Foo Lun Cha

I've decided that it is indeed a useless task trying to forecast Yichang weather...we are back to about 20 degrees and sunshine this week after around 0 degrees and snow last week. Sooooooo....to change the subject, today I went off on another jaunt to give some lessons to another school in Yichang. This time not far away, just over in the city. As part of the "keeping good relationships with other schools" My school put me on loan every now and again, just to give some students and teachers that don't have foreign teachers at their schools a few lessons and a chance to speak with a native English speaker. Today I had two classes (40 kids in each) with some Junior One students. It was VERY HARD WORK!The students at this school only had very, very basic English. They couldn't speak or understand much at all. I often get told "our school(Y.C.F.L.S) is the best, has the best students, has the best teachers, has the best grades, best work ethic" etc etc etc. Today maybe I came to realise that it is infact, Very True! How lucky I am to have such great kids to work with. YES, some days they can be frustrating, but, they are great kids! Even the most troublesome seem to have BIG hearts and are more over excited than naughty. I'm so grateful to have come to "Yichang Foreign Language School."
I must make mention of a funny thing that happened whilst teaching one of the classes at the other school today, which is what inspired the title of this post. One child came up to the front to have a go at the "Taboo game" which I was playing with the kids...His word was "Bread"....I cant remember the taboo word...He desperately started telling his team "foo lun cha, foo lun cha!"Everyone looked puzzled. I said to him "NOOOOO...you can't speak Chinese in this game, ONLY ENGLISH...NO CHINESE!"He looked at me and said "Wo shuode Yingwen" which is "I'm speaking English"
It was then I realised along with everyone else, he was saying "For Lunch, For Lunch"
All everyone could do was laugh :-)The teachers took me out for dinner after classes and we were still all laughing about it. Ahh the joys of teaching English in China!!!

Very COLD!!

The sunny warm pictures around the fountain in Yiling square last Saturday (in my last post),well, I think they've gone for the year now. The weather has turned bitterly cold this week. The forecast is for snow tomorrow night and Monday. The temperature is clocking in around 4 degrees give or take some...down to the minus range at night. 28 degrees last Saturday, I put that at quite a big jump, don't you?

Yiling Square Fountain

I was in "Yiling Square" on Saturday. The weather was stunning and I sat for a while with my Chinese book trying to learn this language which seems equivalent to walking the length of "The Great Wall". I sat with the women doing their knitting and the people playing their card games and even the young couples cleaning each others ears out with ear spoons :-)
Here in Yichang, Yiling Square is a great place to just hang and watch all the different activities that Chinese people like to do. Of an evening, it is full with people dancing, mornings many people exercise there and in general anytime you will find kids playing, skating or whatever the fad game happens to be at the current time. It also has a wonderful fountain that (I think) only goes a couple of times a day on Saturdays (for about 20 minutes)I'm never sure what time of the day and although I've seen it in it's full glory a few times now, I've don't think I've ever had my camera with me at the time and taken pictures of it, but on Saturday I did :-)
Here's some photos for you.

So much excitement with the kids and after it's finished they all love to play where it was spurting ferociously just a minute before.


Here's a short video!

My Little Casserole Dish!

Anyone that knows me also knows I'm not really very domesticated, mostly when it comes to cooking :-)I did make efforts last year (a few times a week) to find some similar foods and cook some similar meals to those I would eat back home in Australia, but this year I seemed to have become more integrated in the Chinese lifestyle and I have been eating mostly Chinese food. I eat at the school food hall quite a lot because my meals are provided for free and as I have mentioned a few times before, the lifestyle here involves much eating out for breakfast, lunch and dinner so restaurant eating is very common and a normal part of life here.
Because of my Stomach cold last week, I decided I had better try and get into a bit of home cooking again, the biggest trouble is that I really don't enjoy cooking very much at all and of course the other trouble is finding the right ingredients.
I decided I wanted to make "Bread Pudding". Whilst I can get butter here, it tastes very unusual and I don't like it very much so I just used Bread, Sultanas, Milk (kind of:), Eggs and Sugar. I searched and searched for some kind of bowl that I would be able to use in my little oven. Because they don't cook with ovens here in China, It was a hard task. I finally found the perfect Casserole type dish that would withstand high temperature and I'm loving it!! My first bread puddings I had to make in some muffin cases that Mum sent over to me, but now the casserole dish makes the perfect bread pudding it even fits perfectly in my little oven.
My little casserole dish has inspired me to greater heights (with some inspirational ideas from my mum) LOOK a "Roast Pork Pot Roast" (kind of :-)Complete with crackling.It must have been tasty because Nettie didn't feel compelled to add from her trusty jar of Chinese "HOT Spicy Relish", which she must keep handy on my shelf for emergencies :-)
Who knows what will be next???
Any ideas gratefully accepted :-)


Bread Pudding