Hello All!
Hope everyone is going good. I have finally got an email which I can access without a problem! So, here is an update.I am now living in Shenyang, it's a city about 4 hours by train out of Beijing. It's a really nice city, a little less busy than Beijing, less Westernised, and less people speak English which is good for my Chinese.It was one of the Olympic cities so it has been done up quite a bit too, but only on the surface! My apartment is quite nice.
Mine is quite small, just one bedroom and a bathroom, its quite small but quite hotel like. There is a shared kitchen upstairs but I invested in a kettle the other day so I can have the luxury of cooking my noodles in my bedroom,yay!
It was quite lonely when i first arrived cos I went from sharing an apartment with 3 other people and always having people around to living on my own. But I quite enjoy it now. In my building there two people who I was friends with during the training course in Beijing-Linnea from Sweden and Ben from England. About 10 minutes walk away there are two other girls from Beijing. And everyone else lives pretty close, and taxis are so cheap anyway so we often catchup during the week and go out partying every weekend!
My school is also quite good-really modern looking. It is a private school called Dongbei Yucai School. The students board here during the week and then go home on the weekends to see their family, poor little things. I am teaching grade 2 and 3 - so 7 and 8 year olds.I was originally wanting middle school but on the train to Shenyang I was told I would have primary. I was a little disappointed but the little kids are great and they know a lot so you can do quite a lot of activities with them. However, there have been some naughty grade 3's I have had to sort out. But the chinese teachers seem to do much better at this than me, as soon as the chinese teacher walks in the room the kids go dead silent and all sit up straight at their desks. The grade 2's are so cute though!! I bought some stickers last night at Walmart to give to the good ones. I catch the bus at 6:50am every morning-monday to friday to get to school, and it takes 1 hour by bus. Then I catch the bus home at 4:30pm. Its quite a long day for me, especially cos we usually go out when I get home. We have an indoor swimming pool at our campus so we went swimming the other day!
On the weekend just gone we went to the imperial palace, which is like a mini forbidden city in Shenyang. And then we went shopping-we did lots of shopping!! I have a new favourite store,its called H&M and apparently it is in every country apart from Australia. Anyways, as we were walking down one of the shopping streets there was this television program and because we were a group of westerners they wanted us to be on their show. They gave us skipping ropes and we had to skip while a big group of Chinese people were watching us and cheering,they are easily amuse! Then we had to say that we love and then the name of the TV show to the camera, so pretty sure we are famous on some TV station. Anyway, thats my random story!!
I have to work all weekend this weekend to make up for a festival public holiday next week. We get three days off which will be great cos we are trying to plan a trip to Dalian, which apparently is a beautiful city with lots of beaches, only about 4 hours away. So we shall see about this! Quite excited to get away though for three days.
Love lot and lots
Emily xxxx
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