time to create an introductory video to try to sell myself on the internet.......................
Thursday 2 November 2017
China - Day 648
Yesterday I helped Winston to create a route description in English so that a non-Chinese English-speaker could find the school. At my lesson this morning we created the Chinese version
I understood perfectly what I said and then Winston said it and it sounded more like what was needed
Wednesday 1 November 2017
China - Day 647 - Wednesday 1st November 2017
Jinzhou has hundreds of these street-food stall bicycles. Every morning at some godforsaken hour the peddlar (literally) gets to their pitch and stays there until after dark, serving food costing from between 10p and 60p a portion, usually high on carbs
On the way back from my favourite coffee shop this afternoon, I stumbled across this school halloween celebration type thing in the park in the middle of my compound
China - Day 646
Beautiful Tuesday morning so the coach takes out his student for her tennis lesson but the student does not listen to the coach and does not like the idea of a video analysis of her forehand
Tuesday is meant to be my day off but I had to go to the Halloween party in the evening and amongst other things, deliver my poem "It's Hallowe'en, a scary night, Jack-o-Lanterns shining bright, bad witches in the sky, spiders crawl and bats fly, ghosts, vampires that bite, mummy, werewolf, scary night!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)