I thought I had something that I wanted to write about here, but now I can't remember. It mustn't have been that important.
So, life in China goes on. I have been given a couple more classes at work. 2 x Grade 2 classes at a new school and the lessons are only 20 mins long! Kind of strange but it's easy. The school is nicer than others that we go to and the kids are smart and already know alot of english. I also had to do an Intro to Interchange class with girls from work this morning. Interchange is for older students who already have a pretty decent grasp on the language. Whilst I don't want to teach older kids in schools, doing Interchange classes at the centre could really be ok I think, as you can just talk to them in english and they mostly understand. Craig has announced that he is definitely leaving at the end of June so who knows what will happen then. I think they are getting us prepared to take over some of his classes when the need arises? I think that schools have holidays in July and August? I really don't know when, so I'm not sure when we'll get a new teacher or if or what will happen. We have been informed though that they want to take kids on a trip to Expo (hello!, i'll go!). At first it was just talk of a day trip or a 2 day trip. It's way too much for a day trip as we have to travel to Shanghai and well, it's China ... so going anywhere means battling large crowds, so expecting to see a lot of Expo in one day just doesn't compute in my mind. They are now talking about doing a week 'summer camp' in Shanghai. Sounds kind of awesome to me but details are only light on at the moment. Spending 24 / 7 with a bunch of kids will get VERY tiring, especially as kids are kids and just go wherever they want, whenever .. so they require an awful lot of chasing after, BUT getting to spend a week in Shanghai doing touristy stuff and going to Expo for FREE sounds appealing! I guess we'll find out more in the coming weeks.
We also supposedly get a long weekend the first weekend in May. Details for this are still sketchy too, as to if weekend classes will be canceled, or if we'll have another field trip or what days we will actually have off. This is frustrating as Matt and I really would love to go away for the long weekend and need to book buses and accommodation. We are planning on going to Hangzhou if possible, but Matt has been investigating and a lot of accommodation is already booked out for this weekend. I guess once again, only time will tell! But it's annoying as we don't get holidays, only 'holidays' and if we never get the chance to leave Suzhou I will get annoyed!
I've had an infatuation with Cantonese food a little since we've been here as there aren't alot of Cantonese restaurants and Cantonese food is more the kind of 'chinese' food that we get at home. The food here is really not the same though and never would be. They serve meat in dishes that still has bones in it and arggh. I find it a bit yuck. We had cantonese the other night and while it was nice, it was a bit bland and meh. I think I'm over my obsession with it. We had dinner in the SIP in an area that has alot of restaurants. After dinner we went for a walk towards the lake as I wanted to check out Rainbow Walk by night. As we passed an apartment complex, I nearly fell over do to a large bang. What else could it be but fireworks?! They were being let off right between two buildings and the sound was just reverberating. Too bad if you'd just put your baby to bed! I can't believe that people don't get in trouble for this kind of thing. Someone is seriously going to start a fire one day! We found Rainbow Walk. It's advertised as a shopping complex and a lot of restaurants there are advertised. We really only found restaurants and not the cheap kind either. They are mostly foreign food restaurants i guess, so that equates to ........ more expensive dinners. Some of the places looked ok though and we may go back one day. The rest of the place once again looks so new and barely finished and is kind of like a wasteland. We wonder how the restaurants and stuff can really make any money? Rainbow Walk is practically on the lake though and I think on a nice summer's day, hanging out by the lake would be pretty cool. There is a huge fountain thing in the lake, a public square, decks over the lake, and bikes for hire / paddle boats for hire on the lake. We also saw a couple of big boats on the lake. If you can do lake cruises I'd be up for that. I think it would be interesting and something new to do.
I started writing this the other day but kept falling asleep so didn't end up posting it and went to bed instead. Indeed, my old habits of falling asleep on the couch haven't left me even though i've traveled across the continents.
I caught a bus to go downtown the other day, specifically to go to Shiquan St. I decided to catch the 110 bus for a change, instead of the 47 which we would normally get. They both go in totally opposite directions and the 47 goes up Shiquan St, while the 110 only stops near the end of the street and I would have to walk. The 47 bus is always old and seems to stall every time the driver stops to pick someone up or let someone off, so i thought I'd go for an adventure on the 110 as we haven't caught the 110 in that direction since our first night here and the 110 is generally a nicer bus! Well ... we got to downtown and i really couldn't decide or remember which stop that I should get off at. We went past Soochow University (Suzhou University) and I thought that maybe I'd gone too far. I got off at the next stop and went to a market that i'd seen near the university inside a building. The market really was quite average. I kept walking up to near the university and couldn't decide if i should walk a bit further up to find Shiquan St or just to come home, so i decided just to come home! I got on the bus outside the university and so did heaps of other university students I guess! There were probably about 10 other girls on the bus who were taller than me and gorgeous! It's wierd getting the feeling of being short in China. At 174cm tall, I don't really get the felling of being short very often, even at home. I thought maybe they'd just to uni to study modeling .... hah!, but I know that is just silly.
xoxo
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