YuanYang for New Year 2015 (moved from old blog)

 Rice terraces in YuanYang

As I mentioned earlier, we were given a surprise week off school. I have worked at this school for three and a half years and I remember it happening only once before. So we leaped into action and planned trips to the corners of China, or in my case the southern part of Yunnan province.

Knowing I was finishing school for good in a matter of weeks, I wasn't too concerned about making a long journey and so I decided to finally get to the terraces in the southern part of Yunnan.

I took an eight hour bus journey, which was hell, to the new town of XinJie. The bus was crowded, small, smelly and the guy next to me was a pretty heavy smoker (despite the no smoking on buses policy) so not pleasant. 

I managed to get through an entire Harry Potter audio book so you should get a sense of the extreme boredom involved. We finally arrived and I was immediately shuffled into a smaller bus that would drop me off at the hostel I was staying in. David recommended it so I sort of knew what to look for, which helped as I had to follow a pitch black alleyway down into a valley to find the place. 

The room itself was pretty nice and the electric blanket on the bed made things a little better as it was freezing cold and fairly humid. I spent many hours in bed debating the act of getting showered. 
I arrived late on New Years Eve and ended up spending the evening with some enthusiastic (and drunk) Chinese grandparents. they insisted i rink with them, chatted about just about everything and then tried setting my up with their grandchildren. I refused based on the fact THEY ARE 19! 

The hostel was just outside a little village and one of the main scenic spots for the area. In total I think there are 12 but I only saw a fraction of them. I went for a walk into the fields and sat with my cheese sarnie in the middle of some of the most incredible scenery I have ever eaten in. In every direction, climbing the valley walls, were steps of terraces and rice fields full of water and reflecting the sun. 

I joined an existing tour to drive about the other scenic spots and spent an entire day either in car or taking pictures of amazing scenery. 

After two days I had seen my fill of tereraces and made my way back in the general direction of Kunming. It's a four hour bus journey to JianShui from XinJie so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. There is however, only one bus a day and I turned up 3 hours early so I had some time to kill. XinJie is a brand new area that has been developed purely as a gateway arrivals place for the terrace scenic area. Nothing is more than a few years old adn they definatly dont get foreigners sticking around. so naturally me chilling on a beanch in the town square with my book caused a bit of a stir. all the locals kids kept creeping closer and closer, then I would look up and they would run away. It was fun for a while anyway, for them much longer. 
Next stop JianShui.

Shangri-la December 2014 (moved from old blog)

 Shivering in Shangri-la

Again, I am a little behind in the updates but getting closer. However, this one is only 6 weeks late. 

I took some holiday from school with the intention of finally getting round to trekking Tiger Leaping Gorge and once again my plan failed me. 
As an extra bonus it was Halloween weekend so I thought I had missed the party the school makes us put on. Annoyingly someone decided that this year we were to put on two, I missed one but not the other. The Friday night was a party for the primary school kids and their parents so I had the ones in my classroom, racing with balloons between their feet or knees. It was hilarious and only one person fell over. 

whats left of the old town

I jumped on a train to LiJiang on the Saturday and arrived early Sunday morning. The bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge was cheap and fairly regular so I had no problem getting a ticket. 

I did however have trouble staying awake on the bus and sailed straight past the gorge only to wake up about half an hour outside ZhongDian or Shangri-la (it was renamed in 2002 for tourism reasons). I had no idea where I was going and it only clicked when we arrived and I checked with the ticket guy. They thought I was hilarious and called over several people to tell hem what I had done, helpfully they all laughed at me too. One was actually helpful and told me about a nice hotel and dropped me off. Shangri-la is at over 3000 meters altitude and so was pretty chilly. Luckily I had packed for hiking and so had lots of shorts and t-shirts and not loads else. So when it started to snow I was only a little freezing (sarcasm, I froze and spent three days looking for fireplaces in cafes and bars).

World's largest Buddhist monastery

Most of the old part of town was destroyed in a fire over the summer so lots of building work. The hotel owner was telling me that although pretty the old town was a tourist trap and he was hopeful some of the traditional elements could be restored with the new build. Time will tell I guess, but I would be interested in going back to see what they make of it. 

ZhongDian is a hugely religious and spiritual place, so most of the things to see are monasteries or temples. Although I have seen lots of temples in China, the ones I visited In ZhongDian were different and so very impressive and interesting places to look round. 
 I spent a few days chilling (literally) in ZhongDian and loved how relaxed and easy going the place felt. After about 3 days I jumped on a bus back to LiJiang before heading back to Kunming and work. I have been to LiJiang so I have ticked off the highlights tour of the town, so this time I took advantage of the warm weather and sat in the park with my book for a  few hours before finding a place to stay for the night.

I ended up in a YHA dorm room of about 30 beds and nothing else. It was amazingly cheap but the public bathrooms outside of the hostel were much nicer than anything in the room. Luckily I managed to snag a bed on the opposite end of the dorm to the bathrooms so I wasn't took bothered by them. I reluctantly got the train back to Kunming and back to work. 

Great Aussie Christmas 2014 (moved from old blog)

 Merry Kunming Christmas everyone!

After the chaos of the Christmas party, the rest of the Christmas season seemed relatively easy and stress free. We made Christmas cards with the kids and played musical chairs with Slade and The Pogues and they kids thought it was great. 


I planned a big meal at The Great Australian Bite, and it got out of hand very quickly. There were at last count, 36 people for dinner. I spent hours on the phone gathering names and then after that meal choices. God bless WeChat! 

Mostly it was Shane teachers and their various girlfriends and a few others from the random drinking scene but I believe everyone had a good time. 

Dinner was amazing and food incredible, we had a few issues and confusion with some of the meal choices and a few people could have had two dinners but we got it sorted in the end. 

Christmas was made a  little better by the sudden announcement from school that we had a week off school for new year, we spent most of the evening planning where to go. EXCITING!

My last Shane Christmas 2014 (moved from old blog)

 "It's the Shane Christmas party." "OH NO IT ISN'T!"

So as is the tradition in language schools, in China at least, all holidays that aren't Chinese are exploited for extra money and recruitment/publicity opportunities. 

Good for the school, terrible for any teacher who might actually like a certain holiday. I, for example, love Christmas but three Shane Christmas parties and I am beginning to rethink this absurd idea. Christmas means to work longer hours, to be forced to do shows for the locals entertainment and to give presents to already spoilt rotten kids right? NO? I must still be bitter from someone high jacking my Christmas. 

So as not to mess with the tradition of destroying all Christmas spirit in teachers, we were told there would be a party and we were to perform a show at this party. And so the idea of the pantomime was born.

We found a copy of Cinderella on-line that was all in rhyme (yes that was intentional) and we divided up the workload. Somehow I ended up in charge of costumes, which with 5 guys in dresses was a mammoth task, and was to play the Fairy Godmother. All the guys in the office played the girls in the show (Cinderella, the ugly sisters and the step mother) while two of the Chinese girls played Prince Charming and his buddy Herald. 

Rehearsals began, lines were learnt (sort off) and it occurred to us what a stupidly large task we had taken on. It took us weeks of going into the office early on a Wednesday to get to a semi decent level of confidence and to stop us panicking about not being ready. 

The party was on a Friday night, so classes were cancelled for the week. The party was at the Expo centre, which is miles away in the north of the city.

The room was massive with a huge stage and runway down the middle. When we got to the party room we were told we had to do a fashion show with some of the kids. In our school there are only two female teachers so we were told we had to go first. I spent ages stood on a runway with two terrified students clinging to me. Oodles of fun! 

After the fashion show we had 7 minutes to get into costumes and get ready for the panto. 
We had a minor problem with microphones, as in we didn't have any, but the kids didn't seem to notice. We had loads of kids sat on the front of the stage taking hundreds of pictures and they seemed to love all their teachers in dresses. 

After the panto we had nearly 2 hours to kill before we were allowed to leave so we all got a little bored. The rest of the show was a mess of speeches and terrible dances, including one from McDonald's who sponsor the school. 

Thankfully this was my last Shane Christmas party as I am to finish work in a few weeks.