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.

# posted by Unknown @ 12:21 pm