Back to The City

We are back to Changsha. Today Flynn and me went for a walk. She showed me a very nice place in the city, finally something really chinese looking^^ Okay, the city is chinese as well, but like a glbalized china. This place had a little bit of ancient feeling. Although it was just for tourists...

Out of Changsha

I've spent the past 5 days in the rural area. I didn't have internet, but actually there wasn't much to write each thay. The spring Festival is somewhat similar to christmas at home. Everybody goes home, everyone is visiting family, having family dinners. For me as a foreigner (and a stranger, moreover not speaking chinese) these days passed really slowly and sometimes boring.

Altogether the famiy was really nice and welcoming, I cannot say anything bad abot them, it is just that the situation was not appropriate for me..let's say >_>

What is more, I caught cold and I was really ill for a few days, which means through all the time spent in the rural area, which made things even more difficult. We slept at hotels and spent the day at the house of the relatives. At the hotels we usually turned on the AC. Previously we slept in 7-12°C and now suddenly 23-28°C it made the situation even worse. The biggest mistake Ive made was not refusing family launch and dinner... I was definitely not feeling well, but I went out 2-3 times a day with the family because I didn't want to be impolite and didn't refuse the invitation. Although it would have been better to stay at the hotel and rest.

Other than my illness...

The countryside here is totally different from what I've seen at home. When we were going to the hometown we wree going on a road for many-many kilometers, and there were only houses one by one next to theroad. No other streets, just a canal with 2 roads on the two sides bordered by houses. The houses looked almost all the same. 2 floors high block shaped white buildings covered with tiles.

 I've seen a lot of weird vehicles on the streets... a lot of three-wheeled cars and bicycles.

Btw.. During Spring Festival children get red envelopes with money from the family- fyi °-°

Firework's Night

Today is the first day of Spring Festival... Actually it started at yesterday midnight^^

I've spent this two days at home with the family. yesterday night was crazy, the whole city was extremely noisy because of the fireworks...it was like a war. Fireworks were everywhere, even next to our building. I uploaded some videos as illustration, but it is not even close to the experience :D

..aand the lunch :)

Clean Glass...

Today we had a little bit of rest..again O..O

We went to the city with the parents and we came back, we had dinner..and now I'm going to sleep.. :D

Tomorrow's the first day of Spring Festival ^^

A funny litle story: After we arrived home I was quite tired. I just wanted to go to the balcony a bit, but I didn't realize the glass door was closed... :D

the market (the day before yesterday):

Lazy Day

Today we had a lazy day.. we got up at 10 again (for me it was half past ten).

We had lunch together (in the morning I was writing the missing blog entries). After lunch we went to change money for me, and in the evening we (Flynn+me) went shopping :D

...this time I bought a dress..^^

This is just a random picture I made this day

Resort?

Yesterday... it wasn't a dinner visit at the family, BUT we went to a Resort Hotel  and we had a shower and a massage. O.O I was quite shocked at first, because I didn't expect this. It was quite an embarrassing situation >_>

So we had a shower (no door cabins..) and then we went to the 3rd floor. We went to a huge room with many (eg 8 rows of 8) massage beds, like super comfortable sofas with pillow, blanket and automatic height adjuster... In the front there was a huge cinema-like projector. We spent there about 1 and a half hour, we had 1 hour massage. Wow, I've never been to such place °_° manythanks to my host family :))))

About today..

We went to bed at about 1AM, so we slept for a long time. I was in the other room, because Flynn's other cousin (10years old) is here now, and she sleeps with her. I woke up at 10 and then I started to chat with Thomas and Joshua, so in the end I got p at about 11AM :D

After lunch we went shopping (not thet kind of..) with the family (host mother, her twin sister, Flynn, her cousin and me) we went to the local markets and bought many fruits, vegetables and candies for the Spring Festival.

In the afternoon I watched the video that donation made for me... I'll just show it to you, no words for this...

After dinner Flynn and me went to the city, we were just walking around.. bt suddenly it started raining, so we had to buy an umbrella and we came home. We went to bed at about midnight, but we had a quite long chat  before falling asleep. Nice long day... (°-°)

KTV

As it turned out yesterday we went to KTV (karaoke), awesome!!! The good thing is that they have a good quality equipment, so our voices were not that bad :D Although not everyone could come, we had so much fun^^

After a while I just texted Flynn if she wants to come or not, fortnately she came, so in the end we spent the evening together.

After the KTV we went to see a movie with Demi's host and his friends. We watched the Cloud Atlas, but to tell the truth I didn't understant it... ok, it was qite late. The movie finished at 1:20AM :D We catched a taxi and came back home, Nana also came to sleep here, because her host family is very far from here.

In the morning we slept till 10:30 ^^

At 12:30 we had a meeting with the others. This was the last meeting before the spring festival. We went to a little restaurant and had a lunch together, so it was rather an informal meeting. The place was sooo typical. A very little shop in a narrow street, we went inside (not that clean place :D) and there was a staircase, and they had the tables on the 1st floor. The food was really good, bt I tasted  some pea and meat thingy... which didn't seem very spicy at first, so I ate another bit of it..... (°o°) it wasn't just hot, but actually it was quite oainflfor about 10 minutes, I couldn't even talk >_>

After finishing lunch we went to see a huge shopping mall, but we were only window shopping as the place was quite expensive. I had come back here till 5 o'clock, because we'll visit my host family's other cousin. So I'lll go and have a dinner now..

Back to Changsha & Birthday

Sooo we came back to Changsha in the morning, after I arrived I got a beautiful and very cute birthday cake from Flynn. It was delicious. She had planned to go to some place in the afternoon, but the other trainees have already asked me out for the evening. So after having a hot shower I went to meet the others. Details tomorrow :D

Before that I have to speak a little about yeterday's happenings ^^

I left off when Thomas told me that they are making some traditional chinese tea in their room and asked if I want to have it or not. So I went down..basically I dodn'T go back to my room for that day, we were having conversation about big and little things of life.

Then at midnight Josha looked at me, I said what? he pointed at the clock.. and about two seconds later... everybody came into the room singing Happy Birthday!! I was so moved, I almost cried..in fact I would've cried, I was just two tired, and I cried too much in the past two days so I had no tears left. I can't find the words for this. As it turned out they had been prepairng for this for about three days Q.Q

Also ine of the students, Ann called me on Jouney's phone, she sent her gift to me and wished me a happy birthday @_@

Really, thank you guys!!

It was quite late and everyone was very tired, so after eating the cake ( a beautiful 2 layers cake with fruits and white cream). Only Demi stayed there and also Thomas and Joshua (since it was their room). I opened the gifts, they were very cute hairclips and little things, really suitable for me ^^

Closing Ceremony

First: I'm terribly sorry for the poor quality pictures, but I accidentally set my phone to the lowest quality, and I only realized it one day later :/ 

TEARS!! Today was the last day at the school. But to start it at the beginning:

In the morning I had some accidents :D

When I woke up Karen was still sleeping, I didn't want to wake her up, so I only turned on the light in the bathroom. When I dressed up funny accidents started to happen:

I was making a hot milk tea, but when I wanted to pour the hot water into the cup, the cap of the kettle fell off. I cathed it, but it was way too hot so I just threw it away :D 

Second thing, I took off my coat from the coat hanger and in the next moment it just fell down and banged on the door.

Not to talk about the sound of plastic bags, poring water, zippers... poor Karen ^^

Although she didn't seem to be bothered by these kind of noises :P

We had classes in the morning, but we didn't do any serious work. In the afternoon we had the closing ceremony. It was a talent show where every class performed something. There were some individual performances as well. Our class sang the song that they practiced throughout the past few days. Due to some technical difficulties they couldn't sing it properly.. and they had to cut it in half. This was the point when I started to cry T_T and then the students came to me and told me not to cry, because they will sing it again!

So they had the hance to sing it again.

The most moving moment was when they asked me if we can dance the hungarian folk dance. I said we can but maybe not here but after the ceremony outside. So after the ceremony we went out together, stood up in a circle and danced while I was singing a hungarian children's song 'A part alatt' it's one of the most basic songs bbut I managed to mess up the lirycs (I sang the 1st 2nd and the...7?th verse) it doesn't  matter, what matters is the athmosphere...

After this we said goodbye to each other.

...and I'm totally packed :) (not in this picture though..)

Team building

This day we had an interesting game for the children. It was a team building game. We have them toothpicks and plasticine, the goal was to make the highest tower. They enjoyed it quite much ^^

They even kept doing it in the break, the students from the other classes came and they wanted to join as well. They said they also want to play this game in their class... success :D

Good things happened  today: I think they accepted us, and they started to like us really.. we started to get attached to them as well. I think yesterday had an effect on this matter >_> 

In the afternoon they practiced the song for the talent show. All I can say is it was really beautiful and moving. As they sang together, even boys were singing with full power! O.O (I had to go out I got too emotional...)

So much of this day, everybody felt that we are getting really close to the end of the week.

In the evening Nana and me went shopping together. I bought my daily milk tea and some bows(hairclips) ;)

Class exchange

Today....

We woke up in the morning (actually Karen didn't wake up, just me) and after getting ready I went down, I knocked on Emily's door. She came out, and we went down together. But we couldn'T leave the building, because the door was locked T_T We waited, we ringed the reception phone, then we waited, then we ringed the phone again, finally after 15 minutes the owner showed up, and opened the door for us. It was at 7:30, so we were late from the breakfast again >_>

Today we changed classes with Joshua and Sheenal. These kids were also very cute, responsive and active, but I really missed our class. It was like we started everything from the beginning. We had to introduce ourselves, we had to get to know the children as well. But the breaks... all the kids said they miss us, it was such a heart warming thing O.O

Same thing with the other class, they didn't want to let go of their original teachers.

In the class we were talking abbout dreams, their dreams, how can they reach them, who can help them. We used a video, we learned a song (Hall of Fame) and we asked them to draw.

In the breaks we were having a chat with the kids. At some point most of the girls gathered around me and they started to touch and smell my hair O.O .. so embarrassing, then I tried to sneak out of the cicle with a quick leap, but the boy next to me (he's the tallest of all of the kids, about 15cm taller than me) pet my head, and told me not to be shy... I was shocked o_o ..13 years old... What is with these kids? :D :D
*cultural shock*

When the classes finished I played basketball with them, we were just throwing the ball at the 'basket??'

After leaving the school we went 'shopping' again. I bought some milk tea and pocky, and we also got candy for the children for the last 2 days. Aaand we bought some little fireworks. My coat was burned by a little spark TT_TT

We made long shutter photos on which we are drawing some shapes with the fireworks.. we had fun^^

Sooooo tired now.

The Kokoburra dance

This day we had more fun :))

We covered the topic of culture today, so talking about culture we mentioned our folk dance as well. For the hungarian dance they had to stand in a circle and hold hands.. well at this part the situationbecame a bit chaotic :D All in all it went quite well I think. I just showed them some very basic steps ^^

In the afternoon Emily tought them Australian aboriginal dance, that was really entertaining!! ^^

At te courses we used some PPT, but at the last course it was free conversation(we had a topic, so I had to adjus questions and direct the connversation according to that) in 2 groups, they really enjoyed it.

During the launch break Emily, Sheenal and me went to explore the other direction of the main street. We found a little stationery full of cute and cheap stuff ^^ I bought a little pack of mushroom shaped post-its. In the afternoon I gave a post it to every student 'from Anna to xx :)'

They were very happy about it ^-^

Paparazzi

- Can I take a picture with you?

- Of course!

This is the most repeated conversation... I start to feel a little bit offended by the number of paparazzis O.O

Really they took about 50 pictures of me today, if not more... I'm not used to this... Just as an illustration of the situation: I took this picture during the break when they surrounded us (Emily and me). 

okay, it's quite embarrassing, but maybe they'll get bored of this after a while..

Regarding the courses: it's an extremely tough thing to be a teacher. They get bored very quicly, also they have extremely much energy, wwww I'm so tired now. T_T

After school we went to the supermarket. I found that there are many pockies here at an acceptable price, so I got two boxes of it ^^

I think I'll go and have a sleep now.

Opening ceremony & first day of teaching

We had the opening cermony in the morning. Wow there were more than 130 students there... After the principle's speech we introduced our countries shortly and we had the talent show. The local volunteers danced to Gangnam Style, the boys sang two chinese songs with guitar and we, the girls danced to Sistar - Push Push :D (nana thought us the dance yesterday, it was quite funny^^)

In the afternoon we held uor first classes, bt as they told us in the last minute that we'll have 3 classes in the afternoon, instead of two we had no prepared course for the third class. So we watched a movie, some Jackie Chan. Not the best thing that could happen on the first day, but it wasn't that bad either :))

About the schedule:
7:30 - breakfast
9:00-11:30 - classes
12:00 - lunch
13:30-16:15 - classes
17:00 - dinner

We got some metal bowls and spoons, we have to wash them after eating, and we should remember which one is ours.

Arrival at the school

We arrived at the school...'GaoTangLing School'

We gathered at the Western Station in the morning. When I was transferring from bus 303 to 134 I met Emily so we went together. We gathered at the McDonalds and after it we took a bus. We travelled for more than an hour, the bus was very crowded T_T

When we arrived we had to find out the exact location of the school. Finally we asked for help from spme policemen, aaaand here somehing unbelievable (for me) happened. They not just helped us, but took all our luggage to the school in the police-car.

The school is quite impressive, they even had a welcoming message at the school gate. After we put our belongigns in the hotel we came back and took a look at the place of the opening ceremony...quite impressive again O_O they were really waiting for us!!

I almost forgot to mention, we will have a talent show at the opening ceremony, so I'll go and practice the dance with the girls now...

Last meeting

Today was the last meeting before going to the school, we finalized the schedule. Our afternoon was free, so I went on a walk with Emily, we discovered a little narrow street with many bars and a uniquely peaceful athmosphere.. and we had a green tea ice cream :))