Kung-Fu and Podiums.

Well I'm writing this on the morning of the day I leave Beijing, and I can't believe how fast the last two weeks  have gone.

I've completed my TEFL course, my Mandarin lessons and I've had some teaching practice in a primary school near our hotel. I have loved every moment of it and I'm very excited to see what Shenzhen has to offer as Beijing is going to take some beating.

This week has probably been the most interesting. There are 83 people here with the British Council and in some ways I'm sad that we're all splitting up as I've met some amazing people. This week we've all had to plan lessons from scratch and teach them to children aged between ten and eleven.

I had a Grade 5 class and they were fantastic. They all varied in ability but were so enthusiastic and seemed to really enjoy the English lessons. On the last day we were asked to prepare a lesson on festivals, so me and my partner Will taught the kids about Halloween (I had them dooking for apples), Christmas (we taught them Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), Hogmanay (we had the whole class in a circle shaking hands to Auld Lang Syne) and Valentines Day (standard card making). Not all of the children had English names which made things a bit tricky, but my class did include a James, a Betty and a Maggie. I also had two little boys called Nick and Tim, but they insisted on me pronouncing their names as "Neek" and "Teem" - I didn't even go there. My fellow ELA's had some slightly more unusually named children including Volkswagen and my personal favourite - Big Egg.

Thursday was our last day and I got a bit teary as a lot of the kids had bought us presents and made cards and pictures. I was so overcome. Two ELA's were actually presented with a fish each, although I'm not sure how that's going to work on the sleeper train! I have also been asked to attend a teachers conference in October via QQ (which is like Skype) which I'm very proud to have been asked to be a part of.

To celebrate the end of school the British Council took us to an amazing Kung-Fu show in the centre of Beijing. It was unbelievable, I have never seen anything like it before. It was my friend Isla's 21st that day too, so everyone decided to go out in Beijing after.

Going out in Beijing, and probably China is general, is a fantastic experience if you are a girl. Girls get in free everywhere. Girls get free drinks vouchers. Girls get everything for a lot cheaper than the boys. This is obviously to combat the problem that clubs are absolute sausage-fests, and as such I now have a healthy collection of ladies cards should I ever wish to grace "La Bamba" or "Propaganda" with my presence again. I probably will not do so, as with cheap/free drinks comes the inevitable loss of dignity. Whilst dancing on podiums with Chinese boys may seem like a fantastic cultural experience at the time, the pictures the next day are not worth it. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Last night we had our closing ceremony and each Mandarin class had to sing the song we had learned in our classes. When I say "learned"...we mumbled our way through it to the best of our ability and managed some debatable swaying during the instrumental break. This was all in front of about 6 invited officials, and I'm not entirely sure what they thought. If you're interested in listening to the song, it's called Tian Mei Mei - I will warn you though that you will not be able to get it out of your head. Ever.

So today I leave for Shenzhen which is in the south, and is a 23 hour train journey away. I am praying for air conditioning, which I now think is the best invention in the entire world. We are in the hard sleeper section which sounds ominous but I'm looking forward to the experience. I'm not sure what the internet situation will be from here on in but when I get a chance to update you all I will. Happy September!

PS. What the hell is David Templeton doing? Seriously?