Week 13
on Tina's Journal (China), 23/May/2009 07:09, 34 days ago
Work wise not much has happened this week apart from helping a grade 2 student in the college plan her teaching practise lesson and unfortunately I won't be around to actually watch her do any teaching. Tomorrow I leave for Jingdong where I'll be based for at least two weeks doing more follow-up visits in the middle schools. Lesley is already there so I'll be joining her where we'll do some schools together and some on our own. It's roughly a seven hour bus journey so I'll probably arrive about 5ish. Yesterday I went shopping for Tea with Mary (the student I helped with the lesson planning) and when you go into a Tea Shop here you sit down, try the different teas and then make your purchase. The nicest one we tried yesterday was produced in 2000, black tea, or red tea as it's known here which is more appropriate because it does look more red than black!, and its the block of tea you see in the photo, it cost 350RMB (about £35). Mary was doing some bargaining and tried to bring the price down and wanted two for 500RMB. We left and Mary has to go back today to see if the price was agreed!! I was given a block of tea a few weeks ago and I haven't used any of it because I was going to keep it as a souvenir and keep it until I come home. I think I'll use it though as it's very good quality and supposedly good for the stomach.Last night Jayne and I took Zhang Fei (she works in the college in foreign affairs and looks after the'foreigners') and her boyfriend to a western restaurant where we ate Pasta Carbonara and Pizza. It was delicious and a real treat, but VERY expensive. We have actually been there before and we will probably make it our monthly treat. I like the food here in China but I am starting to really miss the food I would normally eat back home, especially pasta! People lunch and dinner quite early here, eating somewhere between 11.30 and 1pm for lunch and then dinner from 5.30 to 7pm. Outside one of my favourite restaurants you can find all kinds of repairers of clothes, bags, shoes etc and today we got three handbags repaired (broken zips and stitching undone) for 4RMB (40 pence) and it only took about 10 minutes. Great service!