Another cruisy day spent with a little visit to downtown Jiaxing. Although I am rather excited to be heading off for my solo journey and saving my RMB by laying low the last couple of days, it got to the point where J and I needed to get out of the apartment for a while. So we caught the bus for a little adventure into town.
I am definitely getting a better feel for the area. I remembered that I had passed the stop for bus 82 and was ready to lead J right to where I believed it would be. She was doubtful so called her mum, who directed us right to where I was headed. Yay for me!!
I never get tired of just watching people going about their day and thinking about what their life might be like just by looking at them, so I quite enjoy even just a simple bus ride here.
Downtown is still rather townlike as opposed to city-like in many areas with street stalls and food hawkers all over. There are some quite upmarket department stores, but to tell you the truth they hold little interest to me.
We're in the big smoke now:
This is one of the main corners:
China can never have too many statues:
(This is a bank)
I love the lively street scenes and even the dilapidated department stores that really are just indoor stalls with all their crazy treasures.
These baby hats made me laugh:
I cannot describe how many stores like this there are:
J has been a fabulous companion and translator but I could see she was soon getting tired of just wandering around - I can understand she would not have the sense of wonder that I do - this world is all that she has known.
We soon went looking for food and ended up at a noodle shop run by a Turk who didn't hide the fact that he and everyone else were fascinated with the foreigner eating *???* Talk about pressure! It made J feel supremely uncomfortable so we even had to swap seats.
The food was absolutely delicious and I mastered my pasta chopsticks skills. They brought out a thin beef soup to start with and it was incredibly tasty.
My yummy noodles:
J enjoyed a fried rice dish that wasn't my favourite - maybe it's just the overload of recent rice I've consumed.
When we did get back, I decided to run a small errand for myself - being purchase a razor, something I did not have with me due to the plan to not check my luggage.
I wandered down to the convenience store just near the front gate and took a good look through the tightly packed isles, relying on packaging and pictures to guide me in my quest. Alas, I couldn't find anything that could have been razors!
Oh well, time to engage the young lady at the counter. When I got there, I had an audience - none of the other patrons were interested in being served before me. Of course, they wanted to know what the foreigner was buying!
First I established there was no English-speakers present. I tried. Then I went into miming shaving my legs. They all thought this was hilarious - and I'm pretty sure they were about to point me to some lotion. No.
The shopkeeper next gave me a pen and paper. I wrote the word razor hoping beyond hoe she would recognise it from the packaging nope. Now how on earth do I draw a razor???? I must admit in my desperation I gave it a go. Now everyone was crowding around and guessing what it was that I had scratched on the paper - they were having a marvellous time, at my expense, but I was no closer to making my purchase.
Then a bit of sheer inspiration hit me. Like a madwoman, I googled razor on my phone and brought up a rather fine specimen that I was hoping they would recognise. Yes!!! The shopkeeper made shaving motions on her face and promptly reached beneath the cash register and pulled out 3 men's gillettes of varying quality and prices. My audience thought it was great.
I decided to cut my losses, handed over the 9.9RMB ($A2.05) and fled ... Thanking all of heaven I wasn't trying to buy feminine products or dare I say it? condoms! I can only imagine me attempting to mine or draw either of those...
Well, my class went well this afternoon and I had the first lot of kiddos that I met last week. They areived quite early and were quite happy to see me again, even offering to share some of their after school snacks with me.
We got through all our work quite well and even had a few laughs along the way. Towards the end, Susan turned to me and said 'We don't have enough time left to move on to the next task, so you can just do whatever you like with them.'
So I got them to sing 'Country Roads', which they had learnt and sung for me last week. But then that was over and I still had 10 mins left. Susan had left the room and was talking outside with Brian.
I panicked. I didn't expect to suddenly be in the position where I didn't have any work left to do or create something around, and all I could see was all the songs on the desktop and randomly pressed play.
The next minute there was some crazy song playing about counting up to 5s up to 100 - way beyond the level of the class before me. Susan ran in and quickly put on another more simple educational song and once that was over, I engaged each of the students in a short individual dialogue into it was time to go.
I have been working through my TESOL Diploma in the lead up to being here, but I have only been covering the findamentals thus far and am yet to even approach constructing a lesson and understanding language acquisition progression.
My teaching experience here has been very humbling and anyone who knows me well will understand how hard it would be for me to be so out of my depth. But I am tenacious if nothing else , and when I do know what I am to do, I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.
I now have a couple of days with no classes and am looking forward to a bit of solo exploring. My backpack is ready to go and I'll head off tomorrow morning for a crazy adventure before returning to my next round of classes. 😊
No comments:
Post a Comment