HotPot Picnic

There was debate about what the weather would be like on Sunday...some said rainy, some said cloudy and some said sunny...Well Nettie said "Sun" and even went as far as to say that if it wasn't Sunny on Sunday she would give me a "SUN" (I said as long as it was a "Sun" and not a "Son" :-). Confidently she organised a Hotpot picnic at San you Dong and was she right ??? just look at the pictures. Many of the locals don't find these places beautiful...I don't see how they can not see the beauty...It is so spectacular.
There was so much food to eat and the hotpot was delicious.

Cool Friends !

These are the "Junior 3" English teachers. (left -right)Nettie, Me, Sarah, Carol, Sonia and Mabel. They have been instrumental in helping me fit in here and feel more relaxed. I don't actually teach "Junior 3" this semester but I still spend time in their office and they still ask me to dinner with them every Monday night, which is always fun. They call me their walking English dictionary but even though I can help them with new words and saying etc...their grammar is probably much more on the ball than mine :-)

School Sports Carnival

It turns out that I actually have had the last two days off work due to the fact that the school sports carnival took place. I hung around at different times and took a few photo's. It was great to see the kids having a good time. To say they enjoyed watching the teachers race would be an understatement :-)


Here's some of my teacher friends :-) Nina, Lily, Tina, Vivian and Jane

As part of the celebrations and because of the warmer weather, last night the school put on a movie for the kids to watch. They set up an open air cinema...The atmosphere was great. I went along and watched but the movie was Chinese and for some reason over here they subtitle everything constantly in CHINESE..Sometimes when there is an English movie on TV, they voice dub it in Chinese and put Chinese sub titles...It drives me crazy !!! Anyway it was still fun to go along and I could follow the plot of the movie even if I couldn't understand everything.
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Another busy week !

Another busy week last week ...I thought I'd show you some photos and video's to give you an idea of what a week here is like. Obviously most of my time is spent teaching at the school but out of school hours I'm always busy. Yichang has the famous "Yiling Square" which is one place I spend a lot of time at...but...now there is also "Walking Street" a mall with no cars (but still plenty of bikes) and many shops,restaurants, food and market stalls and entertaining places to hang out. I really like it here, maybe my friends would argue that it is because of "City Hero" which is a bit like one of our "Timezones" a hang out to play arcade games. I like to spend time here, racing cars, shooting hoops, playing "V Drums" in version of the game "Guitar Hero"...but for Drums...much fun!
This short video I took in the middle of Walking Street. Notice all the kids on their skateboards with two wheels...They are split in the middle and work by wiggling your feet to propel them...Looks like great fun to try!

There was a really welcome change in the weather for the last few days and I took advantage of the sunshine and spent some quite time down by the "Yangtze River" just a few minutes walk from my apartment.

I was able to try some very authentic "Yichang cuisine" this weekend when we went to a homestyle restaurant....VERY DELICIOUS! I'm still not good at really spicy food but i think my stomach, mouth and lips are slowly adjusting. It really is very tasty.
The start of spring here in China also signals the start of the kites. I have never seen so many...people are buying and flying them all along the Riverside park.



Because the weather was so nice over the weekend, we decided to climb "Moji Mountain", the highest peak in Yichang city (You can actually see it on the other side of the river in the above picture). It is only two bus stops away from my apartment. As with everything here...SO MANY STAIRS... infact apparently 217 meters of stairs.We stopped halfway for a picnic break.

The view at the top is great but we were all very tired after the climb. We then went to a farmers restaurant for lunch and all fell asleep outside in the sun for a while. Then we went to join in with the kite craze, had another sleep in the sun and ate some dinner before I caught the bus home.
Which brings us back to Monday and school...

School Sports Ground

I finally remembered to take my camera to school and get a photo of the new sports ground....

Before renovating


During renovating



Now

Fishing in Yidu

I had another try at fishing yesterday. This time we went to Yidu (between 1 and 2 hours from Yichang). Many students at our school and some teachers are from Yidu and they go back there on the weekends. I actually caught two fish yesterday but I have to say, it is very different from fishing in Australia. The fishing rods don't have reels and I guess they are a bit like "fly fishing rods". We ate lunch and dinner at a couple of different restaurants, sampling much local fare and had a nice day away doing something different.

Unusual Food

What do you write when you don't know what to write ? Maybe the abnormal has become somewhat normal...Dinner out nearly every night, classes, preparing classes, shopping, get togethers, Chinese weddings, weird food, cold and grey weather etc etc etc.
I had a students parents dinner to attend last night...one of the dishes served was crispy Scorpions...Now I try a lot of things "but" whilst I wanted to try them, something about the fact that their sting can be deadly poisonous just wouldn't let me do it. The last students parents dinner I attended I was halfway through an interesting bowl of food when I found out it was "Frogs Eggs"...Yes it was slimy, blobby and weird, but I'm used to unusual and didn't think much of it...although I have to say that when I actually found out what it was I only had a couple more mouthfuls.
After last nights dinner the parents also treated us all to a foot massage. It was rather more full on than the last one I had and included heating little glass bowls with a flame which made them suction onto the soles of your feet over the pressure points. I get some odd sensations with the foot massage thing. The last one actually made me very relaxed and quite good for a few days...but this one made my hands sweat and I've had a headache all day today. Both gave me a weird tingling sensation in the middle of my left hand "BUT" one worries about mentioning anything to the Chinese people because many always (seems to me anyway) jump to worst case scenarios about things being wrong with you and I don't need any help with that :-)
On that note...I have another cold (probably the reason for the weird response to the foot massage...probably detoxing my system or something) The weather here is very changeable and hard to not catch something. Some bright sunny days would go down very well right now.