rupert and hannah

The first and most exciting thing to say is that we have signed our contracts and we have decided to stay here for a year, rather than six months. We like it so much here we think it just makes the most sense and it will make our travels in the beginning of next year so much easier. We get 40 days off so we can definitely see a fair amount of China then. We finish at the beginning of July, so we also will have some time before we fly out of Beijing.

We got our teaching schedules on Wednesday. They are pretty similar, which is nice. Hannah is only teaching two different classes, one third year class for four hours a week and one first year class for eight hours a week. The first year class is an interesting one - it consists of 15 students who are doing some domestic service degree. After they finish they will go to Israel to work, apparently as some kind of butler/maid/housekeeper...very odd. They are very sweet though, and Hannah gets to use this ultra-modern language lab with computers, DVD players and stuff, I am jealous (Hannah gets quite scared by it all!).

I am teaching all first years. I have seven different classes, that I see each for two hours a week. So I am teaching for two hours more than Hannah, but I only have to plan one lesson a week whilst Hannah has to plan six two hour lessons (but I have to teach the same lesson seven times, I have done it three times already and it is getting a little hard to make it last the same length of time!). All-in-all though, we are happy with what we have got. Hannah has Wednesdays off, we both get Friday afternoon and Monday morning off to. Also, we always have three hours off for lunch (because it gets so hot here, we need a siesta). We also only have two early starts a week (at 8am).

On Thursday it was my Birthday. Hannah had a lovely and very bizarre cake made for me, pictures which are on the blog. China makes such fancy birthday cakes that Hannah had to have one made! It was incredibly sweet and sickly, we could only manage a few mouthfulls. I already have my pressie from her (the complete season 1 of Lost on DVD....nice). We went shopping during the day to try to buy some light Polo shirts for me to teach in since we are meant to wear a collar whilst we teach. Then, in the evening we went to a restaurant that did Beijing (crispy fried) duck. It was very nice indeed. It was in part of the city we hadn't seen before, which has loads of bars and an active nightlife, so we will check that out at some point.

On Friday I taught my first lesson. It went pretty well, the students had some trouble understanding me at first, but I persevered and wrote important things on the board. By the end of the lesson they understood me pretty well (although my entire shirt was dripping in sweat due to the fans not working, sexy!). It was a good laugh, if a little tiring. That afternoon we were invited to a BBQ on the beach by some other foreign teachers (Hannah is dictating this, she does contribute a lot, it is just I type faster than her). We had never been to the beach at Haikou but had heard that it was bit dirty and nowhere near as nice as the beaches along the south coast. So we expected the worst, but were pleasantly surprised. It was a lovely tropical beach with rows of coconut palms, sun loungers for hire and next to the beach a whole area filled with BBQ pits and seats around them. We can get there on the bus for about 30p! We shall definitely be going there often, we plan to go there this Friday in fact. The BBQ was fun, the Americans had brought way too much meat and so we were absolutely stuffed. We met a young American couple about our age who seem very nice.

The next day we had to teach (yes, Saturday) because the first years are busy next Thursday, so we were teaching the lessons they were going to miss. I had to teach two classes, so four hours in total, it was pretty tiring once again, but I was applauded at the begging and end of one of them (more so because I am a foreigner than to do with my teaching skills I think!). The following day we had planned to go to town to buy a DVD player with the help of a student who could do the bargaining for us, which I was very excited about. However, when we woke up we found our plans were scuppered because no students were being allowed off campus due to an impending Typhoon, Typhoon Damrey. So, instead, we stayed indoors and prepared for the storm (by watching Ben Hur on DVD, jeesh, talk about epic). We learnt from the internet that it was a category two typhoon and the strongest one to hit Hainan in the last 20 years! It didn't get that bad until the evening, when the winds really began to pick up. The power cut out about ten o'clock and we huddled up for the night. It sounded pretty ferocious out there, but since the power was out we couldn't tell what it was doing. We woke the next day to the power coming back on and went out to survey the damage. It was still very windy and there were many branches and whole trees that had been blown over. A number of windows had been blown out, particularly in the Foreign Language building, but the damage was not as bad as had been feared. There was some pockets of damage though, many signs had blown over and the roof of a garage on campus had collapsed on top of a bus! The typhoon had not followed the original predicted course and had missed Haikou, it struck the south of the island though and the tropical paradise that is Sanya (where Miss World is being held in December!) was likely hit pretty badly. There was no teaching today due to the continued danger from the winds and we lost power again for most of the day. By the evening (now it is 9.00pm) the winds had died down loads and we had power back so we could get back to normal life. It was all quite exciting and no-one on campus was hurt by the storm, although I don't know how people in villages or Sanya faired though. So, we have had our first Typhoon, and I doubt it will be our last...

Ohh, and before I go, congratulations to our good friend Ben, who got engaged this week to the lovely Sarah....ahhhh.

Typhoon damage - windows had blown out on both sides of the building, entire window frames had also gone. 

More typhoon damage, the whole roof had collapsed and smashed part of the bus on the right. This is a few doors down from our appartment. 

Our street, loads of trees were blown over, including some quite big ones. 

Us. For those of you who complained that we don't put enough pics of us on here. 

the beach looking the other way, its a nice tropical beach, Rupert says "are you starting to feel jealous yet?" 

the beach, with the city in the distance 

Our first trip to Holiday Beach, Haikou. 

Rupert's birthday dinner - Beijing duck 

Have you ever seen a cake with mice eating corn on the cob as the decoration?? 

A very fanciful birthday cake that Hannah had made for Rupert. 

Hello from Rupert and Nahhan (well, that’s what one her students thought her name was).

We haven’t said much for a while since we have been busy enjoying ourselves, so there is quite a lot to catch up on.

Last Wednesday we had to go in to the city to have our medical done, this will allow us to get our residence permits. We had scans, X-rays, blood tests, eye tests and our weight and height measured. It was all quite amusing. No one seemed particularly concerned with any of the results, so we assume we are all fine. We met an American who is friends with the guy from our College who liaises with foreign teachers. He is teaching seven hours a day, to the same class, to help primary school teachers improve their writing. Understandably, he finds it pretty tiring and somewhat boring.

That evening, we went to the English corner, which is something we are required to do as part of our job. All the foreigners in the college go to a certain place in the garden on campus and any students who want to practice their English come and chat to them. It turned out to be quite good fun because we met some lovely students and chatted to them for a couple of hours. It is nice to be paid to do something that is so much fun.

We have been having various trips out to the city to get stuff for our home as we have had a lot of free time recently and wanted to make the most of it. One day we decided to visit a temple nearby which is one of the only sites to see listed by Lonely Planet. Unfortunately the Lonely Planet fail to warn you that it was an over-priced waste of time, on-a-par with the fishing village we spent hours getting to in Hong Kong. Having walked there and paid far too much to get in, we then experienced our first tropical storm (Hannah was very impressed but ‘country boy’ Rupert recons we will see worse). We sheltered in the Temple for the worst of it and watched as some huge branches came crashing down from palm trees in the courtyard. All over the Temple complex windows were crashing together and we thought they were going to smash at any moment. It was quite an impressive storm and Hannah, in particular, was glad to be standing in a building that was at least one hundred years old!

On another of our little explorations of the city we decided to visit a restaurant that some Americans had told us about that had an English menu and that served some Western food. It took us quite a while to find and turned out to be quite an amusing place. It was full of massive sofas with dining tables between them, so that you felt quite far from your food and the people you were eating with. We both ordered the beef steak sandwich, which they kindly served with a pair of surgical gloves for you to put on to keep your hands clean whilst eating the sandwich! They obviously had tried to make it look like a Western restaurant, but had been watching too much Dallas or Dynasty and had got the wrong end of the stick. They also decorated the beef sandwich with some biscuits and a purple flower….interesting. We have since found a much better Western restaurant, a Pizza place with genuinely good pizzas, and there are always McDonalds and about fifteen KFCs!

One of the local English teachers took us out for dinner to a restaurant near the campus. We had a range of meals, including a dish that was like sweet-and-sour battered cod, which we both really liked. Rupert has since attempted to have it from a couple of other restaurants we go to, with varying degrees of success. The first one looked absolutely gross, it was an entire fish, battered, which they put in a bag because we were taking it away. However, it was surprisingly edible and Rupert ate it all. The second was in our favourite restaurant on campus, which took absolutely ages to bring it to us (we had actually finished our other dishes by the time they got it to us) and when we looked at it we realised why! It was the most fanciful creation ever! They had cut separate strips of flesh from the fish, battered them individually, fried them, and then placed them back in a nice pile with the battered head of the fish at one end of the dish and the battered tale at the other. We had to take a photo of it because it looked so good. It lasted Rupert two meals and probably knocked a good few years off his life in the process (very fatty!).

The first year’s military training ends on Wednesday, so we start teaching them on Thursday (Rupert’s birthday, typical). We are both quite excited about it and looking forward to finally getting into a routine. As predicted we are going to find out our timetables on Wednesday!

We find that we are finally getting acclimatised to the weather, although we do still find it hot, we are not constantly dripping with sweat (nice!) like we were when we were first here. Plus, we do not have to have the air conditioning on all the time, which will help cut the electricity bill!

Haikou has an interesting old colonial area which is full of tiny random shops and little market streets. We will definitely go there at some point to take lots of photos as it looks very cool. Tomorrow we are going with an American friend to the tailors’ market in that area, which should be quite interesting. After that, we are going to be taken to see a man who deals cheese to foreigners (sounds very hush hush and sly, apparently it isn’t down a dark alley though!).

On Friday night, by which time Rupert might have just recovered from the shock of being 28……URGGHHH, we are going to the beach for a BBQ with some American friends. We are looking forward to finally seeing the beach, although we are told it is quite grubby and you would definitely not want to swim in the water. Luckily there are some perfect tropical beaches on the south of the island, which the Observer have just called the Hawaii of the East and the new Bali – how cool is that!

To finish, here are some of the amusing Chinglish banners, which we have seen around campus. Sadly you guys say you couldn’t read them from the photos:

“Set your mind at ease, the beloved students’ parent: your entrustment is our college’s responsibility”

“We have confidence in meeting, commenting and upgrading to undergraduate level”

“As young as our college, we’ll go striving abreast”

And finally, here is the copyright notice from the complete series of 24 (season 3, we think) we bought on DVD for £3.50:

“Fox and their associated logos are the property of Twntieth Century Fox film Corporation and aroused under license”

And here is the blurb describing this exciting new season:

“In the very strong and fatal virus in the dissemination infection of Los Angeles, the terrorist requests the government at release the in custody and big poison thunder in six hours Receive, will let virus spread to the whole city otherwise. Anti fear the troops mission is huge, fearing with anti of the right bower the leader elite can not no longer In a conflict for throwing in this field alive withly assassinating , selling illegal drugs, scandal, scandalous story, bloodyly with natural affection quarrel, in limited time Uproot the enemy, stop the disaster.”

this is sweet and sour fish that rupert had a few days ago, it was yummy 

a view of Haikou from the river, near where we live

this is the library, also viewed from across the lake 

this is a view of some student dorms from across a lake in the campuss 

this is one of the teaching buildings 

another amusing banner 

there are lots of banners around the campus to welcome the new first years, the Chinglish is often very funny

more military training going on 

first year students doing military training 

part of the campus, in front of our apartment

our apartment building 

Well, as Hannah is teaching her first lesson and I am on my own I thought I'd write a little something.

It is kinda surreal being here, right now, it is 8 in the morning, very hot and quite humid, there are rows of freshman students outside in full army uniform marching up and down the streets, I'm sitting inside with air conditioning on and the stone roses playing in the background (through some really rather phunky speakers I got for £10 - bargain).

I'm not teaching forat least another week, so I have time to prepare and get really nervous, I am sure Hannah will be fine though, she has done it all before and her lesson looked like a good one. We are still getting to know the main city, we have been there a few times, each time to a different place, it is regarded as a small city over here, with only 800,000 people, it is plenty large enough for me though. It seems pretty cool, there is some interesting old colonial architecture, possibly Portuguese, plus some amazing modern buildings, with all the gaps in between filled with old shacks selling loads of cheap stuff.

Well, I gotta go and prepare for some paperwork that needs doing. Laters.

this is our kitchen and ant farm 

this is our bathroom and cockroach quarters 

this is our bedroom 

this is our sitting room from the other side