The truth about football

This week I decided to teach about football. Thankfully the students know as little as I do, so it was a very basic lesson indeed. I first asked the students what two things people often talk about in England? The replies: 'Soccer', 'Beer' and 'Food'. I reminded them all that they were learning English, not some shoddy pretence for a language that is reduced to little more than 'text speak' - American. As for the beer replies, I think I need to tone down my constant referring to the amber nectar.

As a teacher (using the term very loosely!), I realise that I am in a position of trust. Whatever I say is often taken as correct, though not always. So I have to be careful not to give false information, as 650 students will then be misinformed. So, baring this in mind, I went on to teach the students some basic phrases and the workings of the league table. I then also showed them some influential players in the Premier League, both past and present, most importantly of all - Sir Alan Shearer. Described as the greatest football player the Premier League has ever seen, the students watched in amazement as I showed footage of some of his many goals.

This then leads on nicely to Newcastle United, the numerous trophies they have won and how their current form is hiding their true greatness. The students are all ready aware of how poor Hartlepool United are, but I take pleasure in telling the students about their saving of another football team - Middlesboro from bankruptcy not that long ago.

Ok, so I may have stretched the truth ever so slightly. Nobody would call Middlesboro a football team. Only joking. But I do have to amuse myself somehow when im over here.

Lets play cards

Tired of being told that I am not playing as many games in my classes as other teachers, I decided to rectify that. Teaching them to play pontoon would be a good idea I decided. My reasoning was that it was a game that would require on the spot numeracy skills, I could teach them some English rules and it is a relatively easy game.

Teaching the game however, is not. It took me about 5 lessons to perfect my teaching method for the students to fully understand the rules. To make matters even more dificult, I now find that playing cards is forbidden from the school. So I am now relying on the students not to tell there teachers what fun they have had in Mr David's class - playing cards.

But, I am persevering as its turning out to be a very successful lesson. The students who aren't exactly playing with a full deck themsevles, are enjoying trying to figure out how to play and the more able students are enjoying the subtle intricacies of the game. Anyway, thats what i'm telling myself as I prepare to be told off should any teacher find out im running a little gambling room right under their noses.

The snow has arrived

Each day the temperature has slowly but surely lowered. It is currently around about 2degreesC and feels it. From early morning until late evening you can see your breath and we have to keep our gloves and hat on when we eat in the restaurants.

This morning however, it snowed for the first time. It hasn't rained for about 2 months now, but today, the snow came. So far, it still hasn't stopped:-

You can't beat a cheese sandwich

Eating Chinese food, for nearly every single meal of the week, is something I have found difficult to get used to. Apart from the odd chinese takeaway I might have had when I lived in York, or the even less frequent Chinese meal I might have had back in Hartlepool, I hardly ever ate Chinese food in England. Mother dearest might knock up a stir-fry now and then, or I might eat a Chinese curry from ASDA every once and a while, but other than that - nope. Give me a Tikka Massala over Chicken Chop Suey any day of the week.

We do have McDonalds and KFC's, everywhere as it happens. But I like to stay away from them as much as I can, which is usually until I am hungover and crave a greasy burger. So, as for the purpose of this post - my constant search for ingredients that I can knock together into meals I like when I am in England. Our first foray into cooking came in the form of beans on toast. Everyone's favourite, not least of all mine. This was the case until I spilt my glass of water all over my portion. Next came a fry-up, which you can see from the pictures on this blog, turned out very nice indeed.

Last week, Brock, Zach and Hilary put together minced beef chilli with mashed potatoes and a load of bread. I was in heaven! It was an almighty stodge fest, I left my manners at the door and woofed it down like never before.

My main problem is a lack of cheese and milk in Shijiazhuang. There simply isn't any. Other than UHT milk which is horrid, you can't get your hands on any. So when we went to Beijing, I was delighted to be told that there was cheddar cheese for sale. My order was placed with Meredith and when we returned home, I bought a loaf of bread. The result, a cheese sandwich, with a yoghurt and a glass of orange. I was in heaven:-

I have now purchased a tin of corned beef, an onion will be added tommorow and for lunch I shall be eating a corned beef and onion sandwich. I can hardly contain myself.

P.s. My kingdom for a Melton Mowbray pork pie with HP sauce!

A load of cockneys

This week I decided to teach about the many differences between eating in a restaurant in England and one in China. The two are almost different in every possible way and it made for quite an interesting lesson (I think?!). However, what I did realise is that the students are being taught to speak like cockneys! I was describing 'duck pate' to them (not an easy task I assure you), when one student shouted out - 'ah - Dack!'. The rest of the class then instantly understood.

Later in the class, I was describing the different ways you could ask for your steak to be cooked - 'Well done - for people who prefer their food without any blood'. Again, a class full of blank faces, so I said - 'Well dan - for people who prefer their food without any blad'. Sure enough, they knew straight away. I appreciate that it is a little too much to hope that they will be taught how to speak like they are from the North-East, its a difficult, yet beautiful accent. But cockney? Its not even the Queens English their learning, they certainly do not teach children to speak like this at Eton i'm sure. 'Sit dahn', 'Stand ap', 'Bat, however' - If I say this they know exactly what I mean.  So in ten years or so, if  you happen to overhear a Chinese man/woman speaking in broad cockney, chances are I taught them at some point or other.

Changing a tyre is difficult!

Ok, this needs a post all to itself. At the GP, whilst in the hospitality area, there was a chance to change the wheel on one of the cars. In teams of two, one person used the gun that removed the nuts, the other one removed and replaced the tyre. The time to beat was a litte over 10 seconds. I teamed up with Gaz, and we followed some girls that took about 59 seconds to do it (which we laughed at!).

It isn't that easy, and im not making excuses, but I was hungover and I was cracking under the pressure. I won't spend anymore time explaining, just watch the video and I think it is clear what I was thinking! It goes without saying that I got more than a little bit of grief for what happened:-

A1 GP - Beijing

Charlie and I decided a while ago that we wereg going to go to Beijing to watch the A1 GP (- around about the same time we did not get to go to Shanghai to watch the F1 as it happens!).We thought that if we could not get cheap tickets on the day, we would just do some christmas shopping instead. Sunday started bad as we woke up late, about 10.30a.m, very very hungover. A long taxi drive later we arrived at the entrance to the track.

There were ticket touts everywhere, so we just chose the first one. The tickets had a face value of £100, we offered £6, he said ok. Literally that easy. Tickets in had, off we went, expecting them to be fake and not be allowed to enter. On the way to the track, we had to walk past one of the long straights. Nodobdy was around, so I popped my head through. It was deafening, but unbelievable. I was literally looking onto the track as the cars raced towards me (It was the first sprint race that we missed) :-

Just after taking this photo and video, I was quickly ushered away, unsuprisingly!

The tickets worked like a treat. Through the gate we went without any trouble. There was one main stand, overlooking the pit straight. We had a good 2 hours until the race though. Charlie got chatting to a chinese girl who had a press pass or something. He asked if she could show us the other side of the track, the hospitality side - sure she said! So off we went, the five of us who went, plus the three chinese people who we had met. We think it was a mix of the fact that she had a pass, plus the fact that they were with us, but we were allowed to enter everywhere! We walked straight into the VIP area without any questions being asked at all.

• We walked straight into the pit lane area without any questions;
  
• chatted with the GP team as they fixed the car infront of us;
• lifted what we thought was the winners trophy as we stood next to the podium;
• Drank free drinks and even ate food that was for the VIP's
• Changed a tyre on one of the A1 cars as part of a competition
• Chatted to some of the organisers and those who had to look after all the teams' car parts

It got to the point where we decided we would leave, as we had done everything we wanted to and more, but we wanted to be in the grandstand for the race.

The sounds of the cars was amazing. I have never been to F1 before, so this is as loud as I have ever heard. It was really deafening near to the race track. The Beijing leg of the GP is actually a road race, thus it was posponed for one week due to a problem with the man-hole covers. You could see the markings where the cars normally go when it is not a race weekend. Ths allowed for much action during the race, with quite a few incidents. The Chinese spun out about half way through the race and after the final pitstops, team GB where in fourth place, Italy third, Germany second and Holland first. However, the two leaders crashed into each other, to our huge cheers, which left team GB in second place. We went wild, cheering them on as they went past every lap. They were unable to get ahead of Italy though, so had to settle for second.

When the driver stood on the podium, the five of us cheered as loud as we could, and he definately heard us, we were the only British fans there we think (I may be wrong!).

Overall, it was far better than I could have expected. I think I would have struggled to enjoy myself more at a F1 race, just due to the fact that we would not have been able to do quite what we did at the A1 race. There is another race in Shanghai, next April - so I might well decide to go again.

Here is a quick video I made from the clips I took from the GP. Not exactly Spielberg quality but not too bad:-

Daily Exercise

Trying to make sure 6000 students get adequate exercise each day is presumably something that our school has thought about lots in the past. Im guessing that at the time, whoever made the decision, thought it was the ideal solution. 'Why not get all of them to dance for 10 minutes, synchronised, outside no matter what the weather?'.

All I can say is it has to be seen to believed, so I took a video. I am standing at the window near my classroom and you can clearly see lots of students, all doing exactly the same move at nearly exactly the same time.

What to teach?

It is quite difficult to decide what to teach the students each week. It is made even more so by the fact that we all usually decide what to teach at midnight on Sunday evening, but that’s not the point. Trying to get a balance between teaching them something useful, that their normal English teacher doesn’t cover and also teaching them something fun (which their normal English teacher equally doesn’t do) is a tricky task.

I could show a movie every single lesson, nobody would ever know, the students would love me and I would be able to listen to my Ipod a lot! But I can’t do that, no matter how much I want to every Monday morning at 9.00am. So I try to teach them something interesting, yet useful, for three lessons, then show a movie every fourth lesson (I teach one lesson per week remember, to 24 classes). This week is movie week, with the movie of choice being Over the Hedge. So far, the classes that have seen in have loved it. I’m not even sure they can understand it, but they laugh at the right places, so that’s a good sign.

Last week I decided to teach them slang and cockney rhyming slang. I put about 15 examples of slang on the board, getting them to guess the meaning. They all tell me now that they are shattered all the time, which I didn’t think of at the time. As a way of checking whether they have understood the cockney rhyming slang I have taught them, I tell a little story. The ones who understand laugh (I’m not even sure its funny), the ones who don’t understand just smile at me –

“Yesterday, my friend called me on the dog and bone. He told me that Efan, the tea leaf, had been pushed down some apples and pears. She hit her loaf of bread and broke her bacon and eggs. It made me bubble bath to hear this.”

It made me laugh that’s for sure.

Heres how I organise my class for when I show a film and the second photo shows that they are actually engrossed in Over the Hedge (believe it or not!).

 

Merediths Birthday

Friday was Meredith’s birthday, but the celebrations were not until Saturday. First stop, the World Trade Plaza, in the City centre. It’s known as being the best hotel in the City and its as good a any four star hotel in England. But its trump card has to be the restaurant, the reason Meredith had chose to go there for her birthday. For 80Yuan, you get to eat the buffet (a little over £5). All you can eat and drink and best of all – its western food. Most of us had hardly eaten all day so we could have eaten a horse (again), the second we sat down, Charlie and I were up again and straight to the steak counter. Pork chops, steak, chicken kebabs, fried pork dumplings all cooked right in front of you. I had to eat a piece of pizza while they cooked the meat, otherwise I may have just eaten it raw.

The buffet was as good as we could have hoped, even though the lager was more akin to apple juice than anything alcoholic, but hey – you get what you pay for I suppose. We ate everything from lasagne to Prawn noodles, it was a culinary extravaganza. After about 1 1/2hours of eating, we went to the hotel that Meredith was staying at. We went to the second top floor, to as close to a penthouse suite I’ve ever been in that’s for sure. It had one of those floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the main street below. It was very reminiscent of a Las Vegas hotel room. So we all sat, listened to music and drank a few bottles of wine that Meredith had brought (the same wine Brock and I had bought her for a present, thinking we were novel, only to find she had bought herself three bottles. At least the thought was there). I was as happy as Larry, please feel free to have another birthday any time you like Meredith.

Sunday came and a few of us decided we needed something as close to a good old fry-up as we could get. Hilary cooked some French toast; Charlie some sausage and mushrooms; I knocked together some scrambled eggs and potatoes with onions – we were sorted. As you can see from the photos, it turned out very well indeed. Our only worry now is that it was too good and that we may now need to eat at the World Trade Plaza every week, followed by a fry-up the next morning. For £5, I think we just might

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Change of blog address

Due to circumstances out of my control, I am having to move the blog to a new site. So from now on, I will be posting here -

davidpstokes.livejournal.com

Its nearly exactly the same as this, only a lot easier for me. So see you there....

Damn Mosquitos!

I haven't been bitten by a mosquito for quite some time now. We get bit now and then, but nothing to get too annoyed by. Every once and a while I will see one in my room and take pleasure in using the fly swatter I bought to make it no more. Recently however, I have been bitten like a tasty piece of meat. Two or three times a day. I look, but I cannot see any mosquitos anywhere.

My plan has been to make my appartment as air-tight as possible. Close every window, door and gap to the mosquito ridden world outside. It seemed to work. The bites have been less frequent and I cannot see any flies anywhere. So, you can imagine my suprise when I returned from lessons today to find two small birds in my living room. No, not the type that I would have gladly allowed to stay in my room, but two sparrow-like birds. Flying all over. My living room is completely shut tight. The air conditioning has been shut off for a week and they cannot have come in through there. But, there they were, flying around my appartment.

I have now decided that making my appartment as air-tight as possible is a pointless task and that if I am going to be bit, I am going to be bit. I am however, now sleeping with my fly swatter by my bed!