I had a lot of trouble to post these -- the Internet cafe here does not allow USB so I had to kick about all over the place to find somewhere... weirdly enough I ended up back at my hotel and they did me a favour by letting me use their dial-up connection.
I hope these are useful. The last entry (Alive) was posted by Xiaoxiao at my request. I'd love some feedback and stuff -- it's been ages since I've heard/spoken to anybody.
Sunday, 31 July 2005
A gift
I met the Canon guy (Wangxin) very briefly on Tiananmen Square today and he gave me two photos he had taken and had printed out. One is of me holding a small Chinese baby (quite poorly — he was sort of dumped on me and I was squared to death at the time!) with my camera dangling around my waist. The other is of me setting up a shot with the National History Museum in the background — the concentration on my face seems pretty cool and you can see the beautiful Nikon logo on the neck strap.
I was so surprised and happy when I was given them. I didn’t quite know what to say — and to be honest there isn’t really that much I can say past thank you over and over. I told him I’d be at the Square tomorrow around 4pm and that there would be two beautiful English girls with me. He seemed really happy about this as he loves to shoot foreigners, while I like to shoot Chinese. I’m going to see if I can convince Laura and Katie to sort out some crazy Chinese headgear. I reckon they might quite enjoy the instantaneous attention you can get as a result — the group I hang around in almost all enjoy taking Westerners (especially blonde girls!) so if one person spots two or more people the whole group sort of flocks on over and starts shooting. The speed this can happen if they are wearing some traditional Chinese clothes, hats, etc. is absolutely amazing — just try and imagine three blonde Danish girls with traditional Chinese hats, their parents are taking a photo of them when suddenly about six photographers with high-end cameras (Canon EOS-10/20/1Ds, high-end Nikons and super-telephoto zoom lenses) descend upon them. And when the photographers turn up… the people turn up. At Tiananmen Square if there is a crowd it just keeps growing, so you can go from four people to 20 or 30 people in a matter of less than a minute!
Once that happens the Chinese junior/high-school students practically form a queue and you can easily spend the next ten or 20 minutes posing for parents and friends to take photos. It is absolutely amazing to watch. Anyway, I’ll try explain this to Katie and Laura tomorrow and see what they think — I reckon it is a fairly crazy way to end the third day of your month-long trip to China :)
I was so surprised and happy when I was given them. I didn’t quite know what to say — and to be honest there isn’t really that much I can say past thank you over and over. I told him I’d be at the Square tomorrow around 4pm and that there would be two beautiful English girls with me. He seemed really happy about this as he loves to shoot foreigners, while I like to shoot Chinese. I’m going to see if I can convince Laura and Katie to sort out some crazy Chinese headgear. I reckon they might quite enjoy the instantaneous attention you can get as a result — the group I hang around in almost all enjoy taking Westerners (especially blonde girls!) so if one person spots two or more people the whole group sort of flocks on over and starts shooting. The speed this can happen if they are wearing some traditional Chinese clothes, hats, etc. is absolutely amazing — just try and imagine three blonde Danish girls with traditional Chinese hats, their parents are taking a photo of them when suddenly about six photographers with high-end cameras (Canon EOS-10/20/1Ds, high-end Nikons and super-telephoto zoom lenses) descend upon them. And when the photographers turn up… the people turn up. At Tiananmen Square if there is a crowd it just keeps growing, so you can go from four people to 20 or 30 people in a matter of less than a minute!
Once that happens the Chinese junior/high-school students practically form a queue and you can easily spend the next ten or 20 minutes posing for parents and friends to take photos. It is absolutely amazing to watch. Anyway, I’ll try explain this to Katie and Laura tomorrow and see what they think — I reckon it is a fairly crazy way to end the third day of your month-long trip to China :)
Laura and Katie
Yesterday as I arrived outside the International Youth Hostel Association (YHA) I spotted a friendly looking girl and asked if this was the queue for the trip to the Great Wall… she answered it was but told me I needed a ticket and suggested I speak to a Chinese guy who was organising the whole thing. I wasn’t staying at the YHA but the guy asked how many people and when it turned out it was just me there was no problem joining them. The return bus trip from the YHA to the Simatai section of the Wall was 80RMB per person, plus the 30RMB entrance fee (twice, as we crossed two sections). It wasn’t particularly cheap, but for the convenience and multitude of other foreigners it was easily worth it.
As it turned out, the girl I had spoken to was with her friend and both of them were from England. Somehow we managed to get the back seat of the minibus to ourselves, which meant we could spread out a little and really get to now each other for the next three to four hours before we reached the beginning of the walk.
The walk itself was hard work — we started climbing one of the hardest sections of the Wall at around 1pm and were allowed four hours to walk just 10km! Obviously that was displacement and I reckon if worked out properly the distance would at least double, if not triple. Katie and Laura both arrived in Beijing just the previous day and were still a little jetlagged (and sick!) but somehow they managed it! The first half section was the hardest with a lot of steep ascents, followed by equally steep descents followed by more of the same. A lot of the Wall was crumbling and keeping a safe footing was always important… not easy to do carrying a great big rucksack and a camera around your neck! All the way along we were followed by a few Mongolian women that helped us along the way — we were a little curious as to what their intentions were (knowing full well they wouldn’t be helping us for the fun of it) and we finally found out just past half way along the Wall — they wanted to sell their Great Wall books, post cards and t-shirts. The lady that assigned herself to me wasn’t in for much — I flatly refused to buy anything — a book might have been nice but I just don’t want to be carrying it around we me. I also already have the full set of postcards and didn’t want to get ripped off for a crappy t-shirt that says “I climbed the Great Wall”. However, Katie was helped quite a lot and bought one of the books for 25RMB. Twenty-five yuan isn’t much with the good exchange rate but I personally think they could have been bargained right down to something more in the region of 10RMB. I don’t think it was really about buying something — Katie was genuinely grateful for the help as she was feeling a little ill all the way along.
The second half of the walk was quite a lot easier and much to our surprise we discovered we were almost at the front of the group — quite a shock after spending a lot of time looking at our watches to see how we were doing and hoping we weren’t at the very back. Near the very end was a “rope bridge” which was a little different… but not quite as different as the massive zip-wire that cuts out a 30 minute walk to get from the exit to where our bus was waiting! Most, but not all, of our YHA group took it and enjoyed the experience — quite a few of us tried to hold a camera while we went down… I don’t know about anybody else but it really didn’t work for me! At the bottom we were greeted with a toilet (yay!) and a really tasty ice cream. Finally when the rest of the group turned up we boarded the bus and headed back the way we had came. The return journey seemed considerably shorter but I think this might have something to do with the fact that there was much more conversation and common ground between us — walking a hard part of the Great Wall is one hell of an ice breaker!
I arranged to meet Laura and Katie tomorrow (today now) at 8am (later pushed back to 8:15am) outside Exit A of the Xizhimen subway station. They were visiting the Summer Palace and since I hadn’t been this year (I went last year but didn’t see more than about half) I decided to tag along. Miss Zhang, one of the teachers at Shangli school, told me which buses we could get from Baishiqiao (where I ate almost every night for two weeks when teaching at Shangli) to the Summer Palace so the three of us got a taxi to the bus station there. I was pretty hungry so we headed inside the Carrefour and picked up two French sticks, some cheese, butter, Pringles and a couple of drinks — we started eating almost immediately after getting into the Summer Palace and spent most of the time feeling like a tourist attraction. It was a weird throw-back to the old days of picnics on the Beverley Westwood — not that I went on more than about two!
We totally circled the large lake visiting the island in the middle, the palace on the peak, Suzhou street, the stone boat and some of the unrestored sections destroyed by the British and French troops during the Opium War. Needless to say it was great fun and a lot more relaxed (but definitely not easy-going) than yesterday. Amazingly we managed to find a bus back to Xizhimen subway station without any hassle and even held seats for the whole journey. On the way back (around 6pm — we spent some seven or eight hours at the Palace) I got off at Qianmen station (Tiananmen Square) to get some McDonald’s and take a few more photos. I’ve arranged to meet them tomorrow at around 4pm somewhere on Tiananmen Square (I’m sure they’ll have no spotting me with my luminous sweatrag (of which I now own nine!)). I only managed to spend about 30 minutes taking photos as it was so late, but I did meet the Canon photographer who I have been very friendly with — he gave me a wonderful gift after seeming a little surprised to see me as I’d said I would likely already be in Thailand by now.
After that I was back to the hotel and that pretty much brings me to now. In a second I’m going to go downstairs and find out what’s happened to my washing — I’m having four pairs of shorts, 11 t-shirts, seven sweat-rags and all my pants and socks washed and dried for 70RMB. It’s not a brilliant price but it’s certainly not bad — it works out around GBP5.
With any luck I’ll manage to plug in my USB card reader in at the Internet cafe soon and finally get everything uploaded. Bye for now!
As it turned out, the girl I had spoken to was with her friend and both of them were from England. Somehow we managed to get the back seat of the minibus to ourselves, which meant we could spread out a little and really get to now each other for the next three to four hours before we reached the beginning of the walk.
The walk itself was hard work — we started climbing one of the hardest sections of the Wall at around 1pm and were allowed four hours to walk just 10km! Obviously that was displacement and I reckon if worked out properly the distance would at least double, if not triple. Katie and Laura both arrived in Beijing just the previous day and were still a little jetlagged (and sick!) but somehow they managed it! The first half section was the hardest with a lot of steep ascents, followed by equally steep descents followed by more of the same. A lot of the Wall was crumbling and keeping a safe footing was always important… not easy to do carrying a great big rucksack and a camera around your neck! All the way along we were followed by a few Mongolian women that helped us along the way — we were a little curious as to what their intentions were (knowing full well they wouldn’t be helping us for the fun of it) and we finally found out just past half way along the Wall — they wanted to sell their Great Wall books, post cards and t-shirts. The lady that assigned herself to me wasn’t in for much — I flatly refused to buy anything — a book might have been nice but I just don’t want to be carrying it around we me. I also already have the full set of postcards and didn’t want to get ripped off for a crappy t-shirt that says “I climbed the Great Wall”. However, Katie was helped quite a lot and bought one of the books for 25RMB. Twenty-five yuan isn’t much with the good exchange rate but I personally think they could have been bargained right down to something more in the region of 10RMB. I don’t think it was really about buying something — Katie was genuinely grateful for the help as she was feeling a little ill all the way along.
The second half of the walk was quite a lot easier and much to our surprise we discovered we were almost at the front of the group — quite a shock after spending a lot of time looking at our watches to see how we were doing and hoping we weren’t at the very back. Near the very end was a “rope bridge” which was a little different… but not quite as different as the massive zip-wire that cuts out a 30 minute walk to get from the exit to where our bus was waiting! Most, but not all, of our YHA group took it and enjoyed the experience — quite a few of us tried to hold a camera while we went down… I don’t know about anybody else but it really didn’t work for me! At the bottom we were greeted with a toilet (yay!) and a really tasty ice cream. Finally when the rest of the group turned up we boarded the bus and headed back the way we had came. The return journey seemed considerably shorter but I think this might have something to do with the fact that there was much more conversation and common ground between us — walking a hard part of the Great Wall is one hell of an ice breaker!
I arranged to meet Laura and Katie tomorrow (today now) at 8am (later pushed back to 8:15am) outside Exit A of the Xizhimen subway station. They were visiting the Summer Palace and since I hadn’t been this year (I went last year but didn’t see more than about half) I decided to tag along. Miss Zhang, one of the teachers at Shangli school, told me which buses we could get from Baishiqiao (where I ate almost every night for two weeks when teaching at Shangli) to the Summer Palace so the three of us got a taxi to the bus station there. I was pretty hungry so we headed inside the Carrefour and picked up two French sticks, some cheese, butter, Pringles and a couple of drinks — we started eating almost immediately after getting into the Summer Palace and spent most of the time feeling like a tourist attraction. It was a weird throw-back to the old days of picnics on the Beverley Westwood — not that I went on more than about two!
We totally circled the large lake visiting the island in the middle, the palace on the peak, Suzhou street, the stone boat and some of the unrestored sections destroyed by the British and French troops during the Opium War. Needless to say it was great fun and a lot more relaxed (but definitely not easy-going) than yesterday. Amazingly we managed to find a bus back to Xizhimen subway station without any hassle and even held seats for the whole journey. On the way back (around 6pm — we spent some seven or eight hours at the Palace) I got off at Qianmen station (Tiananmen Square) to get some McDonald’s and take a few more photos. I’ve arranged to meet them tomorrow at around 4pm somewhere on Tiananmen Square (I’m sure they’ll have no spotting me with my luminous sweatrag (of which I now own nine!)). I only managed to spend about 30 minutes taking photos as it was so late, but I did meet the Canon photographer who I have been very friendly with — he gave me a wonderful gift after seeming a little surprised to see me as I’d said I would likely already be in Thailand by now.
After that I was back to the hotel and that pretty much brings me to now. In a second I’m going to go downstairs and find out what’s happened to my washing — I’m having four pairs of shorts, 11 t-shirts, seven sweat-rags and all my pants and socks washed and dried for 70RMB. It’s not a brilliant price but it’s certainly not bad — it works out around GBP5.
With any luck I’ll manage to plug in my USB card reader in at the Internet cafe soon and finally get everything uploaded. Bye for now!
Thursday, 28 July 2005
A quick round-up
It’s been ages since I last posted something. There are various reasons for this… mostly the same as those I laid down in my last (as-yet unposted) entry — although now I’ve got Internet access I’ve not got USB access, which means the stuff I’ve got queued up on my laptop is staying queued up for a little longer.
I’m staying at a hotel in the Dongzhimen area of Beijing, which is about 13 minutes away from the Qianmen subway station. Qianmen is one of the gates (men == 门? that was part of the old Beijing city… it is also one of the three (Qianmen, Tiananmen East and Tiananmen West) subway stations that provide access to Tiananmen Square. I spend most of my time in Tiananmen Square, McDonald’s, on the subway or at the Taj Pavillion Indian restaurant by the China International Trade Centre at the Guomao subway station. I’m pretty much sat waiting to sort a flight out to Bangkok in Thailand now — tomorrow I will head to Tiananmen Square again but the following day I will take a tour bus to the Simatai section of the Great Wall. This involves at least a two-hour each-way bus journey, followed by four hours of hiking along the wall, before heading back.
Last year I visited the Badaling section of the Wall, which is where most tourists head to. At that time I walked all the way to “The End” of the Wall, where I climbed over and walked around to view the “real” Wall which has gone unrestored. I particuarly wanted to visit Simatai but never had the chance.
At Tiananmen Square I’m friendly with quite a few people now… these include the hawkers (well, one or two), the photographers and the pay-per-photo photographers. Just yesterday I was invited to a photography competition where a couple of the guys I know had submitted their photos. One of them was a runner-up and won 100RMB. Some of the photos were absolutely stunning, ranging between landscapes, street photography, architecture and abstract. Had I known a little earlier what was going on I could probably have submitted one or two of my photos… they’re probably not as good as the winners but I believe that some of my best photos were likely on a par with the runners-up.
Yesterday I met about six or seven art students on the Square who were sketching various different people and poses. These guys seemed fairly interesting so I took a few photos before ending up as their model. This was pretty amusing as after a few minutes we had a little crowd… and once you have a little crowd people start to take notice, so this grew pretty quickly ;)
This morning I got up a bit late but visited the Lama Temple one stop further north from Dongzhimen where I tried to take some photos of the rooftops but it unfortunately looks like I failed miserably. The weather today was fairly different — the sky was clear (no smog) and the sun seemed particularly strong, casting some stunning shadows on the Square. I got one or two snapshots of people standing under the shadow cast by the great big floodlights — fairly amusing but nothing spectacular.
Well, that’s the past couple of days and I can’t really remember much further back than that. I hope everybody is doing well and that the weather is a little cooler where you are ;)
I’m staying at a hotel in the Dongzhimen area of Beijing, which is about 13 minutes away from the Qianmen subway station. Qianmen is one of the gates (men == 门? that was part of the old Beijing city… it is also one of the three (Qianmen, Tiananmen East and Tiananmen West) subway stations that provide access to Tiananmen Square. I spend most of my time in Tiananmen Square, McDonald’s, on the subway or at the Taj Pavillion Indian restaurant by the China International Trade Centre at the Guomao subway station. I’m pretty much sat waiting to sort a flight out to Bangkok in Thailand now — tomorrow I will head to Tiananmen Square again but the following day I will take a tour bus to the Simatai section of the Great Wall. This involves at least a two-hour each-way bus journey, followed by four hours of hiking along the wall, before heading back.
Last year I visited the Badaling section of the Wall, which is where most tourists head to. At that time I walked all the way to “The End” of the Wall, where I climbed over and walked around to view the “real” Wall which has gone unrestored. I particuarly wanted to visit Simatai but never had the chance.
At Tiananmen Square I’m friendly with quite a few people now… these include the hawkers (well, one or two), the photographers and the pay-per-photo photographers. Just yesterday I was invited to a photography competition where a couple of the guys I know had submitted their photos. One of them was a runner-up and won 100RMB. Some of the photos were absolutely stunning, ranging between landscapes, street photography, architecture and abstract. Had I known a little earlier what was going on I could probably have submitted one or two of my photos… they’re probably not as good as the winners but I believe that some of my best photos were likely on a par with the runners-up.
Yesterday I met about six or seven art students on the Square who were sketching various different people and poses. These guys seemed fairly interesting so I took a few photos before ending up as their model. This was pretty amusing as after a few minutes we had a little crowd… and once you have a little crowd people start to take notice, so this grew pretty quickly ;)
This morning I got up a bit late but visited the Lama Temple one stop further north from Dongzhimen where I tried to take some photos of the rooftops but it unfortunately looks like I failed miserably. The weather today was fairly different — the sky was clear (no smog) and the sun seemed particularly strong, casting some stunning shadows on the Square. I got one or two snapshots of people standing under the shadow cast by the great big floodlights — fairly amusing but nothing spectacular.
Well, that’s the past couple of days and I can’t really remember much further back than that. I hope everybody is doing well and that the weather is a little cooler where you are ;)
Chinese BO-basher
For some reason, finding deoderant in Chna is no easy task. Last year I managed to pick up a roll-on (which I'm not so keen on) but this year, amazingly, I found a supermarket that sold... yep, you got it -- an aerosol deoderant! Great!
However, the Chinese aerosol deoderant tactic is slightly different from the English. While Bo-bashers in England tend to be anti-persperant, white-mark free, blah-de-blah... in China they design them to destroy your sweat glands by coating them with a thick white burning layer of sweet-smelling gunk to disguise the burning-flesh smell.
On the whole... it works surprisingly well. I'm not using the beautifully-named "Fa" BO-basher and it is doing me a lot of good -- my "girls approached by on the street" rating has quadrupled to... err, still zero. Ah, well, there's hope yet! :P
However, the Chinese aerosol deoderant tactic is slightly different from the English. While Bo-bashers in England tend to be anti-persperant, white-mark free, blah-de-blah... in China they design them to destroy your sweat glands by coating them with a thick white burning layer of sweet-smelling gunk to disguise the burning-flesh smell.
On the whole... it works surprisingly well. I'm not using the beautifully-named "Fa" BO-basher and it is doing me a lot of good -- my "girls approached by on the street" rating has quadrupled to... err, still zero. Ah, well, there's hope yet! :P
Saturday, 23 July 2005
RAW madness
Well, I discovered something I’ve had an inkling about for a couple of days now — when I convert my RAW files to other formats via the GIMP ufraw plugin the colours are slightly different. I’m not sure that they are less saturated (although on the test I did the red was less saturated, but the linearity of shadows on an object was quite different too) but suspect it might have something to do with colour profiles.
As Vlad has already mentioned to me, Linux has no (decent?) colour profile support, but that’s not quite the issue. ufraw does support colour profiles for both input and output. I suspect that I should go and find the D70 colour profile (or find some way of extracting the D70S one from my Nikon Capture CD) and start using that. Quite how well this will work, I don’t know. In the meantime I’m not too worried — I can do all of this when I get back to a decent sized (and much more accurate (for a TFT) colour representation) monitor and access to Windows XP for the Nikon Capture software. I don’t want to use Nikon Capture but in the very short term that might have to be my solution. Maybe once I get that sorted I won’t need to spend so long messing with my images to get them to look half-decent. I’m quite relieved really as I was getting a little upset by how bad the colours were coming out… especially those I’ve taken at Tiananmen Square where the flagstones looked so flat and boring once converted, but looked great on the camera’s LCD.
I’m now shooting in RAW+BASIC mode, which gives me two images for each exposure — one RAW file for manipulation, but also a low-quality (well, looks good to me) JPEG file. This is handy for reviewing the images, as opposed to working with tiny TIFF thumbnails embedded in the RAWs. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this in the first place… maybe I was just being stingy with my size/image use. If so, that doesn’t make sense as it is very rare I shoot 2GB/day. On average I just about fill one of my two cards while I occassionally use about 500MB on the next. I think only once or twice have I needed a full 2GB.
Anyway, time for me to head out to Tiananmen Square. It’s been raining a little today, which is good and bad — if it rains more I can forget taking any decent photos, but if it doesn’t then it adds a nice change to my photos... not that there are any trees on the square (I love the full green on trees after rain).
But for now... off to wukesong subway station by taxi. Tata!
As Vlad has already mentioned to me, Linux has no (decent?) colour profile support, but that’s not quite the issue. ufraw does support colour profiles for both input and output. I suspect that I should go and find the D70 colour profile (or find some way of extracting the D70S one from my Nikon Capture CD) and start using that. Quite how well this will work, I don’t know. In the meantime I’m not too worried — I can do all of this when I get back to a decent sized (and much more accurate (for a TFT) colour representation) monitor and access to Windows XP for the Nikon Capture software. I don’t want to use Nikon Capture but in the very short term that might have to be my solution. Maybe once I get that sorted I won’t need to spend so long messing with my images to get them to look half-decent. I’m quite relieved really as I was getting a little upset by how bad the colours were coming out… especially those I’ve taken at Tiananmen Square where the flagstones looked so flat and boring once converted, but looked great on the camera’s LCD.
I’m now shooting in RAW+BASIC mode, which gives me two images for each exposure — one RAW file for manipulation, but also a low-quality (well, looks good to me) JPEG file. This is handy for reviewing the images, as opposed to working with tiny TIFF thumbnails embedded in the RAWs. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this in the first place… maybe I was just being stingy with my size/image use. If so, that doesn’t make sense as it is very rare I shoot 2GB/day. On average I just about fill one of my two cards while I occassionally use about 500MB on the next. I think only once or twice have I needed a full 2GB.
Anyway, time for me to head out to Tiananmen Square. It’s been raining a little today, which is good and bad — if it rains more I can forget taking any decent photos, but if it doesn’t then it adds a nice change to my photos... not that there are any trees on the square (I love the full green on trees after rain).
But for now... off to wukesong subway station by taxi. Tata!
Friday, 22 July 2005
A very good day
Today has been an outstanding day in the weird and wonderful (?) land of Lewis photography. I spent the day on the Square with Michelle, an English teacher at a Beijing university. We met last night at the skating place I talked about earlier. For a change I really enjoyed spending my time with another person — unlike other people that approach me she understood that I was there to take photos, not to talk in English. This worked really well as we were able to talk about the photos, as well as converse with the other photographers. I met another guy today who is a press photographer — he was with his wife and daughter… and his EOS-1D with a super-telephoto lens. After playing around with that set up for just a couple of minutes it is easy to see why it costs so much more than the prosumer-level cameras and lenses. As for the “power” that a 200mm lens brings you… I wouldn’t need to try and sneak up on people (very hard in China when you’re a foreigner) to snap away at 80mm.
I’ve reviewed the low-quality JPEG files I’m now dual-shooting with and I’m impressed with what I’ve turned up. I think I’ve improved my technique quite a lot in just a few days on the square. That’s not to say that almost half of my photos aren’t suffering from camera-shake or have less-than perfect framing… but I think the “good photo” rate has gone up dramatically. I actually read that street photographers mostly run around with fixed lenses and don’t bother focusing (there just isn’t enough time)… maybe one photo in a hundred is worth looking at further, and then only one in ten of those is worth showing to anybody else.
Now I’m shooting dual file formats I might try and upload some uncropped, un-colour adjusted, un-anythinged images that I think are worth showing. I’m a little reluctant as I don’t particularly want people to say anything but “the very best” I can do right now, which is (I think) quite a bit better than the very original image. Anyway, we’ll see… and it all depends on the spare time I have, how fast the Internet is and how convenient it is to use it.
Tomorrow (today, actually) is my last day of teaching. It’s gone fairly quickly but I hope to take plenty of photos of the kids tomorrow… even some with me and the kids. I think I’ll stay at ShangLi tomorrow evening, before finding myself a cheap hotel near Tiananmen for the next couple of days. I need to arrange a visa for Laos and maybe Myanmar while in Beijing, as they are my next destinations (as well as Thailand). It really does look like I will be putting these malaria tablets to work!
Part of me doesn’t want to leave Beijing. I love the Square too much, the friends I’ve made and the people I get to see. I don’t think there is anywhere else I would rather spend a whole day. But I need some variety and however much the Square provides, I just don’t think it is up to three whole countries, their people and more importantly… their public transport!
I’ve reviewed the low-quality JPEG files I’m now dual-shooting with and I’m impressed with what I’ve turned up. I think I’ve improved my technique quite a lot in just a few days on the square. That’s not to say that almost half of my photos aren’t suffering from camera-shake or have less-than perfect framing… but I think the “good photo” rate has gone up dramatically. I actually read that street photographers mostly run around with fixed lenses and don’t bother focusing (there just isn’t enough time)… maybe one photo in a hundred is worth looking at further, and then only one in ten of those is worth showing to anybody else.
Now I’m shooting dual file formats I might try and upload some uncropped, un-colour adjusted, un-anythinged images that I think are worth showing. I’m a little reluctant as I don’t particularly want people to say anything but “the very best” I can do right now, which is (I think) quite a bit better than the very original image. Anyway, we’ll see… and it all depends on the spare time I have, how fast the Internet is and how convenient it is to use it.
Tomorrow (today, actually) is my last day of teaching. It’s gone fairly quickly but I hope to take plenty of photos of the kids tomorrow… even some with me and the kids. I think I’ll stay at ShangLi tomorrow evening, before finding myself a cheap hotel near Tiananmen for the next couple of days. I need to arrange a visa for Laos and maybe Myanmar while in Beijing, as they are my next destinations (as well as Thailand). It really does look like I will be putting these malaria tablets to work!
Part of me doesn’t want to leave Beijing. I love the Square too much, the friends I’ve made and the people I get to see. I don’t think there is anywhere else I would rather spend a whole day. But I need some variety and however much the Square provides, I just don’t think it is up to three whole countries, their people and more importantly… their public transport!
Thursday, 21 July 2005
Disaster!
I apologise for the big delay with updating my blog but for quite a few days I have been so busy that I just didn’t have time to sit down and write stuff up, let alone transfer it to the computer and upload it to my site. Just recently the Internet has been broken at ShangLi, which has only added to the delay. Just to let everybody know I am okay, not dead, and still having a great time.
It occurred to me today that I have just one lesson left with each class I teach (three of them). Wahey! But I’m also a little sad as I’ve enjoyed teaching the younger two classes, as much due to their funny actions and faces as their level of learning. The older class… well, they’re fun too, but in a much harder way. The reason I’ve only got one day left is because tomorrow (Friday) they are going on a trip, which gives me my free day, and on Sunday instead of lessons there will be a closing ceremony, which means all lessons (mine, at least) are cancelled. That leaves just Saturday.
I’ve been up to so much over the last week, but so much has been the same. I discovered that I can get to Tiananmen Square fairly quickly by taxi and subway (which is very clean, roomy and efficient). Yesterday I made the mistake of catching the bus to a subway station, which took some 45 minutes! My first day on Tiananmen Square was, I think, Tuesday, but it could have been Monday too, and I’ve been back every day since. There is something special about Tiananmen Square that I’ve not found anywhere else in the world. It feels… well, democratic. Ironic, I know. But whatever it is it really is something. Maybe Nixon said: “It sure is a big square”, who knows?
Every day after my lessons finish (at 11:40am, which is really handy) I saddle myself up to become a true fashion disaster… shorts, my shoes (which are still going strong) with socks, a brightly-coloured t-shirt, my (Xiaoxiao’s) rucksack and camera around my neck. I took my MP3 player too, before it decided to stop working earlier on today, but to top it all off is one of my luminous sweatrags tucked into my t-shirt. I’ve found this is essential (maybe Douglas Adams had it right all along) for a number of reasons: 1) wiping sweat; 2) protecting my neck from the sun; 3) protecting my neck from my camera strap; and 4) looking really cool. I’m certainly noticable and while I look a little (!) silly I think it’s good for a couple of reasons — people notice me and that’s helped me make a few friends on the Square — a couple of regular photographers (Chinese, but we show each other photos and talk about how useless 70mm is for the kind of photos I’m trying to take ;), one of the photographers that tote red hats and the cheapest SLRs going (some of them have in-a-bag studios — camera, computer and printer!) — we only seem to talk about pretty girls. I’m not quite sure why because I spent most of my time taking photos of little kids because it’s easier than older people… or maybe younger girls is his thing? — as well as numerous do-good Chinese students (more girls than boys) after a free English lesson.
Yesterday I met an Indian guy (or as the Chinese would say “a black guy”) with his Chinese girlfriend. He was taking a photo of the many flags in front of Mao’s mausoleum (no spell-checking here, I’m afraid) when I walked up to him. I’ve found that people with cameras are always friendly… I guess the same is true of anybody doing the same thing as you. But this guy had a “proper” (not that my D70S isn’t) DSLR — a Canon 20D with high-end 35-one hundred and something lens. I thought my camera was big but compared to the 10 and 20D it’s practically puny. On that note I should mention that I see a lot more Nikon D70s than I do Canon EOS-300/350Ds but I have yet to see a high end Nikon (like the D2X). One guy I spotted today seemed to be wandering around with a Canon 1D with some humongous super-telephoto lens. I’ve found the lens I have (18-70mm) a little limiting — at 17mm I get fairly noticable vignetting (and the lens hood causes a lot more, which makes it totally useless) and at the other end (70mm) I don’t have anywhere near the kind of magnification I “need” for taking shots of people on Tiananmen square. I was fairly interested in the Nikkor 12-24mm but I think a cheapy telephoto will serve me much better.
But anyway, I met this Indian guy with his girlfriend and after talking for a while about a whole range of topics they said they had to get going and asked what I was doing now (the sun had disappeared). I was off to my favourite restaurant in Beijing — the Raj Pavillion near the China Trade Centre at guomao. Oddly enough they were planning on getting a curry too, so we got the tube and enjoyed a nice meal there. The second curry I’d had in two days and it was excellent… I think I should have gone back tonight.
But I didn’t.
This evening I ate at Pizza Hut (again)… although I didn’t have a pizza, I had two Western zesty waffle thingies and an ice cream. Nice enough and I was full at the time but now I’m dying for a chicken tikka vindaloo! After that I headed back to the roller skating place that Ming took me to on Monday. I’ve found that I really enjoy going around in circles. I’m not quite sure why because nobody talks to me… in fact nobody really pays any attention to me once they get over the initial shock. But today I had a wonky boot, so swapped twice before I got a decent one. As I was just checking it was okay (by doing lots of foot wiggling) somebody knocked me from behind and another person was walking almost directly in front of me. I went flying into them (although I don’t think I knocked them over) and then into another guy on skates… we sort of tumbled together for a bit before I fell over backwards landing very heavily on the lower part of my back. Ouch! That doesn’t quite cover what I thought, but it’ll do. I’m not quite sure where I landed but it seriously hurt… I was surprised too, because I’m actually pretty good at skating… I can’t ever recall falling over and the last two trips to the place had gone fine. That was right at the beginning, which really ruined my evening. I’m still in quite a lot of pain now — walking is a little hard and it really twinges when I sit down/stand up. My first thought was that I had broken my cocyx after seeing my Uncle fall in a similar way (although not skating… he slipped on some ice) years and years ago. I think that might have been an overreaction (especially after I prodded and poked and it still didn’t move) but it doesn’t help with the pain.
I spent most of the evening skating around in an upright position looking rather silly. I had a lot more breaks than normal. Fairly early on some Chinese guy called Li introduced himself to me and then never buggered off again. He seemed desperate to practice his shoddy English on me but I just didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t want to talk to him and didn’t like skating around with him. So all the evening was with him trying to cobble a sentence together (much like I do in Chinese, although with slightly more vocabulary but definitely no more grammar). Then a Chinese English teacher introduced herself and has decided to meet me at Tiananmen Square tomorrow. I have no idea how that will turn out. I don’t mind talking to people but when they make a specific point of turning up somewhere 30-odd minutes from their home it makes me think it will end up being a lot more than the usual five-minute “where are you from?” conversation. That screws up taking photographs because they really expect you to talk back. Argh! But how do I handle this situation diplomatically?
To make a good day with a bad ending a little more bad at the end I spent about 20 minutes finding a taxi driver that knew where men tou cun was. On the plus side the driver was very friendly, and even knew a few English words like “left”, “right”, etc. He also got me back one Yuan cheaper than the last guy.
Finally, I’ve noticed that I can understand quite a lot of Mandarin now. If I knew the context (i.e. when trying to find a taxi driver that knows) I can tell what they are asking — e.g. “where?”, “do you know the way?”, “what road is it on?” and so on. Impressive, if I say so myself. But dump me in a room full of Chinese people talking about cheese and I’d be lost.
Time for sleep now — it’s already late and, while I don’t have lessons tomorrow, I need to make up for lost-sleep for the last couple of nights. Hope everybody is well!
It occurred to me today that I have just one lesson left with each class I teach (three of them). Wahey! But I’m also a little sad as I’ve enjoyed teaching the younger two classes, as much due to their funny actions and faces as their level of learning. The older class… well, they’re fun too, but in a much harder way. The reason I’ve only got one day left is because tomorrow (Friday) they are going on a trip, which gives me my free day, and on Sunday instead of lessons there will be a closing ceremony, which means all lessons (mine, at least) are cancelled. That leaves just Saturday.
I’ve been up to so much over the last week, but so much has been the same. I discovered that I can get to Tiananmen Square fairly quickly by taxi and subway (which is very clean, roomy and efficient). Yesterday I made the mistake of catching the bus to a subway station, which took some 45 minutes! My first day on Tiananmen Square was, I think, Tuesday, but it could have been Monday too, and I’ve been back every day since. There is something special about Tiananmen Square that I’ve not found anywhere else in the world. It feels… well, democratic. Ironic, I know. But whatever it is it really is something. Maybe Nixon said: “It sure is a big square”, who knows?
Every day after my lessons finish (at 11:40am, which is really handy) I saddle myself up to become a true fashion disaster… shorts, my shoes (which are still going strong) with socks, a brightly-coloured t-shirt, my (Xiaoxiao’s) rucksack and camera around my neck. I took my MP3 player too, before it decided to stop working earlier on today, but to top it all off is one of my luminous sweatrags tucked into my t-shirt. I’ve found this is essential (maybe Douglas Adams had it right all along) for a number of reasons: 1) wiping sweat; 2) protecting my neck from the sun; 3) protecting my neck from my camera strap; and 4) looking really cool. I’m certainly noticable and while I look a little (!) silly I think it’s good for a couple of reasons — people notice me and that’s helped me make a few friends on the Square — a couple of regular photographers (Chinese, but we show each other photos and talk about how useless 70mm is for the kind of photos I’m trying to take ;), one of the photographers that tote red hats and the cheapest SLRs going (some of them have in-a-bag studios — camera, computer and printer!) — we only seem to talk about pretty girls. I’m not quite sure why because I spent most of my time taking photos of little kids because it’s easier than older people… or maybe younger girls is his thing? — as well as numerous do-good Chinese students (more girls than boys) after a free English lesson.
Yesterday I met an Indian guy (or as the Chinese would say “a black guy”) with his Chinese girlfriend. He was taking a photo of the many flags in front of Mao’s mausoleum (no spell-checking here, I’m afraid) when I walked up to him. I’ve found that people with cameras are always friendly… I guess the same is true of anybody doing the same thing as you. But this guy had a “proper” (not that my D70S isn’t) DSLR — a Canon 20D with high-end 35-one hundred and something lens. I thought my camera was big but compared to the 10 and 20D it’s practically puny. On that note I should mention that I see a lot more Nikon D70s than I do Canon EOS-300/350Ds but I have yet to see a high end Nikon (like the D2X). One guy I spotted today seemed to be wandering around with a Canon 1D with some humongous super-telephoto lens. I’ve found the lens I have (18-70mm) a little limiting — at 17mm I get fairly noticable vignetting (and the lens hood causes a lot more, which makes it totally useless) and at the other end (70mm) I don’t have anywhere near the kind of magnification I “need” for taking shots of people on Tiananmen square. I was fairly interested in the Nikkor 12-24mm but I think a cheapy telephoto will serve me much better.
But anyway, I met this Indian guy with his girlfriend and after talking for a while about a whole range of topics they said they had to get going and asked what I was doing now (the sun had disappeared). I was off to my favourite restaurant in Beijing — the Raj Pavillion near the China Trade Centre at guomao. Oddly enough they were planning on getting a curry too, so we got the tube and enjoyed a nice meal there. The second curry I’d had in two days and it was excellent… I think I should have gone back tonight.
But I didn’t.
This evening I ate at Pizza Hut (again)… although I didn’t have a pizza, I had two Western zesty waffle thingies and an ice cream. Nice enough and I was full at the time but now I’m dying for a chicken tikka vindaloo! After that I headed back to the roller skating place that Ming took me to on Monday. I’ve found that I really enjoy going around in circles. I’m not quite sure why because nobody talks to me… in fact nobody really pays any attention to me once they get over the initial shock. But today I had a wonky boot, so swapped twice before I got a decent one. As I was just checking it was okay (by doing lots of foot wiggling) somebody knocked me from behind and another person was walking almost directly in front of me. I went flying into them (although I don’t think I knocked them over) and then into another guy on skates… we sort of tumbled together for a bit before I fell over backwards landing very heavily on the lower part of my back. Ouch! That doesn’t quite cover what I thought, but it’ll do. I’m not quite sure where I landed but it seriously hurt… I was surprised too, because I’m actually pretty good at skating… I can’t ever recall falling over and the last two trips to the place had gone fine. That was right at the beginning, which really ruined my evening. I’m still in quite a lot of pain now — walking is a little hard and it really twinges when I sit down/stand up. My first thought was that I had broken my cocyx after seeing my Uncle fall in a similar way (although not skating… he slipped on some ice) years and years ago. I think that might have been an overreaction (especially after I prodded and poked and it still didn’t move) but it doesn’t help with the pain.
I spent most of the evening skating around in an upright position looking rather silly. I had a lot more breaks than normal. Fairly early on some Chinese guy called Li introduced himself to me and then never buggered off again. He seemed desperate to practice his shoddy English on me but I just didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t want to talk to him and didn’t like skating around with him. So all the evening was with him trying to cobble a sentence together (much like I do in Chinese, although with slightly more vocabulary but definitely no more grammar). Then a Chinese English teacher introduced herself and has decided to meet me at Tiananmen Square tomorrow. I have no idea how that will turn out. I don’t mind talking to people but when they make a specific point of turning up somewhere 30-odd minutes from their home it makes me think it will end up being a lot more than the usual five-minute “where are you from?” conversation. That screws up taking photographs because they really expect you to talk back. Argh! But how do I handle this situation diplomatically?
To make a good day with a bad ending a little more bad at the end I spent about 20 minutes finding a taxi driver that knew where men tou cun was. On the plus side the driver was very friendly, and even knew a few English words like “left”, “right”, etc. He also got me back one Yuan cheaper than the last guy.
Finally, I’ve noticed that I can understand quite a lot of Mandarin now. If I knew the context (i.e. when trying to find a taxi driver that knows) I can tell what they are asking — e.g. “where?”, “do you know the way?”, “what road is it on?” and so on. Impressive, if I say so myself. But dump me in a room full of Chinese people talking about cheese and I’d be lost.
Time for sleep now — it’s already late and, while I don’t have lessons tomorrow, I need to make up for lost-sleep for the last couple of nights. Hope everybody is well!
Friday, 15 July 2005
A few photos
I've added one or two photos to my galleries, including some more photos of the kids, as well as Chris, YULu and Icy (the English teachers). You can get to the ShangLi school photos via this link.
The other gallery, which currently has just three images, is the Street/People subsection of BeiJing. These are all photos that I really like, although the black and white image isn't the final effect I hope to achieve.
Please let me know what you think :)
The other gallery, which currently has just three images, is the Street/People subsection of BeiJing. These are all photos that I really like, although the black and white image isn't the final effect I hope to achieve.
Please let me know what you think :)
Thursday, 14 July 2005
Telling the time
My lessons today went fairly well on the whole. I covered telling the time with all of my groups, although at very different paces. With the youngest ones we spent quite some time understanding "half past", "a quarter past" and "a quarter to" but the older kids already knew and it was just a case of me checking.
"Mr Wolf" went down well today, although we had one accident in the first lesson with a girl hitting a desk, so I quickly stopped that and got on with the other stuff. With the other two sessions I took the kids outside to the playground but we actually ended up with more accidents there! Today I caused one bumped shoulder, three grazed knees and one grazed elbow (all but the bumped shoulder (which happened in the classroom) happened on the very last run of the day) so I'll have to think twice before trying that again... maybe we could move to the grass, but I doubt that is much softer and it is quite a walk away.
I've got the hang of all but the oldest class now (the 11 and 12-year-olds), so I'm happy about that. Controlling the oldest kids is really hard, but I think that's because I'm trying to teach them stuff they already know, or find too easy. Or again, maybe they just know I can't do much, who knows? I'm having real trouble judging their level but I think this is partly because it varies quite a lot.
I've spoken a lot more with Chris, who taught for a whole semester, and it turns out she had just two lessons with each set per week. I have a lesson with every single class (except the other school, which alternate days) every single day (although there has been one day off so far). This does alter things quite a lot -- Chris managed a single "theme" for the week, which is one of the hard things to come up with. So in planning her lessons she would spend a couple of hours coming up with a theme, a basic lesson, varying levels of questions and games for the different ages... and that would last a week (maybe a little under). But for me, I have to come up with a new theme almost every two days, which is proving difficult. To make it a little worse the older set have requested I do sports with them (after I asked what they wanted to cover) -- I plain can't come up with any ideas for games, songs, quizzes, etc. to make this work. If anybody reading this can think of anything, please let me know!
Tomorrow and the following day (depending on how well what I've planned goes) I will be teaching animals. Again, something they must have done before (but even Chris said she was sure everything she did had been done before -- I suppose learning by repetition does work) but with any luck some of the ideas I and UA have had will be a little different.
I'll introduce animals by starting with dates and the time (from yesterday). This will be by asking questions about the Chinese calendar -- what animal are you? I'm a rat, etc. Once we've got these listed, I'll add some more (ask if they know them) and then we'll have a go at singing "Old MacDonald" (if I can get my lyrics sheet photocopied). Next, we'll try and describe the animals by answering set questions (How big is it? What colour is it? Does it have wings? How many legs does it have? How many legs does it walk on (this could be quite hard)? Does it have fur? Does it have a tail? and so on). This is a good chance to pick on people in the audience. Finally the game that Vlad sort-of suggested (but I changed a lot) -- get some blank stickers, write an animal (a simple, easy to identify one) on and stick it on some poor little kid's head.
Get the boy/girl to stand at the front of the class and make him/her ask questions. So "What colour am I?" and all the other questions we learned/practised earlier. Obviously the aim is to figure out what animal they are.
If, after all that, there is still some time left (which amazingly could happen) we can always fall back to "Head, shoulders..." or, as quite a few of the older kids requested, just play a game of Bingo.
It's already quite late now and I need to go over this a little more. After tomorrow I have another free morning, so I will finally catch up with the things I meant to yesterday. I'm also glad that Saturday is my last day with the other kids, which means that once my last lesson finished at 11:50am I have the whole afternoon free. I should finally be able to get some travelling/sightseeing/touristing done.
Bye for now!
"Mr Wolf" went down well today, although we had one accident in the first lesson with a girl hitting a desk, so I quickly stopped that and got on with the other stuff. With the other two sessions I took the kids outside to the playground but we actually ended up with more accidents there! Today I caused one bumped shoulder, three grazed knees and one grazed elbow (all but the bumped shoulder (which happened in the classroom) happened on the very last run of the day) so I'll have to think twice before trying that again... maybe we could move to the grass, but I doubt that is much softer and it is quite a walk away.
I've got the hang of all but the oldest class now (the 11 and 12-year-olds), so I'm happy about that. Controlling the oldest kids is really hard, but I think that's because I'm trying to teach them stuff they already know, or find too easy. Or again, maybe they just know I can't do much, who knows? I'm having real trouble judging their level but I think this is partly because it varies quite a lot.
I've spoken a lot more with Chris, who taught for a whole semester, and it turns out she had just two lessons with each set per week. I have a lesson with every single class (except the other school, which alternate days) every single day (although there has been one day off so far). This does alter things quite a lot -- Chris managed a single "theme" for the week, which is one of the hard things to come up with. So in planning her lessons she would spend a couple of hours coming up with a theme, a basic lesson, varying levels of questions and games for the different ages... and that would last a week (maybe a little under). But for me, I have to come up with a new theme almost every two days, which is proving difficult. To make it a little worse the older set have requested I do sports with them (after I asked what they wanted to cover) -- I plain can't come up with any ideas for games, songs, quizzes, etc. to make this work. If anybody reading this can think of anything, please let me know!
Tomorrow and the following day (depending on how well what I've planned goes) I will be teaching animals. Again, something they must have done before (but even Chris said she was sure everything she did had been done before -- I suppose learning by repetition does work) but with any luck some of the ideas I and UA have had will be a little different.
I'll introduce animals by starting with dates and the time (from yesterday). This will be by asking questions about the Chinese calendar -- what animal are you? I'm a rat, etc. Once we've got these listed, I'll add some more (ask if they know them) and then we'll have a go at singing "Old MacDonald" (if I can get my lyrics sheet photocopied). Next, we'll try and describe the animals by answering set questions (How big is it? What colour is it? Does it have wings? How many legs does it have? How many legs does it walk on (this could be quite hard)? Does it have fur? Does it have a tail? and so on). This is a good chance to pick on people in the audience. Finally the game that Vlad sort-of suggested (but I changed a lot) -- get some blank stickers, write an animal (a simple, easy to identify one) on and stick it on some poor little kid's head.
Get the boy/girl to stand at the front of the class and make him/her ask questions. So "What colour am I?" and all the other questions we learned/practised earlier. Obviously the aim is to figure out what animal they are.
If, after all that, there is still some time left (which amazingly could happen) we can always fall back to "Head, shoulders..." or, as quite a few of the older kids requested, just play a game of Bingo.
It's already quite late now and I need to go over this a little more. After tomorrow I have another free morning, so I will finally catch up with the things I meant to yesterday. I'm also glad that Saturday is my last day with the other kids, which means that once my last lesson finished at 11:50am I have the whole afternoon free. I should finally be able to get some travelling/sightseeing/touristing done.
Bye for now!
Wednesday, 13 July 2005
"Mr Wolf"
After spending ages figuring out where all my line breaks had gone I've just uploaded two more pictures, which I will link to in this entry.
Just one lesson today with "Camp A" I taught them how to tell the time. Most kids already knew "One o'clock, two o'clock" etc. but lots didn't know "Half past one", "A quarter to two" and "A quarter past three". Getting this across was harder than it might sound (and I had expected) but we finished just in time to play "What time is it Mr Wolf?" for ten minutes.
[image:1580 size=preview class=inline]"Camp A" running away from "Mr Wolf".
[image:1581 size=preview class=inline]"Camp A" sat down, just as the class had ended.
Just one lesson today with "Camp A" I taught them how to tell the time. Most kids already knew "One o'clock, two o'clock" etc. but lots didn't know "Half past one", "A quarter to two" and "A quarter past three". Getting this across was harder than it might sound (and I had expected) but we finished just in time to play "What time is it Mr Wolf?" for ten minutes.
[image:1580 size=preview class=inline]"Camp A" running away from "Mr Wolf".
[image:1581 size=preview class=inline]"Camp A" sat down, just as the class had ended.
FreeBSD 6
With a little spare time today I've had a look at the latest information on FreeBSD 6.
There are some great new things being introduced -- WPA authentication, sound fixups, new dhclient and generally much greater stability. From what I've read I'm really liking how 6 is shaping up and with any luck I'll give it a whirl when I get back to England.
I don't yet know of the status of Beagle and other Mono-based apps, but I do know Mono is supported in the ports repository, so that's a good start.
Maybe it's not quite up to Ubuntu in terms of user-friendliness, but I certainly believe it has a great many other redeeming features.
There are some great new things being introduced -- WPA authentication, sound fixups, new dhclient and generally much greater stability. From what I've read I'm really liking how 6 is shaping up and with any luck I'll give it a whirl when I get back to England.
I don't yet know of the status of Beagle and other Mono-based apps, but I do know Mono is supported in the ports repository, so that's a good start.
Maybe it's not quite up to Ubuntu in terms of user-friendliness, but I certainly believe it has a great many other redeeming features.
Tuesday, 12 July 2005
Lewis, super-teacher
I have now been "teaching" English for two whole days. Yesterday I taught four 40-minute lessons and today another four 40-minute lessons... plus one extra one. My ninth English lesson was a little different -- I travelled to a school 15 minutes away by car, along with Icy, one of the English teachers at ShangLi school.
All in all, I must have spent three to four hours preparing for this single 45-minute lesson. Unlike my other classes where there were between 25-35 pupils, this lesson was practically a lecture, with well over 100 people attending! It wouldn't have taken so long to prepare if I had known a little more about the venue -- my first idea was to teach the body parts in detail, split the audience in two and try and play Blockbuster with 26 different body parts. Games and competitions are great, if they work well, as the kids love the competition and get really worked-up and excited about things.
However, much to my dismay, I found out about one hour before the lesson began that there would be no blackboard, whiteboard or anywhere for me to write! With a lot of help from Icy I reworked my lesson plan to use cards with single letters; instead of two groups, we had four, and we brought in "Head, shoulders, kness and toes" (what a useful song!)
I spent about ten minutes introducing myself: "My name is Lewis. Which country do you think I am from? I have one sister, she is called... etc." I mentioned hobbies, university, travelling and so on. All the time I had to keep asking questions of the audience, which, fortunately, were fairly receptive.
We (I say we, because all the time Icy is translating what I say in simple English into Chinese, so that everybody in the audience can understand) then move onto the body parts. Starting out with the simple things -- I point to my hair and say: "What is this?" and very quickly every student answers. Once past leg, arm, head, hair, eye, nose, mouth, hand, foot and finger I start to ask (and teach) thumb, chin, cheek, neck, elbow, knee, armpit, stomach, chest and (much to their amusment as I turn around and point at my) bottom. This involved saying the word clearly, getting them to repeat, before spelling the word out. Unfortunately I can't write the word down, which would have helped a lot.
Once we'd got through all the body parts I wanted to name, we had a review session. This involved me point at various different parts of Icy's body... as you can probably guess once we got past hair, eye and nose we gave up on her being a model and I pointed at myself. Other funny parts were foot and toe... but only because I was stood behind a desk and hopping around on one foot while trying to point at your toes, spell the word and draw the letters all at the same time, isn't the easiest thing to do!
Next up was the quiz with the lettered cards. For once my pre-planned game worked fairly well, maybe more due to the fact Icy translated my explanation of the rules, than anything else. Unfortunately we had to cut this short as (for once!) I was running over time. We barely used a quarter of the cards.
With less than five minutes left we found somebody that already knew the song and dance we had planned, tricked them into coming up and standing in front of all the other pupils, and dancing and singing along to "head, shoulders, knees and toes". People that hadn't done this before picked it up really quickly so we managed to get a three-speed finale in (slow, medium and super-fast), which seemed to go down really well.
Officially my time was up about now, but I asked if anybody had any questions. To begin with (as is always the case) nobody wanted to know anything about me but once I picked on somebody there were plenty of hands going up in the audience.
I actually really enjoyed this lesson, which is surprising, because I was particularly worried about it. I had been told that the oldest students would be about 12, and the youngest eight or nine... as it turned out, the oldest student was 18, and probably the youngest nine or ten! With such a vast difference in age range I'm happy what I had planned for young learners went down so well. I think this may partly be due to the fact that the older students were well-behaved and attentive (even if they were just pretending), which helped keep the younger ones in line. The McDonald's wrist-bands (the coloured plastic ones people are all wearing in England) worked out as really good prizes too!
Once back from the school I caught the 360 bus to the Carrefour, 30-odd minutes down the road. Instead of Pizza Hut, I headed to The Pizza Company. There is hardly any difference in the food... and the price. However, there is a smaller pizza, which suited me quite well -- the smallest pizza available in Pizza Hut is just too much for me to eat (they have just medium and large) but the small at TPC is just right. In a moment of pure genius I decided to order a medium pizza to take away with me... it's now safe in the fridge and I plan on eating it throughout tomorrow (I knew the microwave would be handy!). Maybe somebody could tell me now if that is safe? I don't particularly want to die, although that may be a safer option than visiting a Chinese hospital for medical treatment.
Tomorrow is the day of rest... well, sort of. Just one lesson starting at 3:20pm means I can have a lie in, take some photos, write up what I did over the weekend (I just haven't had time to sit down and breathe, let alone think!), maybe finish off watching a DVD (that I had planned to do this evening, but it is already past midnight now and I'm shattered)... not to mention plan the lesson at 3:20pm and the three lessons I have tomorrow (I re-use the 3:20pm lesson tomorrow, as they alternate days). That should easily leave me no time to eat my pizza if I get up at 9am. Ah, well, I still have plenty of time after the lesson ends at 4pm...
All in all, I must have spent three to four hours preparing for this single 45-minute lesson. Unlike my other classes where there were between 25-35 pupils, this lesson was practically a lecture, with well over 100 people attending! It wouldn't have taken so long to prepare if I had known a little more about the venue -- my first idea was to teach the body parts in detail, split the audience in two and try and play Blockbuster with 26 different body parts. Games and competitions are great, if they work well, as the kids love the competition and get really worked-up and excited about things.
However, much to my dismay, I found out about one hour before the lesson began that there would be no blackboard, whiteboard or anywhere for me to write! With a lot of help from Icy I reworked my lesson plan to use cards with single letters; instead of two groups, we had four, and we brought in "Head, shoulders, kness and toes" (what a useful song!)
I spent about ten minutes introducing myself: "My name is Lewis. Which country do you think I am from? I have one sister, she is called... etc." I mentioned hobbies, university, travelling and so on. All the time I had to keep asking questions of the audience, which, fortunately, were fairly receptive.
We (I say we, because all the time Icy is translating what I say in simple English into Chinese, so that everybody in the audience can understand) then move onto the body parts. Starting out with the simple things -- I point to my hair and say: "What is this?" and very quickly every student answers. Once past leg, arm, head, hair, eye, nose, mouth, hand, foot and finger I start to ask (and teach) thumb, chin, cheek, neck, elbow, knee, armpit, stomach, chest and (much to their amusment as I turn around and point at my) bottom. This involved saying the word clearly, getting them to repeat, before spelling the word out. Unfortunately I can't write the word down, which would have helped a lot.
Once we'd got through all the body parts I wanted to name, we had a review session. This involved me point at various different parts of Icy's body... as you can probably guess once we got past hair, eye and nose we gave up on her being a model and I pointed at myself. Other funny parts were foot and toe... but only because I was stood behind a desk and hopping around on one foot while trying to point at your toes, spell the word and draw the letters all at the same time, isn't the easiest thing to do!
Next up was the quiz with the lettered cards. For once my pre-planned game worked fairly well, maybe more due to the fact Icy translated my explanation of the rules, than anything else. Unfortunately we had to cut this short as (for once!) I was running over time. We barely used a quarter of the cards.
With less than five minutes left we found somebody that already knew the song and dance we had planned, tricked them into coming up and standing in front of all the other pupils, and dancing and singing along to "head, shoulders, knees and toes". People that hadn't done this before picked it up really quickly so we managed to get a three-speed finale in (slow, medium and super-fast), which seemed to go down really well.
Officially my time was up about now, but I asked if anybody had any questions. To begin with (as is always the case) nobody wanted to know anything about me but once I picked on somebody there were plenty of hands going up in the audience.
I actually really enjoyed this lesson, which is surprising, because I was particularly worried about it. I had been told that the oldest students would be about 12, and the youngest eight or nine... as it turned out, the oldest student was 18, and probably the youngest nine or ten! With such a vast difference in age range I'm happy what I had planned for young learners went down so well. I think this may partly be due to the fact that the older students were well-behaved and attentive (even if they were just pretending), which helped keep the younger ones in line. The McDonald's wrist-bands (the coloured plastic ones people are all wearing in England) worked out as really good prizes too!
Once back from the school I caught the 360 bus to the Carrefour, 30-odd minutes down the road. Instead of Pizza Hut, I headed to The Pizza Company. There is hardly any difference in the food... and the price. However, there is a smaller pizza, which suited me quite well -- the smallest pizza available in Pizza Hut is just too much for me to eat (they have just medium and large) but the small at TPC is just right. In a moment of pure genius I decided to order a medium pizza to take away with me... it's now safe in the fridge and I plan on eating it throughout tomorrow (I knew the microwave would be handy!). Maybe somebody could tell me now if that is safe? I don't particularly want to die, although that may be a safer option than visiting a Chinese hospital for medical treatment.
Tomorrow is the day of rest... well, sort of. Just one lesson starting at 3:20pm means I can have a lie in, take some photos, write up what I did over the weekend (I just haven't had time to sit down and breathe, let alone think!), maybe finish off watching a DVD (that I had planned to do this evening, but it is already past midnight now and I'm shattered)... not to mention plan the lesson at 3:20pm and the three lessons I have tomorrow (I re-use the 3:20pm lesson tomorrow, as they alternate days). That should easily leave me no time to eat my pizza if I get up at 9am. Ah, well, I still have plenty of time after the lesson ends at 4pm...
A Depth of Field revelation
In order to kill 15 minutes before a lesson this afternoon I whipped out my camera and decided to take a few shots. Nothing too fancy or "arty" but after I while I spotted a tree I liked the look of. I have no idea about trees but this was a nice looking sort of tree (maybe Charles would be friendly with this one?) that had a really thin bark that was flaking off -- the kind of thing people with a damn site more knowledge and experience than me can make a really great photo out of.
Not to be put off, I set about framing my shot. My thoughts for this were "I want the tree in focus, but everything else out-of-focus to draw attention towards the nice peely bark"... so I duly selected the widest aperture (in the case of my 18-70mm Nikkor lens a fairly measly f/3.5) and took a shot. Not great -- the resulting preview showed pretty much the whole scene in near-perfect focus... but why? My lens was wide open so where was my "arty" low DOF image?
I decided to try again (not really sure why after the first failure) but this time zoomed in, setting the focal length at, maybe, 50mm -- I could *instantly* see the background lose focus in the viewfinder! But why!? My aperture was now something like f/4.1, which was smaller than the last shot... change the focal length to the maximum 70mm and even less is in focus!
A true revelation! The DOF is proportional to the focal length!
How have I managed to miss this? I've read plenty of articles on the subject, know all about the Circle of Confusion (COF) and so on... but I can't recall *ever* reading that the DOF is related in any way to the focal length -- at least nobody has said it as simply as that.
I don't mind this too much -- I'm a real beginner with this photography stuff, although I feel I've been making lots of progress (even if my final images don't quantify this). What annoys me most is that I've been so blindly following what I've been reading and not done a five second test on DOF myself! To me it doesn't seem the most obvious thing in the world but I can imagine once you know it, you could laugh at somebody for not realising.
I partly blame (not really blame) digital photography not being "instant". People (myself included) have this crazy idea that with digital photography you can get the photo perfect by taking (and deleting) as many shots as you want. But this is in no way true. Sure, the handy histogram and highlight previews are priceless but they are such a long way from viewing the photo fullscreen on a large (>15") monitor... so you never really know if what you've shot is any good. Having said that, it is still a lot quicker than traditional photography and I can fully appreciate why it is considered instant... it is if you are sat taking photos of your computer and swap the memory card in straight away.
Anyway, even clueless thoughts from me. But with any luck this simple discovery will go a very long way toward improving my "arty" photos. Here's to hoping!
Not to be put off, I set about framing my shot. My thoughts for this were "I want the tree in focus, but everything else out-of-focus to draw attention towards the nice peely bark"... so I duly selected the widest aperture (in the case of my 18-70mm Nikkor lens a fairly measly f/3.5) and took a shot. Not great -- the resulting preview showed pretty much the whole scene in near-perfect focus... but why? My lens was wide open so where was my "arty" low DOF image?
I decided to try again (not really sure why after the first failure) but this time zoomed in, setting the focal length at, maybe, 50mm -- I could *instantly* see the background lose focus in the viewfinder! But why!? My aperture was now something like f/4.1, which was smaller than the last shot... change the focal length to the maximum 70mm and even less is in focus!
A true revelation! The DOF is proportional to the focal length!
How have I managed to miss this? I've read plenty of articles on the subject, know all about the Circle of Confusion (COF) and so on... but I can't recall *ever* reading that the DOF is related in any way to the focal length -- at least nobody has said it as simply as that.
I don't mind this too much -- I'm a real beginner with this photography stuff, although I feel I've been making lots of progress (even if my final images don't quantify this). What annoys me most is that I've been so blindly following what I've been reading and not done a five second test on DOF myself! To me it doesn't seem the most obvious thing in the world but I can imagine once you know it, you could laugh at somebody for not realising.
I partly blame (not really blame) digital photography not being "instant". People (myself included) have this crazy idea that with digital photography you can get the photo perfect by taking (and deleting) as many shots as you want. But this is in no way true. Sure, the handy histogram and highlight previews are priceless but they are such a long way from viewing the photo fullscreen on a large (>15") monitor... so you never really know if what you've shot is any good. Having said that, it is still a lot quicker than traditional photography and I can fully appreciate why it is considered instant... it is if you are sat taking photos of your computer and swap the memory card in straight away.
Anyway, even clueless thoughts from me. But with any luck this simple discovery will go a very long way toward improving my "arty" photos. Here's to hoping!
Three more classes done
Whew. Three more lessons out of the way. It seems my rules went a really long way -- to my surprise they worked far better with the younger kids than the older ones... or maybe that is just because the little ones are used to doing what they are told (or maybe even the older kids know I can't really do anything if they don't do what I say ;).
First of all I had grades three and four and we got on with what I had planned pretty well, although we didn't get to head, shoulders, knees and toes (much to my delight). The second lesson of the day was with the very young ones (grades one and two) and they responded well to the rules. This might be a lot to do with the fact one of the Chinese English teachers was sitting in with me (to get used to my accent for reasons I will explain shortly) -- this lesson was much easier as she translated things they didn't understand. The downside... I got through my stuff really quickly, which meant that at the end I had literally just run out of things to talk about... saved by the bell! With the older kids I went through the same stuff as the younger ones... numbers. Trying to help them read big numbers out loud (999,999,999 was a favourite suggested by them), which is actually a very easy thing to teach (just split at the commas and insert "million", "thousand" and "hundred"). Obviously with grades five and six I went through this very quickly as they got the hang of it in no time. We then turned to animals, body parts and some fruit -- the game of Pictionary didn't quite work out as well as it could have done. Drawing a fish, for example, is a little too easy, but one girl faced with "monkey" didn't do so well.
I think their level is much higher than I've been teaching them so I've got to figure out exactly what topics to cover. YuLu has now given me an atlas (not sure why), a picture dictionary and three other textbooks. Annoyingly it is not the textbook they are using, but hopefully that won't matter too much. I'll have to spend plenty of time this evening making up plans for tomorrow's lessons.
Somehow I've agreed to teach a class of 100 kids, ranging from eight to about 12 years old, this evening. It's not a class at this school so I am being taken by the Chinese English teacher that sat in on my lesson today. She will be acting as a translator for my lesson, which will start at 7pm and last for 45 minutes. I've got to get a "lesson plan" to her as soon as I can, so that is what I will be doing for the next hour or so. It will be based largely on the plan I used yesterday -- introducing myself, asking them some questions (I'm going with "everybody stand up; sit down if you are from Beijing" followed by questions of "where do you live?" for those still standing up) and so on. Unfortunately there isn't much point in getting them to write name cards (which amazingly everybody remembered at the lessons today!) as I don't think I will be seeing them again -- this was a great time waster and most of the kids enjoyed drawing their names.
The other lesson I still have is with "Camp B", who are another set from the other school having a summer camp here. I don't know if these guys will be better/worse but judging by their age (from what I've seen of them in their luminous yellow t-shirts) they will be much the same. At least I will introduce my rules in the first lesson, which might help, although "Camp A" were very well behaved in the first place. I can use my name card time-waster too!
I've just spoken to the other British teacher here (who finished teaching a week ago and is flying back on Saturday) -- I have no idea how she has managed to teach these guys for one whole semester! You have to have some serious imagination to fill that many lessons with new and interesting things. I'm sort of struggling as to what I will teach tomorrow!
That's it for now. Time to plan my lesson for this evening. Poor me.
First of all I had grades three and four and we got on with what I had planned pretty well, although we didn't get to head, shoulders, knees and toes (much to my delight). The second lesson of the day was with the very young ones (grades one and two) and they responded well to the rules. This might be a lot to do with the fact one of the Chinese English teachers was sitting in with me (to get used to my accent for reasons I will explain shortly) -- this lesson was much easier as she translated things they didn't understand. The downside... I got through my stuff really quickly, which meant that at the end I had literally just run out of things to talk about... saved by the bell! With the older kids I went through the same stuff as the younger ones... numbers. Trying to help them read big numbers out loud (999,999,999 was a favourite suggested by them), which is actually a very easy thing to teach (just split at the commas and insert "million", "thousand" and "hundred"). Obviously with grades five and six I went through this very quickly as they got the hang of it in no time. We then turned to animals, body parts and some fruit -- the game of Pictionary didn't quite work out as well as it could have done. Drawing a fish, for example, is a little too easy, but one girl faced with "monkey" didn't do so well.
I think their level is much higher than I've been teaching them so I've got to figure out exactly what topics to cover. YuLu has now given me an atlas (not sure why), a picture dictionary and three other textbooks. Annoyingly it is not the textbook they are using, but hopefully that won't matter too much. I'll have to spend plenty of time this evening making up plans for tomorrow's lessons.
Somehow I've agreed to teach a class of 100 kids, ranging from eight to about 12 years old, this evening. It's not a class at this school so I am being taken by the Chinese English teacher that sat in on my lesson today. She will be acting as a translator for my lesson, which will start at 7pm and last for 45 minutes. I've got to get a "lesson plan" to her as soon as I can, so that is what I will be doing for the next hour or so. It will be based largely on the plan I used yesterday -- introducing myself, asking them some questions (I'm going with "everybody stand up; sit down if you are from Beijing" followed by questions of "where do you live?" for those still standing up) and so on. Unfortunately there isn't much point in getting them to write name cards (which amazingly everybody remembered at the lessons today!) as I don't think I will be seeing them again -- this was a great time waster and most of the kids enjoyed drawing their names.
The other lesson I still have is with "Camp B", who are another set from the other school having a summer camp here. I don't know if these guys will be better/worse but judging by their age (from what I've seen of them in their luminous yellow t-shirts) they will be much the same. At least I will introduce my rules in the first lesson, which might help, although "Camp A" were very well behaved in the first place. I can use my name card time-waster too!
I've just spoken to the other British teacher here (who finished teaching a week ago and is flying back on Saturday) -- I have no idea how she has managed to teach these guys for one whole semester! You have to have some serious imagination to fill that many lessons with new and interesting things. I'm sort of struggling as to what I will teach tomorrow!
That's it for now. Time to plan my lesson for this evening. Poor me.
Monday, 11 July 2005
More good news
I have just received an email from Tracy, the girl Xiaoxiao and I met in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. She has told me that the university in Hong Kong she had an interview with have accepted her. She will now be learning English at the University of Zhejiang in the mainland for one year, before heading out to Hong Kong.
The bad news... I have to try and teach English again tomorrow! It is exceptionally difficult as I can't explain what I am trying to do very well. With any luck I will find one of the Chinese English teachers tomorrow and have them translate some "rules" for me -- basic things like "Talk one at a time" and "Raise your hand to answer a question, don't shout out". With any luck this will help.
This is my lesson plan for grades 1-4 tomorrow. I will vary the number of words and level of questions based on the age range and ability. It also forms the basis for my lesson with the older kids (11 and 12), where I have made some cards with simple animals and fruit that I hope to split the class in two and play Pictionary with. How well this will go... I have no idea, but here's to hoping!
My desk as it was about 15 minutes ago (23:50). Right now I'm desperate for some sleep but I got caught up at Pizza Hut yesterday (I'll go into this as soon as I have more free time) and missed the last bus back -- oh, and yes, I've been fed! But thinking about it right now, I'm absolutely starving. Good job I bought some goodies and a pack of chocolate muffins from the Carrefour next to Pizza Hut!
Right, I really have to go. Hope everybody is still well. Byee!
The bad news... I have to try and teach English again tomorrow! It is exceptionally difficult as I can't explain what I am trying to do very well. With any luck I will find one of the Chinese English teachers tomorrow and have them translate some "rules" for me -- basic things like "Talk one at a time" and "Raise your hand to answer a question, don't shout out". With any luck this will help.
This is my lesson plan for grades 1-4 tomorrow. I will vary the number of words and level of questions based on the age range and ability. It also forms the basis for my lesson with the older kids (11 and 12), where I have made some cards with simple animals and fruit that I hope to split the class in two and play Pictionary with. How well this will go... I have no idea, but here's to hoping!My desk as it was about 15 minutes ago (23:50). Right now I'm desperate for some sleep but I got caught up at Pizza Hut yesterday (I'll go into this as soon as I have more free time) and missed the last bus back -- oh, and yes, I've been fed! But thinking about it right now, I'm absolutely starving. Good job I bought some goodies and a pack of chocolate muffins from the Carrefour next to Pizza Hut!Right, I really have to go. Hope everybody is still well. Byee!
Head, shoulders, knees and toes
What is life coming to when I spend my spare time trying to remember how to do the "head, shoulders, knees and toes" song!?
One good site Christine pointed out to me was ESLcafe, which I'm trying to cover as quickly as I can for my fourth and final lesson of the day.
I've now been given directions to two supermarkets and a place that sells pizza. I reckon I'll be getting very friendly with the 714 bus in the next couple of weeks.
One good site Christine pointed out to me was ESLcafe, which I'm trying to cover as quickly as I can for my fourth and final lesson of the day.
I've now been given directions to two supermarkets and a place that sells pizza. I reckon I'll be getting very friendly with the 714 bus in the next couple of weeks.
Mr Lewis
OHMYGOD!
"Teaching" English to nine year-old kids is impossible! I'm exhausted and the back of my throat absolutely kills... I wouldn't mind but it isn't yet mid-day!
I've taught three 40-minute lessons; first were grades three and four, then one and two and finally five and six. The youngest ones are the hardest, as they seem to know very little English, but the other two classes aren't so bad -- usually somebody figures out what I was trying to say and explains it... or more frequently three people figure out what I was trying to say and proceed to battle out explaining it to the other kids by way of lots of shouting.
Today I tried to cover my self introduction, ask them to introduce themselves to me and then ask questions of each other, as well as get them to draw up name cards so I can remember their names. To me that theory was sound, but in practice nobody listens when I talk, nobody listens when other people talk and there was much fighting over the pens for the name cards.
It doesn't help that I feel like I've not eaten anything for days (good for my tummy, though) and the only offerings nearby are less than mouthwatering.
I've got a couple of hours to kill until my last lesson of the day (four lessons per day) at sometime past three. I'll have to try and come up with some really good ideas of how and what to teach tomorrow. Once that lessons is out of the way I'm off to find some food!
"Teaching" English to nine year-old kids is impossible! I'm exhausted and the back of my throat absolutely kills... I wouldn't mind but it isn't yet mid-day!
I've taught three 40-minute lessons; first were grades three and four, then one and two and finally five and six. The youngest ones are the hardest, as they seem to know very little English, but the other two classes aren't so bad -- usually somebody figures out what I was trying to say and explains it... or more frequently three people figure out what I was trying to say and proceed to battle out explaining it to the other kids by way of lots of shouting.
Today I tried to cover my self introduction, ask them to introduce themselves to me and then ask questions of each other, as well as get them to draw up name cards so I can remember their names. To me that theory was sound, but in practice nobody listens when I talk, nobody listens when other people talk and there was much fighting over the pens for the name cards.
It doesn't help that I feel like I've not eaten anything for days (good for my tummy, though) and the only offerings nearby are less than mouthwatering.
I've got a couple of hours to kill until my last lesson of the day (four lessons per day) at sometime past three. I'll have to try and come up with some really good ideas of how and what to teach tomorrow. Once that lessons is out of the way I'm off to find some food!
Sunday, 10 July 2005
Alive and (soon to be) teaching
A quick post to let people know that I'm still alive and back at ShangLi school.
I spent the weekend with my "house family" which I will talk a lot about in a post later today or tomorrow. Right now I've just received my teaching timetable (which I'll probably make available ;) and got some blank paper and pens.
It's all very well and good arranging to teach English over the 'phone... but when you turn up at a school and realise that you don't have the first idea about where to start, things get a little more interesting.
Fortunately for me, Christine, who has been teaching English in Beijing for a year and a half, has lent me her notes and lesson plans. I'm hoping the first lesson will be fine -- introduce myself and ask the kids to do the same. A short question and answer session as well as show them some photos of my house (if I can get/find them in time) as well as my family.
As for the second lesson...
I spent the weekend with my "house family" which I will talk a lot about in a post later today or tomorrow. Right now I've just received my teaching timetable (which I'll probably make available ;) and got some blank paper and pens.
It's all very well and good arranging to teach English over the 'phone... but when you turn up at a school and realise that you don't have the first idea about where to start, things get a little more interesting.
Fortunately for me, Christine, who has been teaching English in Beijing for a year and a half, has lent me her notes and lesson plans. I'm hoping the first lesson will be fine -- introduce myself and ask the kids to do the same. A short question and answer session as well as show them some photos of my house (if I can get/find them in time) as well as my family.
As for the second lesson...
Thursday, 7 July 2005
My bed
It's quite surprising just how quickly you can start to feel lonely... I've not been here more than a couple of hours, but I've already spent most of it on my own. YuLu and another man (who I assume was her boyfriend, but didn't want to ask) took me out to a barbeque restaurant for dinner. To be honest, I wasn't really keen on the food, but it is certainly better than a lot of other Chinese food I've had, and I was able to eat a little -- enough to keep me from feeling too hungry. Fortunately I've also been given a pack of biscuits and a whole watermelon... after the three meals tomorrow I shall start to consider how long to ration it for!So I'm sat inside my little tent. It's actually very comfortable, especially once I bring in my laptop, camera, and the air conditioning remote. But it's still lonely; not really because I feel lonely now (why would I? I have spent almost every night on my own during this holiday) but because I know that for the next two weeks I will be mostly on my own. I should ring Gogo as soon as I get chance tomorrow -- I think meeting up with somebody that I know will help me feel much better.
So today, or rather, yesterday, was a fairly big day. The start of the G8+5 summit, more protesting, the supposed execution of a high-ranking Egyptian official in Iraq... and the numerous bombs that were detonated across London. It goes without saying just how disturbing this is. I don't really know myself quite what has gone on, in spite of reading a news article and catching a very brief review on CCTV9. It is at times like these that I really begin to wonder just what sort of harm the Chinese firewall can have -- the Chinese news channels were all silent (or at least, the bits that I saw, which means that it wasn't considered a particularly big story (although the impending electricity shortage in China is, and has been every day I've been here)) up until about an hour ago. In fact, were it not for a rather out-of-place article on my favourite technology website, Slashdot, I most likely would not have known! BBC News is out-of-bounds in China, as are CNN, ABCNews, and many other foreign news providers. Much to my surprise, not even the English-language section of the main CCTV News website carried the story!
Right now I'm not entirely sure how many people have lost their lives -- is it three or four? or thirty or forty?
I'll have to talk about this a little more when I fully understand what has happened and what the implications are. Most people I talk to seem quite against the invasion of Iraq. My personal stance is basically that it needed to be done -- in the short term there is a lot of disruption, loss of life and the potential for more "terror attacks", but in the long run many more people will be better off without Saddam Hussain -- especially those that might have been the target of his "law" enforcement agencies. Where I think it all begins to get hazy is the reason... or lack of. It does all seem rather cyclic though -- the attack on the Twin Towers, the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, numerous car bombs, suicide bombers and now recently the attack in London (assuming the claims of links to al-Qaeda are correct)... the question now is how will Britain react? From what I did see I was rather worried by Bush's statement; it seemed to concentrate far too heavily on what would be done and not sympathy... even a day without the Next Big Plan(TM) would have been nice.
But back to what I'm up to (I really shouldn't get into politics as I'm way out of my depth)... I'm sat in bed writing stuff. I just enjoyed flicking away a mosquito that landed on my tent -- if only they made decent portable versions!
Tomorrow I should be up around 9am in time to take a tour of the campus (it was too late/dark when I arrived), meet the headmaster and, I think, move location. As the school is officially on holiday, it is pretty much just the security guards and chef on campus... at least until the Summer Camp starts next Monday. YuLu has arranged for me to stay with a Chinese family tomorrow and Saturday evening, before I return on Sunday night for school the following day. I'm not quite sure what to expect but so far all of the people I have met have been exceptionally friendly and helpful.
Over the next couple of days I have to come up with some ideas of how to teach the kids (9-12) English. YuLu suggested I try some catchy things (she suggested teaching English songs but that sounds like it involves me singing!) but so far I haven't come up with much more than simple games -- hangman, for example -- and a common Chinese tactic that involves asking the students to make up a song or story based on a single word. It is starting to all sound very complicated! Any suggestions are *very* welcome!
Website "hacked", new gallery
As a few people have noticed, my website has been down for what I think to be around one day. An unpatched vulnerability in the blog software I use to drive my website was exploited. Fortunately CompSoc/inomine shut my site down as quickly as possible to prevent further harm to CompSoc in general.
I've spent a little while going through the logs and SQL database to check everything is in order. Normally I would have been up-to-date with security patches but I didn't have Internet access as the problem was announced. Fortunately the guys who exploited the vulnerability didn't cause any major hassle, for which I'm thankful. The site is now all patched and up-to-date so I'm hoping there won't be any more problems in the future.
I've added a new image gallery (current it just has the photos from my last entry) called ShangLi School, which I will do my best to keep updated with any photos I take of the school while I'm here.
I'm up reasonably early tomorrow morning so I need to get some sleep. Bye.
I've spent a little while going through the logs and SQL database to check everything is in order. Normally I would have been up-to-date with security patches but I didn't have Internet access as the problem was announced. Fortunately the guys who exploited the vulnerability didn't cause any major hassle, for which I'm thankful. The site is now all patched and up-to-date so I'm hoping there won't be any more problems in the future.
I've added a new image gallery (current it just has the photos from my last entry) called ShangLi School, which I will do my best to keep updated with any photos I take of the school while I'm here.
I'm up reasonably early tomorrow morning so I need to get some sleep. Bye.
ShangLi School, HaiDian district, Beijing
Well, I've arrived! I'm now sat in what is to be my bedroom for the next couple of weeks. It's pretty good, actually -- I have a TV (with CCTV9), air conditioning and a mosquito net over my bed. There's plenty of space for all of my junk and right across the hall is the common room, equipped with a computer with ADSL Internet access. I've already checked for WiFi but unfortunately, there isn't any. Not to worry -- it seems that it was a stroke of good luck my Dad had sent his PCMCIA CompactFlash reader along with the laptop when it went back to be repaired; his USB CF reader has already been exceptionally useful!
Above you can see my shower and toilet room -- for once a shower in China even comes with a shower curtain (not that you can see in this photo).
The common room -- looks pretty cluttered to me, but from what I've heard I'm pretty much the only person staying in this building. Having said that, I've already seen at least three or four other people.
Finally, the kitchen/dining area. There is also another room with a washing machine and toilet attached.I'm not quite sure how I'm going to fit into my bed, but I'm sure I'll manage. Fortunately there are a whole pile of plugs in this room, unlike other places. For once I'll be able to plug in my laptop and not be forced to disconnect the lights to do so. I have my very own room 'phone -- the number is +861082594275, once you hear some Chinese automated message, dial 815 to get through to my room :)
That's it for now -- I'll post this entry and a few others I've had written up on my laptop in a few minutes when I head to the common room. Time for me to catch up on the stuff that's been going on in the world. Bye for now!
PuDong Blogging
I'm just sat in the departure lounge at PuDong airport in Shanghai. I should be boarding my flight (MU5131Z) to Beijing any moment now. The only reason I switched my laptop on was because I half-expected there to be some free wireless -- there wasn't, although there were two secured access points.
It's about 3:15pm now and I'm not quite sure what to expect when I meet YuLu, the English teacher at the school I am helping out at. I can't actually recall the name right now, but I know it is in HaiDian district in Beijing -- from what I've heard it is a little way from the "centre", but hopefully that won't stop me.
Next stop... Beijing!
It's about 3:15pm now and I'm not quite sure what to expect when I meet YuLu, the English teacher at the school I am helping out at. I can't actually recall the name right now, but I know it is in HaiDian district in Beijing -- from what I've heard it is a little way from the "centre", but hopefully that won't stop me.
Next stop... Beijing!
Wednesday, 6 July 2005
Shanghai Bund
Today's plans changed at the very last minute due to unexpected rain overnight. Our original plan had been to visit Suzhou in Shanghai but we instead visited the main Shanghai promenade -- The Bund. The Bund was built largely by the British and French and is home to some of the most famous buildings in Shanghai.
I visited The Bund last year and got a few snapshots of the famous spaceship-like building. I managed to take a few photos today, but it was hard due to the on-and-off rain. Furthermore, the sky was overcast so I doubt there will be any truly stunning photos this time! Xiaoxiao's elder brother arrived around 3pm from Zhejiang (approximately six hours by sleeper bus) and after collecting him we headed back to Xiaoxiao's aunty's flat to sit about and play cards before eventually going out for dinner.
I had particularly wanted some night photos of The Bund but didn't bother to go back around sunset due to the poor weather. Tomorrow I fly to Beijing to meet YuLu, the English teacher I have arranged to work for for two weeks. From what I understand I don't start teaching until Monday, but the extra time will give me a chance to meet up with GoGo and maybe the girl I met on my flight from London. It might also be a good idea to try and catch the sunrise flag raising ceremony before I start teaching, if only so I don't fall alseep while talking to the kids!
Talking of London... I was sat watching some Chinese show as the Olympic announcement was made -- good work, London! To be honest, I couldn't really care less but it just wouldn't do to play second-best to France now, would it? Actually, this brings me to another subject -- Japan-China relations. I'm not going to get too far into this but I was disgusted to see a Chinese guy wandering around sporting a "FUCK JAPAN" t-shirt earlier on today. China is home to some very clever people (especially businessmen) but it is equally home to some of the most ignorant people in the world.
I'm getting bored of the English-language TV channel now -- they repeat the same programme up to five times per day. I guess the idea is that it will be available to people all over the world this way, but to all those in China it is a pain in the arse. It would help if they went into a bit more detail too -- just as you're getting interested in a particular programme (for example the Black Clothing Juan clan) they whip up the ending credits! What a waste!
Right, time for me to head to bed again. I'm not up for anything specific in the morning (other than getting my clothes back from the laundrette) but I hope to spend quite a bit of time around Sanlitun Lu in Beijing tomorrow evening.
Hope everybody is well :)
I visited The Bund last year and got a few snapshots of the famous spaceship-like building. I managed to take a few photos today, but it was hard due to the on-and-off rain. Furthermore, the sky was overcast so I doubt there will be any truly stunning photos this time! Xiaoxiao's elder brother arrived around 3pm from Zhejiang (approximately six hours by sleeper bus) and after collecting him we headed back to Xiaoxiao's aunty's flat to sit about and play cards before eventually going out for dinner.
I had particularly wanted some night photos of The Bund but didn't bother to go back around sunset due to the poor weather. Tomorrow I fly to Beijing to meet YuLu, the English teacher I have arranged to work for for two weeks. From what I understand I don't start teaching until Monday, but the extra time will give me a chance to meet up with GoGo and maybe the girl I met on my flight from London. It might also be a good idea to try and catch the sunrise flag raising ceremony before I start teaching, if only so I don't fall alseep while talking to the kids!
Talking of London... I was sat watching some Chinese show as the Olympic announcement was made -- good work, London! To be honest, I couldn't really care less but it just wouldn't do to play second-best to France now, would it? Actually, this brings me to another subject -- Japan-China relations. I'm not going to get too far into this but I was disgusted to see a Chinese guy wandering around sporting a "FUCK JAPAN" t-shirt earlier on today. China is home to some very clever people (especially businessmen) but it is equally home to some of the most ignorant people in the world.
I'm getting bored of the English-language TV channel now -- they repeat the same programme up to five times per day. I guess the idea is that it will be available to people all over the world this way, but to all those in China it is a pain in the arse. It would help if they went into a bit more detail too -- just as you're getting interested in a particular programme (for example the Black Clothing Juan clan) they whip up the ending credits! What a waste!
Right, time for me to head to bed again. I'm not up for anything specific in the morning (other than getting my clothes back from the laundrette) but I hope to spend quite a bit of time around Sanlitun Lu in Beijing tomorrow evening.
Hope everybody is well :)
Tuesday, 5 July 2005
YUJiaYu
Today the three of us (Xiaoxiao, her aunty and me) went to visit Xiaoxiao's little brother -- JiaYu -- at his school in Shanghai. He is attending summer camp, which lasts about a month, after getting a low mark in his English test. A "low mark" in China is something like "below 70, but above 60", so he's really not done that bad at all ;)
On the way we stopped to get some food, where I ended up getting an Italian BLT from Subway. Not because I particularly like Subway, but because I am *really* fed up of McDonald's and Pizza Hut. I've had a slightly upset stomach for the past few days -- I suspect this is partly due to the lack of variety in what I've been eating. I'm beginning to wonder if some vitamin tablets would be a good idea -- I just don't get on well with food in China. Anyway, the BLT was a nice change, but not something I would go for normally.
To my surprise, we had no trouble getting into JiaYu's school -- Xiaoxiao said a few words to the security guards and we walked on in. Once in, nobody questioned my presence and I even wandered into the swimming pool (not actually in, but around) with my camera. Quite bizarre, I thought.
What struck me most about the school were the slogans plastered around the walls -- things like "we decide our future", "be kind and gentle to every human being" and so on. Many were reasonable, but frequently I found myself wondering about them -- some instantly made me think of propaganda and "brainwashing". Whoa, let's slow down a bit -- this is some fairly extreme stuff! I've spoken to a lot of Chinese and frequently when I feel the conversation is going the right direction I ask them what they think of communism in China, as well as the Chinese government. The response seems to vary greatly -- some people stand up for communism, the government, and everything Chinese almost instantly. It seems to me that they are not really thinking about the questions I've asked properly; that or they lie awake at night mulling things over so they can answer foreigners quickly. The others (generally) seem to fall into the "don't particularly like communism, aren't really too sure about the government, but are happy with the progress China is making" camp. Very few people admit outright they do not like communism or the government.
I don't know enough about exactly what goes on to make any judgment, but it looks very much to me as though China isn't really communist. In fact, China is currently one of the most capitalist economies going -- where there is demand, there is supply, and plenty of it! Healthcare is not free, education is not free and there is no state benefit system that I am aware of. But in the short-term I don't think this really matters -- China is clearly making massive leaps and bounds in development and growth; attempting to provide free services would probably cripple the country.
I've heard and read stories about things that happen in China -- kidnapping being the prime example. I don't know whether this happens or not, but I do know that things are heavily censored and that some body is trying very hard to restrict the flow of information about certain topics -- we only have to look at the lack of news.bbc.co.uk to see that! I've heard arguments that Chinese would be confused by this knowledge, or that it might cause troubles that would upset the country's development. I suppose it could do, but the way I see it is that only the highly educated (i.e. those that can read English) would be able to read it anyway, and, surely, these people are clever enough to make their own decisions?
I'm straying way off the path here, but this is partly because I'm getting fed up with the sanitised English "news" channel. All I hear about is that premiere blah-blah has had a chat with some other country and they have agreed to do this, sign a silly piece of paper, etc. Call me a synic, but I find it very hard to believe that all of these international meetings go perfectly -- I've heard nothing bad about the economy or talks *at all* since turning up a few weeks ago.
Okay, okay, enough. I've probably already rambled enough to get myself filtered by The Great Firewall! I was talking about JiaYu ;) After giving him an excuse to skip a few lessons we watched his swimming practice before finally taking him to the cinema to see Batman. We spent about an hour playing in an arcade on the same floor, where we thoroughly enjoyed air hockey. With a bit more practice I reckon I could be a seriously good player ;)
I don't normally see a film twice in a short period of time; almost never when I have to pay (through the nose -- the cinema is about 60-70RMB in China, which translates to roughly GBP4-5). However, I probably won't be seeing JiaYu again for any period of time so I thought it would be nice as he wanted to see it. Very briefly I'd like to mention that the film has at least one scene cut -- why!?
After that we headed back and I grabbed a large 3L bottle of Coke for a whopping 7RMB, or 46p. As for now... time to sleep!
On the way we stopped to get some food, where I ended up getting an Italian BLT from Subway. Not because I particularly like Subway, but because I am *really* fed up of McDonald's and Pizza Hut. I've had a slightly upset stomach for the past few days -- I suspect this is partly due to the lack of variety in what I've been eating. I'm beginning to wonder if some vitamin tablets would be a good idea -- I just don't get on well with food in China. Anyway, the BLT was a nice change, but not something I would go for normally.
To my surprise, we had no trouble getting into JiaYu's school -- Xiaoxiao said a few words to the security guards and we walked on in. Once in, nobody questioned my presence and I even wandered into the swimming pool (not actually in, but around) with my camera. Quite bizarre, I thought.
What struck me most about the school were the slogans plastered around the walls -- things like "we decide our future", "be kind and gentle to every human being" and so on. Many were reasonable, but frequently I found myself wondering about them -- some instantly made me think of propaganda and "brainwashing". Whoa, let's slow down a bit -- this is some fairly extreme stuff! I've spoken to a lot of Chinese and frequently when I feel the conversation is going the right direction I ask them what they think of communism in China, as well as the Chinese government. The response seems to vary greatly -- some people stand up for communism, the government, and everything Chinese almost instantly. It seems to me that they are not really thinking about the questions I've asked properly; that or they lie awake at night mulling things over so they can answer foreigners quickly. The others (generally) seem to fall into the "don't particularly like communism, aren't really too sure about the government, but are happy with the progress China is making" camp. Very few people admit outright they do not like communism or the government.
I don't know enough about exactly what goes on to make any judgment, but it looks very much to me as though China isn't really communist. In fact, China is currently one of the most capitalist economies going -- where there is demand, there is supply, and plenty of it! Healthcare is not free, education is not free and there is no state benefit system that I am aware of. But in the short-term I don't think this really matters -- China is clearly making massive leaps and bounds in development and growth; attempting to provide free services would probably cripple the country.
I've heard and read stories about things that happen in China -- kidnapping being the prime example. I don't know whether this happens or not, but I do know that things are heavily censored and that some body is trying very hard to restrict the flow of information about certain topics -- we only have to look at the lack of news.bbc.co.uk to see that! I've heard arguments that Chinese would be confused by this knowledge, or that it might cause troubles that would upset the country's development. I suppose it could do, but the way I see it is that only the highly educated (i.e. those that can read English) would be able to read it anyway, and, surely, these people are clever enough to make their own decisions?
I'm straying way off the path here, but this is partly because I'm getting fed up with the sanitised English "news" channel. All I hear about is that premiere blah-blah has had a chat with some other country and they have agreed to do this, sign a silly piece of paper, etc. Call me a synic, but I find it very hard to believe that all of these international meetings go perfectly -- I've heard nothing bad about the economy or talks *at all* since turning up a few weeks ago.
Okay, okay, enough. I've probably already rambled enough to get myself filtered by The Great Firewall! I was talking about JiaYu ;) After giving him an excuse to skip a few lessons we watched his swimming practice before finally taking him to the cinema to see Batman. We spent about an hour playing in an arcade on the same floor, where we thoroughly enjoyed air hockey. With a bit more practice I reckon I could be a seriously good player ;)
I don't normally see a film twice in a short period of time; almost never when I have to pay (through the nose -- the cinema is about 60-70RMB in China, which translates to roughly GBP4-5). However, I probably won't be seeing JiaYu again for any period of time so I thought it would be nice as he wanted to see it. Very briefly I'd like to mention that the film has at least one scene cut -- why!?
After that we headed back and I grabbed a large 3L bottle of Coke for a whopping 7RMB, or 46p. As for now... time to sleep!
Combined entry
I've gotten a little behind with my entries... I've had a half-written entry kicking about on my laptop for a few days now -- I'm going to finish this off to make up this entry; watch out though if things seem a little out of time order!
Today was another interesting day... we got up a little late again and after spending some time looking around the shops (it is just too hot to go out for any period of time during the middle of the day) we headed to McDonald's to find me something to eat. Just as we (I) finished my meal we were approached by a young Chinese girl who introduced herself in excellent English, explaining that she had just graduated from high school and that she had an interview (in English) with a Hong Kong university the following day. She asked if I would mind talking to her for a little while to provide some practice for her interview.
At this point I was more than a little amused but also quite wary -- I've read about how some Chinese make a habit of striking up conversation with foreigners for various different reasons (but mostly for a free English lesson that can otherwise run into many hundreds of Yuan). I explained that we were about to visit somewhere very shortly, but agreed to talk for five or ten minutes in the meantime. Eventually, with a little translation by Xiaoxiao, we better understood each other and agreed to visit the temple (the place we had planned on going) together and hold a conversation along the way. We were very lucky here as the girl's Mum asked if we wanted dropping off; we accepted and managed to hold a very stinted conversation in the car. Upon arrival our entrance fee was paid for us (even though Xiaoxiao tried to object ;) but unfortunately the main temple was closed, so we would only be able to look around the grounds and walk up the mountain.
It looks like we missed quite a bit by not visiting the temple proper but the surrounding area had some nice statues and what could have been a very nice walk to the summit of the mountain... if the temperature hadn't been some 39 Centigrade! By this time we had had chance to properly introduce ourselves and it was much easier to talk to each other :) The number of different topics that we managed to cover is quite surprising -- we talked about school, university, food, films, books, music, economics, Communism and a raft of other subjects.
We left the temple and headed back to our hotel, which is very close to the famous West Lake. I went up and had a quick shower, while Tracy and Xiaoxiao went to the nearby supermarket to get something to eat (and some more
ke-le (Cola) for me). Around 5:45pm we all set off towards the lake and I arrived just in time to get a few last-minute photos of the sunset before we walked along the banks toward C.straits, a restaurant selling various different cuisine. I spent quite some time looking through the menu before deciding to go for pasta with tomato sauce (those funny shell-shaped pasta) but much to my horror this turned up with shells, prawns and other seafood bits as well as the pasta -- not what I was expecting (especially as the menu had a specific seafood pasta dish!). I tried arguing with the waitress about this but didn't get very far -- in the end I went without dinner (I couldn't tell the difference between the bits of pasta and the seafood!) but we managed to get some free fruit. Otherwise the place was very nice, but I don't think I'll be returning, based on the poor response to my (legitimate) complaint.
Tracy's Mum picked Tracy up and dropped us back at our hotel at around 11:30pm, which was a simple finish to a very different day. I particularly enjoyed the extra company, especially as I haven't really spoken to anybody but Xiaoxiao for well over a 20 days.
As I'm finishing this entry four days later, I can happily say that having spoken to Tracy over MSN she believes her interview went well. I can't remember the exact figures, but there were around 300 people applying for less than ten places -- that's a fair amount of competition, but after Tracy and I talked about school and her results I feel confident she will gain a place at the university. If she does, she will spend the first year studying English at Zhejiang university, before finishing her four-year degree in Hong Kong.
Today was another interesting day... we got up a little late again and after spending some time looking around the shops (it is just too hot to go out for any period of time during the middle of the day) we headed to McDonald's to find me something to eat. Just as we (I) finished my meal we were approached by a young Chinese girl who introduced herself in excellent English, explaining that she had just graduated from high school and that she had an interview (in English) with a Hong Kong university the following day. She asked if I would mind talking to her for a little while to provide some practice for her interview.
At this point I was more than a little amused but also quite wary -- I've read about how some Chinese make a habit of striking up conversation with foreigners for various different reasons (but mostly for a free English lesson that can otherwise run into many hundreds of Yuan). I explained that we were about to visit somewhere very shortly, but agreed to talk for five or ten minutes in the meantime. Eventually, with a little translation by Xiaoxiao, we better understood each other and agreed to visit the temple (the place we had planned on going) together and hold a conversation along the way. We were very lucky here as the girl's Mum asked if we wanted dropping off; we accepted and managed to hold a very stinted conversation in the car. Upon arrival our entrance fee was paid for us (even though Xiaoxiao tried to object ;) but unfortunately the main temple was closed, so we would only be able to look around the grounds and walk up the mountain.
It looks like we missed quite a bit by not visiting the temple proper but the surrounding area had some nice statues and what could have been a very nice walk to the summit of the mountain... if the temperature hadn't been some 39 Centigrade! By this time we had had chance to properly introduce ourselves and it was much easier to talk to each other :) The number of different topics that we managed to cover is quite surprising -- we talked about school, university, food, films, books, music, economics, Communism and a raft of other subjects.
We left the temple and headed back to our hotel, which is very close to the famous West Lake. I went up and had a quick shower, while Tracy and Xiaoxiao went to the nearby supermarket to get something to eat (and some more
ke-le (Cola) for me). Around 5:45pm we all set off towards the lake and I arrived just in time to get a few last-minute photos of the sunset before we walked along the banks toward C.straits, a restaurant selling various different cuisine. I spent quite some time looking through the menu before deciding to go for pasta with tomato sauce (those funny shell-shaped pasta) but much to my horror this turned up with shells, prawns and other seafood bits as well as the pasta -- not what I was expecting (especially as the menu had a specific seafood pasta dish!). I tried arguing with the waitress about this but didn't get very far -- in the end I went without dinner (I couldn't tell the difference between the bits of pasta and the seafood!) but we managed to get some free fruit. Otherwise the place was very nice, but I don't think I'll be returning, based on the poor response to my (legitimate) complaint.
Tracy's Mum picked Tracy up and dropped us back at our hotel at around 11:30pm, which was a simple finish to a very different day. I particularly enjoyed the extra company, especially as I haven't really spoken to anybody but Xiaoxiao for well over a 20 days.
As I'm finishing this entry four days later, I can happily say that having spoken to Tracy over MSN she believes her interview went well. I can't remember the exact figures, but there were around 300 people applying for less than ten places -- that's a fair amount of competition, but after Tracy and I talked about school and her results I feel confident she will gain a place at the university. If she does, she will spend the first year studying English at Zhejiang university, before finishing her four-year degree in Hong Kong.
Friday, 1 July 2005
West Lake
I'm having trouble uploading images over a really slow connection at this hotel. It looks like I might have to find some way of storing my images and uploading them when I get back. I'll try and post one or two photos I take from now on, just so you can get an idea of what I've been up to.As for the West Lake... I take back what I said yesterday!
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