Orientation Day 1 Photos Pt 2

Day 1 of Orientation

Got up at 9am ready for the registration where you pay for your visa extension which the staff apply for and had my photo taken for my ID card (If I'd known, I would have put make up on!) we then had a tour of the local area, we were shown where the bank, pharmacy and classrooms we are going to use are. I had missed breakfast but apparently it was potato salad and soup so I didn't miss much!. At 1pm I went for lunch (meals will be provided in the hotel for the duration of the orientation) then a group of us went to the local park, like a grass park in England but with lots of sculptures (Marbury, Markeaton that sort of thing) which was nice. There was a group of men playing mahjong tiles in the park and one of the girls took a photo of them and they went mad! apparently gambling is illegal in China and because the men were playing for money they were worried the photo would be shown to the police, luckily an old man on a bike saved the day by translating for us.

I then cam back to the hotel and read my book for an hour, it was then time for to do an activity called 'wangfujing' which is street stalls selling weird foods in the centre of Beijing. We took the subway which is only 20p to go wherever you want in the city and the walked to this street which is like a market where there are lots of stalls selling different foods. The first stall was selling dung beetles, seahorse, scorpions, starfish and snake which were all on skewers. I tried the starfish which was really hard to bite off and tasted really salty. Then there was a scorpion which was alive on the sticks and the fried it in front of you, but was nice and tasted like pork scratchings, although I did have to psych myself up to eat it. I then tried snake which is delicious, tasted a bit like pork but i will definitely be eating that again, I then tried octopus which would have been nice if they hadn't put so much soy sauce on it, tasted really sour. Other people tried things like tarantula, monkey and dung beetle which were at the other end of the market, but i didn't wander that far as we only had an hour. It is really weird as the Chinese just stare at you wherever you go and when we were at the food market I got asked if a Chinese couple could have their picture taken with me, which was weird.

First Day Photo's Pt 2

First Day in Beijing

Made myself get up at 9am, even though I am exhausted! went to reception to pick up my timetable which starts tomorrow and met up with three other girls to find somewhere to go for lunch. Ordering was a nightmare as the menu was just symbols and none of us had a clue what any of it meant, so we just pointed to the people on the next table to us had as it it looked nice. It was some sort of sweet chili satay chicken and was really tasty, with a bowl of rice and bottle of water and cost £1.50 for the meal! I had a go with chopsticks and it turns out i'm a natural! We then wandered through the shops on the way back and sat and chatted with the other interns and staff (who did the internship themselves in 2008) by 3pm I was so tired and felt myself dropping off to sleep so went back outside for a wander round, it has been pouring down on and off all day so not been able to explore much, but it is 32 degrees and very smoggy. At 6:30pm a few of us (16 other interns) went out for Tea and ordered 16 rice, noodles, chicken wings (didn't taste much like chicken) lamb skewers (salty but nice) mushroom spiced mushrooms on skewers (delicious) corn on the cob and finally one of the New Zealand girls insisted we each try chicken feet as we were in China. I was going to try it until I saw it and along with about half the group just couldn't go through with it. All of this, including drinks came to about £2 each, amazing value! I obviously haven't drank enough water today as I have a bit of a headache so going to drink more tomorrow, its almost 10pm here so I am going to bed for some much needed sleep.

The Adventure Begins

Arrived at Manchester airport in plenty of time for the flight, said a tearful goodbye to Matt and then off to customs where I had my packet of wet wipes confiscated at customs! Boarded the 9pm flight to Dubai which was 7 hours long and I managed to get an hours sleep. Each seat had its own touch screen TV and we had a meal at 10:30pm which was supposedly Asian chicken with basmati rice and carrots but was nothing like! there was a three hour wait at Dubai airport for my connecting flight to Beijing. This was another seven hour flight but this time I had a man behind me who obviously hadn't used a touch screen before and was hitting the screen and making my headrest jerk a lot! add the fact that there wasn't much leg room (think Ryanair) and I was sat next to a very camp, chatty young man who when he wasn't exclaiming "ooh hows exciting" after every sentence, sucked his thumb the whole way there bit odd for a 22 year old man!). Now anyone who knows me knows I hate flying more than packing, so within minutes i realised this was not going to be such a good flight and requested to be upgraded to business class, thinking it wouldn't be that much extra, how wrong I was! Emirates would be happy to upgrade my seat for £1500!! "oh, err, I think I'll just stay here" was my reply. so after an extremely long flight to Beijing, time seemed to drag and I only got about an hours sleep again, I finally arrived at 11:30pm local time, I had arranged a pick up at the airport and was at the Hotel by 1am.

I won't be sending many texts as its £1 each and Skype isn't working that well as I have a bad connection in the Hotel. Its now 3am and I am exhausted so I am going to bed and will update again soon.

Pippa x

Not long now

I have got my final lot of injections this week and it's all starting to feel a bit more real as it's only 5 days away now.

I am panicking slightly at the thought of having a 30kg weight allowance for 5 months when I manage to go over my weight allowance for a week in Spain!

All I know so far is that I have a 2 week orientation when I arrive in Beijing and at the end of the orientation I will find out what school I will be placed in (I have requested the south of China and primary aged children) I could have anywhere between 10 and 50 children in my class. I don't know yet what kind of accommodation I will be in or if I will be placed with another English teacher or on my own. I will keep you posted x

Progress

It has been a busy week, I went to Manchester to apply for my Visa and that came through at the weekend and yesterday I booked my flights (I didn't realise just how long they were going to be!)

I leave Manchester on Friday 12th August and arrive in Dubai very early Saturday 13th August and then leave Dubai to fly to Beijing, arriving at 10.20pm Saturday 13th August which gives me a day to recover before my two week orientation in Beijing starts on Monday 15th August.