Weekend Abduction

OK sorry for the wait been busy planning lessons!

Well we had Sunday and Monday off which was nice, on Sunday we went to Xining for the day which was really nice!

Where we catch the bus

This was a shop a couple of days ago...

The bus ride was cramped to say the least but the Chinese amused themselves by telling me how big my feet were (or words to that effect). We walked around the Children's Park, its beautiful down there! Then we went off to lunch namely as Will was complaining continuously about how hungry he was... We decided on somewhere western so pizza buffet it was! They had all sorts there pizza, pasta, onion rings, CHIPS, etc. but none of it was very warm which was worrying! They even had wine as part of the buffet! It was nice to have some western food but none of us felt too good afterwards. Maybe we'll give it a mix next time.

Next we went shopping in the underground mall.Lisa had shown me this on Tuesday on the way to school so I had to guide the guys there. The shops went on forever! It was weird because they were so similar it kind of felt like we were going in circles! The girls wanted some clothes and Mike and I wanted some Blue Tac. So naturally we all came away with nothing! Blue Tac's nearest translation is glue so that caused us a lot of trouble even with the Swallow translating!

Stationary Shop!

So Much Chinglish.

Next the Swallow invited us to her friend's tea house for a Gongfu tea ceremony, now having been drilled by TTC to assume all invitations of this nature are scams set in place to separate me from my money, we were suspicious. However seeing as the Swallow had gone through all the trouble of getting a job with the company and befriending us for the last 3 weeks, we gave her the benefit of the doubt! If it were a scam, then she had worked bloody hard at it! So before we know it her friends turn up in their cars and she tells us to get in. Hmm well this seems legitimate... So we are driving East, really far East. We start to worry about what we've let ourselves in for, we turn into an industrial estate and the driver tells us to get out. We emerge to find ourselves outside this factory; by this point we are making jokes and determining who will be the first to be raped and killed (Mike volunteered because he wanted to be the Hors d'oeuvre...). We were ushered into this small room and there is this man with a tea set. He beckons us over and pours us some tea. In China the first pour of tea is never drunk, it is only used to clean the cups. Soon we all had tiny cups of Gungfu tea and were sipping politely wondering why we were there and how we could escape. Next we ushered into another room and told to 'play', they turned the light on and there were table tennis tables and pool tables! We spent a good couple of hours playing pool and table tennis. We had to teach the Swallow how to play pool but she got the hang of it quickly enough. I won a couple of games surprisingly, Alex and I have come to the conclusion that we are equally bad at pool! We had to be back at the complex for dinner at 6 so we had to make our excuses to leave at 1630 as we had to get buses but no we weren't allowed to leave. They said they'd drive us into town so we'd only have to get one bus. Mike was taken to play basketball (he loves basketball) and the rest of us were left with a hacky sack, turns out we are all awful at hackysack! Instead we threw it to each other. It got to 1705 and we really had to go as dinner was at 1800! The brought us out a bottle of coke and a bag of non-dairy creamer each (that was what they made at the factory) and drove us to where we catch the bus. 

We got out just as a bus came round the corner, after some shouting and frantic waving it stopped (despite us not being at a bus stop!). The bus was crowded to say the least and yet they kept stopping to take on more people!!!

We made it back at 1801! 

We chilled out the rest of the night and Alex and I watched Jumanji! 

Monday morning was filled with lesson planning, I am now planning for 3 different abilities which is more challenging! But I think I have a good lesson plan! In the afternoon we went into Xining to open up a Chinese bank account, we met up with the Swallow and a new lady in the office who is called Fish. Yep, her name is FISH! Trying to keep a straight face was difficult... We walked to the nearest branch of the Bank of China and were then given long forms to fill in, all in mandarin of course!! Interesting fact, pin numbers in China are 6 numbers long and the cards have no name on them...

The form we had to fill out!

The rest of the day was spent chilling out and half-heartedly cleaning my room. Alex, Cecilia and I watched Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame which was nice!