Tuesday, May 30, 2006
A long blog from Hannah
Hi there, it's been such a long time since I put anything on here that I am going to try and write a nice big chunk about what we have been up to since about...oooh March or whenever the last time I actually blogged something was.
So at the beginning of term we had some Tai Chi lessons and after a Couple of months had mastered the routine that is the 24 basic movements of Tai Chi. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, thinking it would be boring as its so slow, but was persuaded to give it a go by Rupert and after the second lesson I was hooked. We had a lesson everyday until we had finished learning the basic movements and since we finished we have been supposed to be practicing it and perfecting it ourselves but we haven't done too much of that recently partly because the tropical climate seems to make us lazier than ever. Ru started Kung Fu lessons recently but that seems to have fizzled out as it is too hot for such strenuous exercise.
Esther (my sister) arrived in mid-March and stayed for almost a month. We managed to fit a lot into the month, particularly shopping which she and I are very good at. Other highlights of her time here were a weekend at a hot spring resort in the south of the island and another weekend at the Golden Palm resort in Sanya that Ru and I had visited back in October. The hot springs were lovely, the weather rained for most of the weekend but it was so hot that it was quite nice to have the cooling rain, especially as you are wallowing in hot pools and are soaking wet anyway. We went with our American friends and their son and we all stayed in a cute little villa at the resort which was kind of like a pink tiled Chinese version of a Swiss chalet (see pics later) complete with its own private hot springs tub out the back. On the Saturday some of us decided to go and climb a nearby mountain called Seven Fairy Mountain. It was amazingly tropical and lush, the noises of the insects and birds was deafening, despite the heavy rain. The route up the mountain was typical of Chinese mountains - a staircase, and we slogged our way up hundreds of steps in a few hours to reach the top, stopping near the top for lunch of rice and veg at a little house, the owners tried to persuade us to have chicken as well but Esther made sure we declined as the chickens were all running around our feet and they were just going to pick one up and kill it. Some of the chickens had chicks, some a few hours old and Esther is a bit of an animal lover and was offered a chick to borrow for a few hours! Anyway, the very last part of the mountain was a kind of cliff face with two chains secured all the way up it and a huge drop away down another cliff on one side. You had to scramble up the cliff by hanging onto the chains, kind of rock-climbing without the harness etc. I was pretty much pushed up and pulled down it by our American friend Bob and Esther was helped up and down by his son Zeke who climbs like a monkey. Rupert and our Chinese friend Lily wisely decided not to do it and after reaching the top I really regretted going up as going down was infinitely scarier (see pics!). It was one of the scariest, most exhilarating things I have done and I would never ever do it again,especially as when I got back down I saw a sign and asked Lily what it meant - she translated it as "it is forbidden to climb up this cliff, it is too dangerous". We couldn't see anything because of the swirling mist and rain and so even after reaching the summit didn't get to see the famously stunning views from the top!
The weekend we spent in Sanya with Esther was also marred by rain. We did manage a bit of swimming in the sea and pool during the brief periods of blue sky but spent a lot of the weekend sitting on the balcony willing the rainclouds to go away.
Once Esther left she was replaced briefly by Ru's parents who came for a fleeting visit one weekend. We had a fascinating day trip to a couple of little villages on the West side of the island. The first on was a little farming village with lush rice paddies and some wonderful old wooden houses and barns which meant Ru's dad was like a child in Disneyland! There were some reminders of the interesting and troubled history of rural China, most exciting for me was the village barn with old faded paintings of Chairman Mao, slogans from the cultural revolution and a chalkboard which was very faded but you could just about make out the markings as the place for recording how much time each villager had spent in the communal fields each day and hence how much (or usually) little rice they were given at the end of the year - some villagers ended up owing rice despite having worked in the fields all year. Sadly the villagers were all old people or children, the young people having left to work in Haikou, leaving their children to be brought up by the grandparents in the freedom and safety of a small village, sending for the children once they are old enough to attend school in Haikou. The young will not return to the village, having become accustomed to the excitement of city life and so the villages will presumably eventually become deserted, and as this must be happening all over China we wonder what will happen in a nation so populous and so obsessed with being self-sufficient.
The following weekend Ru and I returned to Golden Palm resort in Sanya and this time enjoyed lovely weather and huge crashing waves in the sea. Ru got horribly sunburned on the Saturday which overshadowed the rest of the weekend. The resort is rebuilding their pool so most of it was closed off so we visited a few other resorts to pick a different one for our next trip to Sanya. We decided on a neighboring one called Red sky resort. We have just come back from a weekend there and had an amazing time. Although Golden Palm was lovely, Red Sky is somehow even nicer, its way smaller has a fabulous pool (see pics)and great stretch of beach. The weather was lovely and Ru wore a T-shirt even while swimming so managed to avoid getting burnt. This was our fourth trip to Sanya and by far the best as I was ill during the first one, it rained most of the second one and Ru was completely frazzled in the third one. This time we avoided getting burnt (apart from my forehead and one leg!) and even ate relatively realistic fish and chips and Mexican chilli in the resort's restaurant. We love going to Sanya but coming back at the end of the weekend is hard as our apartment feels really third world and basic compared to the luxury of the resorts! We plan one more trip there before we leave - hopefully in late June and will definitely go back to Red Sky resort.
So term is coming to an end, we only have about four or five weeks left and we are starting to wind down and get ready to leave. We will be sad to leave but feel it is the right time to go as in the last few weeks we have started to get a bit bored and restless, especially in the evenings - but we do have loads of free time as we only teach ten hours a week and most of that is over by ten in the morning, so its hard to fill all that time. We have made some great friends amongst the students and will be sad to say goodbye to them. Some of the students are really funny and interesting and we have had some great lessons with them. This week I have been talking about the difference between the British and Chinese education systems with my second years and there is an exercise where they are asked to rank some educational goals in order of importance in the Chinese educational system and then for the British educational system. It is very amusing to see that the most important one in the Chinese system is usually said to be 'Loyalty to your country', the second is 'Developing memory skills', and goals like 'Independent learning', 'Individual thinking'and 'Creativity and Imagination' come near the end, almost the opposite to how Ru and I would rank the British educational system. The students are so shocked to learn that in Britain we are not instructed to love our country as the most important part of our education.
There are so many things we will miss about this place, particularly the food. We were very excited recently though to discover a western style coffeee shop type place that actually does a pretty good cheesecake! I think that as we are starting to think about leaving we are starting to crave western food more and Ru has also been very excited to discover a place that does a rather good impression of steak and chips, despite it coming with a garnish of strawberries rather than salad! I am really going to miss the shopping here too - the other day I went shopping with one of Ru's students and bought a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, two pairs of jeans and had a Chinese silk dress made and spent a total of less than twenty quid! Yesterday we went to an optician and Ru had an eye test and bought a new pair of glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses and the total price was about thirty quid.
I am going to miss the sunshine but am looking forward to cooler nights, its often hard to sleep here when its really hot. I am so not going to miss the insect life - we seem to have been bombarded recently by cockroaches, slugs, massive centipedey things, mosis and the occasional jumping spider. The lizards are very cute though, we have loads living with us but they do make weird, incredibly loud noises for such tiny creatures.
We are going to fly from here to Beijing a week or so before we fly home from Beijing so are looking forward to a holiday there. I have been there once before and can't wait to go there again, I am looking forward to the Great Wall etc. but Ru seems to be mostly looking forward to the Beijing Duck!
Well that's it for now, I will add loads of photos after this post and I'm sure we'll blog again from here or Beijing. We arrive back in the UK on July 16th and hope to see you all sometime over the summer.
Love Hannah
So at the beginning of term we had some Tai Chi lessons and after a Couple of months had mastered the routine that is the 24 basic movements of Tai Chi. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, thinking it would be boring as its so slow, but was persuaded to give it a go by Rupert and after the second lesson I was hooked. We had a lesson everyday until we had finished learning the basic movements and since we finished we have been supposed to be practicing it and perfecting it ourselves but we haven't done too much of that recently partly because the tropical climate seems to make us lazier than ever. Ru started Kung Fu lessons recently but that seems to have fizzled out as it is too hot for such strenuous exercise.
Esther (my sister) arrived in mid-March and stayed for almost a month. We managed to fit a lot into the month, particularly shopping which she and I are very good at. Other highlights of her time here were a weekend at a hot spring resort in the south of the island and another weekend at the Golden Palm resort in Sanya that Ru and I had visited back in October. The hot springs were lovely, the weather rained for most of the weekend but it was so hot that it was quite nice to have the cooling rain, especially as you are wallowing in hot pools and are soaking wet anyway. We went with our American friends and their son and we all stayed in a cute little villa at the resort which was kind of like a pink tiled Chinese version of a Swiss chalet (see pics later) complete with its own private hot springs tub out the back. On the Saturday some of us decided to go and climb a nearby mountain called Seven Fairy Mountain. It was amazingly tropical and lush, the noises of the insects and birds was deafening, despite the heavy rain. The route up the mountain was typical of Chinese mountains - a staircase, and we slogged our way up hundreds of steps in a few hours to reach the top, stopping near the top for lunch of rice and veg at a little house, the owners tried to persuade us to have chicken as well but Esther made sure we declined as the chickens were all running around our feet and they were just going to pick one up and kill it. Some of the chickens had chicks, some a few hours old and Esther is a bit of an animal lover and was offered a chick to borrow for a few hours! Anyway, the very last part of the mountain was a kind of cliff face with two chains secured all the way up it and a huge drop away down another cliff on one side. You had to scramble up the cliff by hanging onto the chains, kind of rock-climbing without the harness etc. I was pretty much pushed up and pulled down it by our American friend Bob and Esther was helped up and down by his son Zeke who climbs like a monkey. Rupert and our Chinese friend Lily wisely decided not to do it and after reaching the top I really regretted going up as going down was infinitely scarier (see pics!). It was one of the scariest, most exhilarating things I have done and I would never ever do it again,especially as when I got back down I saw a sign and asked Lily what it meant - she translated it as "it is forbidden to climb up this cliff, it is too dangerous". We couldn't see anything because of the swirling mist and rain and so even after reaching the summit didn't get to see the famously stunning views from the top!
The weekend we spent in Sanya with Esther was also marred by rain. We did manage a bit of swimming in the sea and pool during the brief periods of blue sky but spent a lot of the weekend sitting on the balcony willing the rainclouds to go away.
Once Esther left she was replaced briefly by Ru's parents who came for a fleeting visit one weekend. We had a fascinating day trip to a couple of little villages on the West side of the island. The first on was a little farming village with lush rice paddies and some wonderful old wooden houses and barns which meant Ru's dad was like a child in Disneyland! There were some reminders of the interesting and troubled history of rural China, most exciting for me was the village barn with old faded paintings of Chairman Mao, slogans from the cultural revolution and a chalkboard which was very faded but you could just about make out the markings as the place for recording how much time each villager had spent in the communal fields each day and hence how much (or usually) little rice they were given at the end of the year - some villagers ended up owing rice despite having worked in the fields all year. Sadly the villagers were all old people or children, the young people having left to work in Haikou, leaving their children to be brought up by the grandparents in the freedom and safety of a small village, sending for the children once they are old enough to attend school in Haikou. The young will not return to the village, having become accustomed to the excitement of city life and so the villages will presumably eventually become deserted, and as this must be happening all over China we wonder what will happen in a nation so populous and so obsessed with being self-sufficient.
The following weekend Ru and I returned to Golden Palm resort in Sanya and this time enjoyed lovely weather and huge crashing waves in the sea. Ru got horribly sunburned on the Saturday which overshadowed the rest of the weekend. The resort is rebuilding their pool so most of it was closed off so we visited a few other resorts to pick a different one for our next trip to Sanya. We decided on a neighboring one called Red sky resort. We have just come back from a weekend there and had an amazing time. Although Golden Palm was lovely, Red Sky is somehow even nicer, its way smaller has a fabulous pool (see pics)and great stretch of beach. The weather was lovely and Ru wore a T-shirt even while swimming so managed to avoid getting burnt. This was our fourth trip to Sanya and by far the best as I was ill during the first one, it rained most of the second one and Ru was completely frazzled in the third one. This time we avoided getting burnt (apart from my forehead and one leg!) and even ate relatively realistic fish and chips and Mexican chilli in the resort's restaurant. We love going to Sanya but coming back at the end of the weekend is hard as our apartment feels really third world and basic compared to the luxury of the resorts! We plan one more trip there before we leave - hopefully in late June and will definitely go back to Red Sky resort.
So term is coming to an end, we only have about four or five weeks left and we are starting to wind down and get ready to leave. We will be sad to leave but feel it is the right time to go as in the last few weeks we have started to get a bit bored and restless, especially in the evenings - but we do have loads of free time as we only teach ten hours a week and most of that is over by ten in the morning, so its hard to fill all that time. We have made some great friends amongst the students and will be sad to say goodbye to them. Some of the students are really funny and interesting and we have had some great lessons with them. This week I have been talking about the difference between the British and Chinese education systems with my second years and there is an exercise where they are asked to rank some educational goals in order of importance in the Chinese educational system and then for the British educational system. It is very amusing to see that the most important one in the Chinese system is usually said to be 'Loyalty to your country', the second is 'Developing memory skills', and goals like 'Independent learning', 'Individual thinking'and 'Creativity and Imagination' come near the end, almost the opposite to how Ru and I would rank the British educational system. The students are so shocked to learn that in Britain we are not instructed to love our country as the most important part of our education.
There are so many things we will miss about this place, particularly the food. We were very excited recently though to discover a western style coffeee shop type place that actually does a pretty good cheesecake! I think that as we are starting to think about leaving we are starting to crave western food more and Ru has also been very excited to discover a place that does a rather good impression of steak and chips, despite it coming with a garnish of strawberries rather than salad! I am really going to miss the shopping here too - the other day I went shopping with one of Ru's students and bought a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, two pairs of jeans and had a Chinese silk dress made and spent a total of less than twenty quid! Yesterday we went to an optician and Ru had an eye test and bought a new pair of glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses and the total price was about thirty quid.
I am going to miss the sunshine but am looking forward to cooler nights, its often hard to sleep here when its really hot. I am so not going to miss the insect life - we seem to have been bombarded recently by cockroaches, slugs, massive centipedey things, mosis and the occasional jumping spider. The lizards are very cute though, we have loads living with us but they do make weird, incredibly loud noises for such tiny creatures.
We are going to fly from here to Beijing a week or so before we fly home from Beijing so are looking forward to a holiday there. I have been there once before and can't wait to go there again, I am looking forward to the Great Wall etc. but Ru seems to be mostly looking forward to the Beijing Duck!
Well that's it for now, I will add loads of photos after this post and I'm sure we'll blog again from here or Beijing. We arrive back in the UK on July 16th and hope to see you all sometime over the summer.
Love Hannah
