Prisoner on the 12th floor

Here I am, it's 4.25am and I can't sleep....I've been overloaded with sleep over the last few days and now I'm wide awake.

Hmmm...let's go back a few days....on Monday I actually had a good class! Yay!! There were lots of disruptions to classes this week because there were health checks going on at the school - all the kids had to have blood tests, eye tests, and the general medical check up, so some classes were cancelled all together. So, on Monday some of Andrew's classes weren't on and he came to one of mine. He sat up the back and it was great because the kids liked having him there...and then I started involving him in the lesson like he was a student, getting him to pronounce a word etc. Then I'd say "Oh wow, what a good student" and write his name on the board...the kids thought it was so funny - they were yelling out "nooooo, he's not a student, he's a teacher" but I'd just pretend not to know what they were saying, and carry on.

Tuesday was a fairly average day really. Tuesday night at about 8pm we went to the school - I thought I might be able to get some Tai Chi in, and Andrew was set to do some laps of the oval. We weren't there very long though when we bumped into some of our Grade 5 girls....well, weren't they happy to see us. We were quickly organised into playing games with them, and the numbers grew, until we had enough to do relays on the track, play "teacher says" and then do some more running games!!! Some mothers had turned up to collect their kids, and they had trouble getting them to leave. Wow, I've never felt so popular!! The kids made us promise that we'd come back at the same time the next night!!!

Andrew has started helping out with the music at the school too....he has made friends with the music teacher (who doesn't speak English), and somehow arranged to help out on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, teaching a small group of students who play trombone and trumpet.

On Wednesday, sickness descended. I went to school in the morning, but by lunch time my throat was really sore and I went home and collapsed on the couch. I've barely been off the couch or out of bed since then, and it's now Saturday morning!! I think it's the flu...aches, pains, coughs, and only enough energy to go from the couch to bed and vice versa!!! Andrew is now coming down with it too...I haven't been out of the apartment since Wednesday which is starting to drive me a little mad...Thank goodness for the DVD player, I've been watching lots of 'Thank God You're Here' and ER! Dalene sent me over a nice loaf of bread and Anne has been ringing to make sure I'm still alive, so that's nice...

Oh, and to top it all off, we didn't have hot water for 2 or 3 days...in the end, after we got tired of waiting for the workmen to come and look at the gas thing, Andrew went and bought some new batteries and put them in, and also cleaned the inside of the gas thing (I forget it's technical name!!)...and bingo, it's working again...it's very unreliable though, so we will enjoy hot showers while we can.

So, that's the latest....I'm not sure what the weekend will hold, probably more lying around I'd say!!!

Hope you are all well....breathe in some of that fresh air for me....Ruth

written by  arterra on October 26, 2007 from Dongguan, China
from the travel blog: China Adventure
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