China Travels | Phil & Sabine's Excellent Adventure
March 2010 - Back to routine
11th -14th March: Mosquitoes in Winter!
Back in Xifeng our evenings were being plagued by mosquitoes. I wouldn’t have minded but it was freezing. I thought they only like warm climates. With no heating in our flat, it certainly wasn’t warm. In fact this reminds me of a Betty Reese quote: "If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito."
On Saturday, we trained some English teachers on how to improve their English pronunciation. Sunday was supposed to be a rest day but we were awoken by a Hui funeral blasting out music for most of the day. Sunday, was also my first visit to the hairdresser’s, alone! I survived!!
15th -21st March: Salmon in town??
On Tuesday, I ventured out to the other end of town to team teach with a Chinese friend. I enjoy doing this as it is much appreciated by the classes and the teacher. I also met up with another NGO with regards to doing some training with real disadvantaged schools in the county.
Back in Xifeng our evenings were being plagued by mosquitoes. I wouldn’t have minded but it was freezing. I thought they only like warm climates. With no heating in our flat, it certainly wasn’t warm. In fact this reminds me of a Betty Reese quote: "If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito."
On Saturday, we trained some English teachers on how to improve their English pronunciation. Sunday was supposed to be a rest day but we were awoken by a Hui funeral blasting out music for most of the day. Sunday, was also my first visit to the hairdresser’s, alone! I survived!!
15th -21st March: Salmon in town??
On Tuesday, I ventured out to the other end of town to team teach with a Chinese friend. I enjoy doing this as it is much appreciated by the classes and the teacher. I also met up with another NGO with regards to doing some training with real disadvantaged schools in the county.
On Saturday ,we invited some of our colleagues for tea. We had heard on the grapevine that you could buy salmon in the town and decided to cook that. We cycled to the shop only to be told to come back in the afternoon. We did so and were shown a huge frozen salmon which would have cost us £50 to buy. Now that was a lot of money and lot of fish! We asked if we could only buy some of it, but not possible. Sadly, we had to leave empty handed. We cooked a tune bake instead which wasn’t quite the same! After the meal, we showed them an episode of “Little Britain”. I think we laughed more at their reaction than the programme itself. They asked whether English people were really like this. I answered honestly and said, “Yes, sometimes”.
Sunday was the first day of spring, allegedly. Didn’t feel like it, particularly as the heating has now been switched off until November!
22nd -31st March
Most of the next week was spent planning a leadership training for the weekend. Also the China Programme Office dropped a bombshell that they are merging their Education and HIV/AIDS programme. Unfortunately it was communicated by email and with very little detail and with no consultation with the volunteers and partners. The volunteers were up in arms and apart from preparing and delivering the training, the rest of the week was spent reading and responding to various emails regarding this subject. It was quite exhausting. More so than my running which was continuing to be a bit of a challenge. I put it down to the cold weather….
Once a week a group of us meet up a take part in a “Chinese Corner”. There are a mixture of foreigners and Chinese who meet up for a meal and a chat. While I will be the first to concede that even after a year, my Chinese is far from brilliant, this week the girl I sat next to, understood nothing I said and vice versa. Even sentences which I now find quite easy such as who I am, where I work and what I do, etc, there was not even the slightest bit of recognition. It was a classic foreigner abroad situation. I would repeat want I wanted to say a couple of times and then she would then finally understand and say exactly what I had just said in the same way. Conversely when she said something to me and I didn’t understand it, she would just say it again but louder. Fortunately, I have since had my confidence renewed!
Most of the next week was spent planning a leadership training for the weekend. Also the China Programme Office dropped a bombshell that they are merging their Education and HIV/AIDS programme. Unfortunately it was communicated by email and with very little detail and with no consultation with the volunteers and partners. The volunteers were up in arms and apart from preparing and delivering the training, the rest of the week was spent reading and responding to various emails regarding this subject. It was quite exhausting. More so than my running which was continuing to be a bit of a challenge. I put it down to the cold weather….
Once a week a group of us meet up a take part in a “Chinese Corner”. There are a mixture of foreigners and Chinese who meet up for a meal and a chat. While I will be the first to concede that even after a year, my Chinese is far from brilliant, this week the girl I sat next to, understood nothing I said and vice versa. Even sentences which I now find quite easy such as who I am, where I work and what I do, etc, there was not even the slightest bit of recognition. It was a classic foreigner abroad situation. I would repeat want I wanted to say a couple of times and then she would then finally understand and say exactly what I had just said in the same way. Conversely when she said something to me and I didn’t understand it, she would just say it again but louder. Fortunately, I have since had my confidence renewed!
Sunday was quite an experience and in many ways a very Chinese one. A friend of ours had won a second prize of 2000 RNB at a competition for the Tourist Board. Instead of giving her the prize on the night itself she had to wait several months to get it. Not only this, she had to perform an act in front of an audience to receive it. One day at work she got a phone call to say that she had to attend a rehearsal the following day and it was imperative she attended and show her performance. She was given very few details as to what she needed to perform or for how long. With the help of another friend, they decided to do an Irish dance. They performed at the rehearsal only to be told that their act was of a poor quality and totally inappropriate. Their clothes were also criticized. As this was only a rehearsal and they were given very little information, the comments they received were very harsh and insulting. The Chinese friend was devastated and her confidence severely damaged whereas the English friend who helped was outraged. On the evening itself, Zhang Dan opted for doing some calligraphy instead and spent a significant amount of her wages buying new clothes for the event and going to the hairdressers to have her hair and make-up done as this was the expectation. The host organisers were very rude towards her. It was a classic situation of minimal information and those in charge treating those below with disdain.
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