Faking it!

Yesterday was a day of fakes! First stop... Food republic. This is found in the basement of a big supermarket called Carrefour and it is the equivalent of a food court. Lots of different Chinese, Korean and Japanese food. BUT the menus are all in mandarin. A problem? Oh no!




This food is all plastic! So any meal you want to buy, you can just point at one that looks quite nice and a similar bowl is produced for you! Perfect for someone who hasn't moved past ni hao and zai jian yet! My lunch was therefore a MASSIVE bowl of noodles with Chinese cabbage, pork, mushrooms and some purple vegetable that I didn't work out. It was very tasty, and only cost 20RMB (about £2!)

Next to the famous fake markets. We spent a while looking at the converse shoes (all starts), toms shoes (tims) and uggs (ugs) :) Kevin walked away with a tintin painting that had started proceedings at 530RMB and finished on 180. As for me - I now own a very authentic Cath Kidston bag, which I am planning on using for a planned trip to Suzhou in a couple of weekends time.




And finally, last night was much more chilled out compared to Friday! A DVD and a bag of cheesy lobster crisps (yes, really!) with a couple of the other teachers.. DVDs here are amazing! As a general rule each disk is 5RMB. I got a bit excited last night and walked away with:




Series 1-7 of greys anatomy and how I met your mother, series 1-3 of modern family, plus a copy of the artist and the hunger games. Which came to a grand total of £13.50!

Now if you don't mind, I have 176 episodes of how I met your mother to work my way through!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

First week back at school!

I am straight back into school now! Monday and Tuesday were whole school inset days and Wednesday we had just new children in (of which I had 6!). Then the rest of my class returned on Thursday and Friday. I have 22 children and a whole load of different nationalities - I am sensing a display here! Australian, American, British, Hungarian, Indian, Chinese (unsurprisingly I guess!), Indonesian... I could continue! But also a lot of the children have moved from several different countries too, so it is very interesting chatting to them about all the exciting places they have lived in.

The school day is a lot longer than in the UK-the children arrive between 8 and 8,15, and we finish at 3.30. It may not sound a lot but I am used to getting started at about 9, so you can tell the difference! But we always used to say that it was hard to fit everything in each week so hopefully that won't be too much of a problem now! Next week we will start on a normal timetable so I will get a bit more of an idea what we are doing then.

I am still going out when I can to meet the old junior school staff, everyone seems really friendly. I am also going to write a list of everything I want to do in Shanghai as it seems likely that the weekends could just pass with constantly going out! Last night I combined the two...

KTV! For those of you who haven't heard of KTV, it's karaoke... Which is MASSIVE here. The building was the size of a supermarket, with a compete maze of individual rooms and flashing disco nights. I swear they get you deliberately lost so you the idea of trying to find your way out is so off putting that you just stay and sing some more.

We payed 100rmb each (just under £10) to get the room for 6 hours. We scoffed at the idea of being in there for 6 hours... Little did we know!



That 100 each also included 3 BIG bottles of Smirnoff vodka, 20 bottles of coke, 20 bottles of beer and a random assortment of snacks





6 hours didn't look quite so unlikely now!

And yes, here we are 5 hours later, still singing!




We managed to work our way out of the maze at 4.30am, when it was still surprisingly busy! And just enough time left to stop off at the 24 hour KFC for some chicken porridge (or fries, though the porridge was an option) before wandering home in the morning sunshine!

All in all a very cultural evening, but also an incredibly fun one!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

And the view from my balcony....

As promised!!








Please note the blue sky and green trees (inbetween all the high rises!) It has been pretty cloudy and smoggy this week (though not that you can notice it, smell wise or anything), so the blue sky is a bit of a treat :)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Let me introduce you to...

My brand new flat :)
*apologies in advance, a lot of photos! I love it!





Dining room/ lounge





Continued! (note the dangerous glass table, not a great idea!!)





Spare room/study room (haven't really been in there much!)





Kitchen!! The thing under the hob isn't an oven, it just heats up your plates?! Apparently very common in china! I have an electric oven instead. Please take note of the water dispenser in the corner, haha!




Spare room #2, otherwise known as the "hair room" (it has a mirror and a plug, therefore making it perfect for straightening and other necessities!)





Bathroom #1!





My bedroom!





My bedroom again, leading onto the "dressing area" and bathroom! Oooooh, fancy!

I haven't taken a photo from my balcony yet, and it is dark at the moment so I will put it on soon!



This is one of my favourite parts of the flat! It is part of the toilet! And FYI, the massage function does not refer to the toilet seat. I won't be making that mistake again!!!!

I won't take up any more space here chatting, but still having lots of fun. I am going for my medical tomorrow so I imagine that will involve some comical

Zai jian!! Xx

I have arrived!

I am here! In China! Still pinching myself when I wake up in the morning!

It has been a very busy few days, have I really only been here 4 days?! I arrived at lunchtime and was greeted by my new head teacher and some other teachers who were delayed due to the typhoon (I just missed it, thank god! Though we did fly through a storm and seeing lightning that close up is pretty scary!)

I hadn't slept at all during the flight, so I scraped a few hours of sleep in the hotel and then we were out for dinner and drinks with some new and current staff. Everyone is very friendly and I am glad that we were thrown into doing things straight away. I have gone out the past three nights with new staff too, great start!

On Thursday I moved into my flat.




I am on the 7th floor of this block

WOW!!! It is huge!! I have a big open plan lounge/dining room, a big kitchen, THREE bedrooms and 2 bathrooms!! It is all very modern and I love it! I am in a massive compound which I am still wandering around to get my bearings, I think there about 40 blocks in total. But it is a lot greener than I was expecting. And also calmer, but we are in the suburbs!

I will put some pictures of it up in a bit, but I don't have wireless in my flat yet so I am sat in Starbucks at the moment, and forget to take any photos.

Other than going out for dinner and drinks I have managed to sort out a few things. I have come to realise that everything here takes at least 10 times effort, but it is 10 times more gratifying when they are done! For example, I have a water dispenser in my flat. There was no water in it. Hmm.

UK solution: ring the number and job done.
China solution: Go to the reception. Spend 15 minutes using mime and a translator app to explain the issue. Realise you are at the wrong reception. Walk to the next reception. Repeat the above, including being In the wrong place. Work out where you actually need to be! Repeat the above, buy tokens for water. Get home and look at the tokens as you have no idea what they mean!
Discuss this with people at school. Get given a number to ring. Ring, with crossed fingers there is an English option. There is! Result! Order water. And this morning.... IT ARRIVED!! I actually fist pumped the air when the door bell went!

Job 1 done, only 27 left :)

Glass of water anyone?!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

And.... I'm off!

I actually wrote this on the plane heading towards Hong Kong, so it is a bit delayed in getting posted!

The last few days in the UK have been great, Libby and Andrews wedding was absolutely fantastic. She looked stunning and they both looked so happy the entire day :D happy honeymooning! I will put some pictures on here when I can. It was also good to spend time with Em and Em and with my family :)

I am now starting my journey, both physically and metaphorically, to my new teaching career in Shanghai. Hopefully the posts from now on will be slightly more interesting than "I said goodbye to this person, and then I packed, and then I did some more goodbyes" which is what they seem to be so far! (I swear I started saying goodbye at the start of June! Though generally that involved a lot of wine and laughs, so not complaining!!)

I am feeling pretty nervous about everything ahead of me; it is all quite overwhelming! And I know I will miss a lot.... Hmmm a list seems quite a good idea here!

- my family
- all of my lovely friends
- living in London. I am so glad I have lived there, it really has been a great 2 years.
- living with Libs!
- cadbury boost bars (the 4 in my suitcase are not going to last long at all!)
- crisps and tzatziki mmmmmm

But when that becomes a bit too much I am going to try and think about all of the reasons that made me want to teach internationally in the first place. Namely;

- travelling around China
- travelling around Asia!
- meeting people from all over the world
- exploring a completely different culture
- trying lots of tasty new food, mmm
- attempting to learn a new language
- developing as a person

That last one sounds really cliche but I am doing this by myself, and I don't want to sit around my flat by myself every night. Therefore I will have to become more confident and proactive. In a way that makes me glad I am going solo, If I were to do this with a friend/family then I probably wouldn't force myself to attend different events, and who knows what missed opportunities that would result in!

Anyway, time to watch the Hunger Games! See you in Asia! X

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad