Peking Duck @ Welcome Dinner

The Boss, The King & The Manage - Welcome dinner

Arrived in Shenyang 6pm Wednesday 29th August. Luckily the 4 hour train journey was bearable as I spent most of the time sleeping! (I was awake to catch some incredible views of the mountains tho!!) Our Graduation Ceremony and after party went on until 7am so I was left with one hell of a hangover! Saying our goodbyes and leaving Beijing was pretty draining (emotionally as well as physically!) I have met some really amazing people and wish I could take them all with me!! However, there are ten of us in Shenyang and I get on with everyone really well so its not all bad! We are all teaching in different schools and staying in different places, all about a 40 minute bus ride from eachother. I am staying outside the City Centre with Lea, a 19 year old German Girl (Hard work at times, but sweet!)

We were met at the train station by Icely and Linda who work for TTC - Teach & Travel China.Our accomodation wasnt ready so we were told that we would be staying in as hotel for the first night. That was fine by me, I just wanted to sleep, didnt care where! We went to the main road to flag down a taxi and this is where the fun started!!!
The roads in Beijing were pretty mental, but if at all possible, they are worse in Shenyang!! A taxi pulled over and Linda and Icely were rushing us to get in. Lea's suitcase took up the whole of the boot, and she climbed in the back seat with my bag! A bit spaced out, I was stood on the road confused as to where my suitcase was going to go when the taxi driver decides to pull off into the middle of the road! (When I say road I mean a 4 lane motorway like road in the city centre at rush hour with hundreds of cars all driving like maniacs!!) He stopped again about 10 meters away from us.Instead of helping Lea out of the Mad Mans taxi, Linda ushered me in to the front seat before heaving up my suitcase and plonking it on my knee!! At which point the taxi driver decides its a good time to drive off again with my door still open- fucking lunatic - (If he had been laughing, it would have been a joke, He wasn't. He started ranting in Chinese!) My suitcase was flung back, knocking Linda flying!! The taxi driver stopped again and I went to get out, but Linda shoved me back in with my suitcase and closed the door before jumping in the back with Icely! I was a little confused and unhappy about being manhandled, but pleased we were all in the taxi and we can finally go to the hotel!!! Oh No.... That would be far too simple!! A police car pulls up in front of the taxi (more angry ranting from the taxi driver - This time most of it was pointed in my direction!!! Cheeky tw...Not a wise thing to do when I am loosing my patience!! I decided to do a little angry ranting of my own and point it in his direction to shut him up!) The policeman asked to see his licence, he handed it over... the policeman obviously want happy, without saying a word he dragged the taxi driver out of the taxi, into the policecar and they drove off! The four of us just sat there in the taxi for a minute a little gobsmacked! The drivers door was wide open, cars were whizzing past and beeping like mad, the keys still in the ignition, the engine still running and our driver had been arrested - it was pretty surreal! I was tempted to hop into the drivers seat and do a little joyriding of my own, but decided on the safer option. We grabbed all our luggage and braved it back across the road, flagged down another taxi and were on our way!!
Thursday 30th August - After a decent night sleep we were taken to our apartment. I wasnt really sure what to expect, and was pretty excited. Our accomodation is in the grounds on Shenyang Art School about 30 minutes bus journey from the School where we will be teaching. I wasnt impressed. Me and Lea are sharing a room, the beds are 2 wooden boxes pushed together covered with a sheet and a duvet! Thats it! The bathroom was a health hazard with no glass in the windows and the shared kitchen I wouldnt even step inside!! I'm not sure why our apartment 'wasnt ready' the night before, it's certainly not because someone was cleaning it!!! We didnt have long to take it all in before we were whisked off to the police staion to register at our new address (you have to do this when you live in China!) this took fookin ages, but it has to be done. Finally it was time to go and see the school!!! We will be teaching at Shenyang Dandelion International Kindergarten. Its so bright and clean and the kids are adorable ( I soon forgot about the state of our accomodation!) We arrived at the school pretty late in the day, so had a quick look round and then we were taken out for a Welcome Dinner the school had arranged for us.
We had a private room set up in a really nice restaurant. The President (of the school!!) The Manager, The Headteacher, two English Teachers ( Lisa and teacher tang) and Linda joined Lea and Me. I had such a lovely time! Lisa and Linda speak English and spent most of the time translating, its a little strange at first, but you soon get used to it! The food was amazing and everyone took it in turns to make a speech, welcoming us into 'their family'. It was actually quite moving!! Lisa kept saying to us ' If you have a problem, you tell me your problem, I will fix your problem, no matter how big or small' (Sweet!!)
Chinese english speakers often adopt an English name and the President (all the English speaking teachers call him 'The King'!!!)took it upon himself to give me a Chinese name! It is 牛牛 (niu niu) It means ' Energetic and mischevious"! Apparently it is relevant to the year I was born (The year of the Ox!) and is a playful nickname especially in Shenyang (Everyone was rather amused when discusing my new name, and I later discovered that Niu Nui is a boys name and very rarely used as a girls! Glad to see 'the king' has a sense of humor!!)! Nontheless I feel very proud of my new chinese name and very lucky to be working with such lovely people.
Just when I was beginning to think that things couldnt get any better, it was time to go home! The appartment worse than I had remembered. As soon as the light went on we could see the number of mosquitos in our room (I dont mean a few, there must have been a hundred at least - a result of having no proper windows!!!) Luckily Lea was armed with 2 fly swatters and we got straight to work killing the little buggers! After what felt like an eternity we had managed to kill all of the mozzies we could see (our walls were covered in little black/brown dots! Ewww!) we settled down for the night as we only had 6 hours till we had to be up again. I was just nodding off when Lea let out an almighty scream! I looked up to see the bigget spider I have eve seen. I dont know if they have terantulas in China, but this was as big and twice as hairy! It was actually pretty amazing! Due to the commotion the spider scurried back behind Lea's bed! Lea is petrified of Spiders (and a bit of a drama queen!) so armed with a fly swatter it was my job to locate and destroy the beast. Now, I'm not scared of spiders, but I didnt fancy touching this fucker! So afer a half hearted attempt I gave up, convincing Lea (and myself!!!!!) that the spider wasnt going to crawl all over her face when she was asleep and lay eggs in her ears! Finally we got into bed! I didnt sleep a wink that night. I was rolled up like a catterpillar in my duvet so the mozzies didnt eat me alive, but with no air con I was in danger of sweating to death. I had to get up to kill about a thousand more mosquitos and was actually relieved when 6 am arrived and I could finally get out of bed and out of that stinking apartment. We spent the morning doing a dummy run of what will happen on the weekdays (Breakfast, bus to school..etc) We told Lisa about the problems with the mosquitos & the spider, and just like she said she would.. she solved our problem!! She bought us electric mosquito killers and creepy crawly spray! She is so sweet!! We decided to remain positive although we were knackered and went to buy cleanig products to make our flat nice!! We got back but our water was brown and lumpy so unfortunatly we couldnt do any cleaning. However we did have some new friends waiting for us, cockroaches! (as big as my thumb - no joke!) I dont mind them because you can swat them, but when I moved the chair to try and find one that was getting away, a rat came scurrying out!! Now it was my turn to scream! I can cope with the bugs, not the rodents! I grabbed a bag of clothes and went to stay at Heidi & Elisas flat! I'm not going back until the rats are gone!
I have told Lisa about my problems with the flat and she has told me that she will fix the problems for me! I belive that she will!!!

written by  emmarogers85 on September 3, 2007 from Shenyang, China
from the travel blog: Teach and Travel China - 6 Months
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Darling, please get some pics of that apartment as now I really have to see it! But you know what? You are doing just great! I almost cried out of laughing when reading the most recent news :D All the best and keep in touch! Rob says 'hi' as well! Magda xx

written by  Magda Robbie on September 11, 2007

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