Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Latest waffle from Haikou
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.”
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.”
