Freezing Cold

We didn't have a late night on New Year's Eve - so we were quite bright and cheery on New Year's Day, but it was bitterly cold. I think it was -2 at one stage, so I chose to stay indoors for most of the day.

I did venture out to the new supermarket and found bottle of some red wine - this version of Grand Dragon has no English on it, so I have no idea what is really in it. Some of the Chinese wine bottles have some English but it is usually something about being made from the best grapes in the world by the best winery, and how it can make you healthy.

It remains unopened - but I'll probably venture to taste it later today. I stayed indoors and watched two movies - I have not used my DVD player very much, but in this cold weather it was worth it. I will be prying to take it home to Australia now I have mastered it, but nothing in the instructions is in English, but I manage.

The first movie I'd found at the DVD shop in Shaoxing was called "Two Brothers" and Australian actor Guy Pearce was in it. I thought it a delightful movie and will be taking it home with me. I know some children that might enjoy it! It was made in 2004, but I had not heard of it.

The other one was called "Ballet Shoes" which was great too. This movie was made in 2007 - and that too would be enjoyed by my grandchildren.

I sat with my heaters on, a small hot water bottle which I kept filling up, a glass or two of wine, and I was really pleased when it was bed time as I crawled into my very warm bed (thanks to the electric blanket) and had a good night's sleep.

I wish the heaters were efficient - but they are not as warming as I would like.

Snow

This morning it is cold - and it snowed for the first time. Not a lot as you can see - and I didn't see it fall, but it is there none the less. The temperature gauge says -2, but there is a wind blowing so outside it feels a lot colder than that.

I don't know if we will have any more snow forecast - but hopefully we will see a little more of it.



There is a little snow on the car which was parked there overnight. Actually the guy that drives that car is currently in Victoria, Australia. My apartment is directly behind the snow covered car. Ground floor (or first floor as it is known here) - I'm told it is warmer than the floors above.

To Shanghai

Rice fields after harvest.

I was so proud of myself venturing from Shaoxing to Shanghai on my own. I managed to buy the tickets on my own at Shaoxing Train Station - easy really as quite surprisingly there was an English speaker behind the window in the Ticket Office!

After completing class on Friday last, I went to my apartment, collected my already packed luggage (backpack) and set off on foot to the bus stop at the West Gate. When I arrived there were many students and I reasoned that I would struggle to manage my backpack in the packed bus, so I hailed a taxi instead.

At the station in the waiting hall, several Yuexiu students were there and I chatted with them while we waited for the train. In China one waits in a very busy waiting hall - and about five minutes before the train is due to arrive at the platform, we file through the now open gate, have our tickets checked and then line up where we think the carriage will stop. Each ticket has the carriage number, and if you have paid for a seat, the seat number.

Usually, despite the orderly way everyone queues to get into their carriage, the train usually arrives and one discovers that the carriage they must enter is further along the platform, so there is a mad scramble!

On the train there was a lady asleep in my seat - the train had come from Ningbo, so she reasoned that for some of the trip anyway she would sit in someone else's seat. She did not pay for a seat. I woke her, and she got up and moved when I showed her my ticket. There were other students on the train too, and we chatted until they got off.

The activities on the train are always amusing. People wandering up and down the aisle, railway staff back and forth selling food and drinks, and hot water for the tea. Most Chinese people carry a small container of tea of some sort, and the boiling water top up is most popular. Mobile phones going off all the time, loud conversations between travellers, loud music.

I had my MP3 player going, and I was reading and enjoying the views from the train window as we passed through villages, cities, farmland, and fish farms. The scenery is ever changing. It is harvest time in the rice fields, and many of them are laid bare and the workers are burning the stubble left on the fields. In front of many of the houses you can see the rice laid out on the ground - sometimes just on the cement and other times on bamboo mats or in flat cane baskets. The rice must be continually turned over so that it all dries out properly.

Beside the houses are bags of rice. This drying of the rice continues for several weeks and someone is always "on duty" to continually rake the rice to keep the air circulating around it.

In the fields there are many green vegetables growing - it is quite a sight - neat rows of vegetables as far as the eye can see. In some places new plastic domes (or hot houses as we would call them) are being erected to protect the plants from the cold. It is down to 1 and 2 degrees at the moment and will get colder, and maybe even snow.

The scenery is ever changing. In the nearly three hour trip between Shaoxing and Shanghai the train only makes a few stops - Hangzhou and Haining. The landscape is every changing though - there are so many rivers, streams, canals, farms, cities, parks, factories, housing estates, villages, fields. So hard to describe it all - even such a short trip really.

I would love to take more photos - but taking photos through the window of a fast moving train does not guarantee success, but I managed a few!

When the train arrived at Shanghai there was a mad scramble as everyone tries to be the first off the train. It will never be me! People with all sorts of luggage from plastic sheets tied up holding all the precious "cargo", suitcases, backpacks, computer bags, shopping bags, and the ever popular red, white and blue carry bag that even we in Australia are familiar with!

Shanghai Station Sth is very modern, and it is easy to get off the train, up the escalator and in my case along the walkway to the underground railway (subway). I had to catch a train on Line 1, for two stations,get off and get the subway on line 4 to my destination. Managed it with one small hiccup, but arrived safely.

My host was at the station to meet me and we wandered back to her apartment. Now I had been there just 2 months before, but the landscape had changed dramatically. Soem buildings had been completely demolished, and were being replaced by modern housing. In her own apartment block it was surrounded by bamboo scaffolding, as the apartment was being refurbished.

It was quite cold and good to get inside. We chatted for ages before enjoying a good meal which included tender pork pieces with a special port seasoning, steamed carrot, broccoli, and boiled potatoes. And some good Australian red wine!

Wet and cold

It was only a week or so ago that we were lamenting the continued hot weather. Overnight it changed. Last weekend when we went to Hangzhou it was wet and cool, but today it is wet and COLD. I have two jackets, but I will need a winter woolly or two. I have had a look in the shops in the city, and there are some reasonable jackets or tops at a good price, so next week I will get one or two.

I have some tracksuit pants, but no tops. And I will get one or two of these as well. Especially for the early mornings when I jump out of bed, I need something warm to put on as I don't have a dressing gown and I don't intend to get one here.

Everyone wears scarves and there are some delightful ones around. Very imaginative designs. I do generally wear a scarf during the cooler weather as they really do keep the body warm. I love looking at the scarf designs the students wear and those in the shops, and I do have a growing collection of them.

One of the things that always amuses me here, is that with 10,000 students there is always a parade of umbrellas when it is raining. It is hard describe the scene with so many students leaving the classrooms, and at lunch time or when classes finish at 8.30 pm the long "conga line" of students under umbrellas, often with a strange glow from their mobile phones, as theywalk from the classrooms to the West Gate or to their dormitories.

Speaking of dormitories. I had a phone call from a student last night. His teacher has asked him to invite a "foreign teacher", an English teacher, to the boys dormitory to help them with their English conversation, and he asked me to go on Mondy night. Conversations with Chinese students can often be curious. He did explain that his teacher would be there - but his invitation to come and have fun with the boys in the dormitory I found rather amusing. I sent a text message to one of the other Aussie teachers. "I have been invited by some boys to go to their dormitory to play games and have fun, should I go?" Her reply (and I knew to expect something like this as she does have a wild sense of humour) was "Absolutely" and when I saw her we had a good laugh about that. So that's a story for next week.

So now it is cold I will wear one of my jackets and a scarf, and carry my bag of items for class, and my umbrella. I feel like a pack horse!

Computer, Cold, and Classroom!

Well, it didn't help that I came down with a rotten cold at the same time my computer crashed. And then I had challenges with the classroom!

Many of the teachers had suffered from a cold, and despite all my antiseptic hand wiping, avoiding as much as possible those with the affliction, I ended up with a terrible sore throat and cough. If I spoke with my raspy voice, I coughed! Not easy to teach when cannot speak.

So I used my copy of "King Arthur" to "amuse" the students while I recovered. But the classroom could not be darkened enough and the screen was difficult to see. It is a movie with a lot of dark scenes anyway, so in the end I was embarrassed by it. On a good day I could get English dialogue and English subtitles (actually for the hard of hearing but it worked in the context of English lessons), but on one day the computer would stop and start and I who had seen the movie more than once knew that the movie was jumping all over the place and the story was impossible to follow. I am not sure that my students followed it anyway, it was so hard to see.

At times the dialogue would change into Chinese! Adding much mirth to the class.

As well, I had asked for the classroom to be "cleaned" - I was assured that it was - but as I watched the movie for the third and fourth time, I did some cleaning myself and found that the black splodges all over the floor actually disappeared with a wet mop. Was it my task to do it all? I complained again, and still was told that the room was cleaned.

Meanwhile back at the apartment I struggled with the laptop that refused to do anything. Despite having Norton Antivirus, I suspect I have a virus which is not being picked up. All efforts to use the computer were fruitless, so I was not happy at all.

Meanwhile I have been offered another classroom - I insisted on inspecting it first - and I have refused to use it. It is slightly darker, with an a/v system that is so damaged I'd need a weeks lessons to learn how to drive it, and the classroom is dirtier than my original. I can't see any point in moving.

I gave up on the movie, but Friday's students had heard about the movie, so didn't bring any books, and were disappointed that I refused to show it. In any case only about 25% of students bothered to watch it - the rest slept through it. So I'm not having great success! Very frustrating.

Meanwhile, Saturday has come and for the fourth weekend in a row it is raining. I'm feeling better, and surprisingly so is the computer though it is far from fixed.

And the classroom - oh, I'll worry about that on Monday.