Saturday 24th September

I had a lazy morning today and then a few of the teachers were meeting at the subway to go to a real ale brewery which had a courtyard to sit outside and enjoy the good weather (32 degrees today) and socialise outside of work. Myself, Milzie, Jodie, Doreenda and Mark got the subway and then met Anna (grade 1 teacher)about an hour away in Beijing city centre.

We then got a taxi and walked through these little back streets with food vendors and it was a real shanty town kind of feel, there were little huts made of crumbling stone that could fit a camp bed in and that was someone’s house. When we finally got to the courtyard it was 4pm and there was an art exhibition on so there was no way we could get a table, the place was packed and it was standing room only. I asked what was going on and apparently this was a famous artist and musician who had done 12 pictures of leaves and a song to go with each. I had no idea who he was but had my photo taken with him anyway (you never know, that might be worth something in a few years!). We stayed for one drink as Anna had been raving to everyone about how good the real ale was here (I didn’t, I can’t stand the smell of ale, I was just there to enjoy the atmosphere and get to know some of the other teachers better).

Anna then got a phone call from one of the other teachers saying that they were lost, so we left to go and meet them at another bar called the drum and bell where the roof had been turned into a beer garden and was really lovely, there were sofas and comfy chairs on decking and lot’s of flowers everywhere. Waiting for us were 4 other teachers, Ashley who also teaches grade 1, Shanna who teaches grade 3, Harvey who teaches kindergarten and Kirsten who teaches grade 5. We had a lovely evening drinking cocktails and gossiping away when we heard music, on the courtyard outside of the bar there were about 100 Chinese people doing aerobics! We just had to go and have a go as well, it was good fun. Apart from the apartment crawl I had not seen Ashley, Anna, Shanna, Kirsten or Harvey outside of work so it was nice to get to know them a bit better.