Almost famous

The weather has, thankfully, got much cooler and I am writing this with the window open, wearing jeans and long sleeves.  Things are sooooo much easier when you don't have to do them in the baking heat.

I was thinking the other day about how kind and polite (most of) the students here are.  Some examples of kindness from the last week:

1.  I arrived in one class to find the teacher's desk dirty and covered in chalk dust.  This, by the way, is not unusual.  The classrooms all seem to be dirty and I spend my life covered in chalk and trying to dust myself down without spreading more chalk on myself.  Anyway, a student rushed forward and wiped the desk down with some tissues before I had to chance to put my stuff down on it.

2.  Power cut on Monday evening about 5 or 10 minutes before the end of class.  When it didn't come back on in a minute or so (having tried to get the mobile phone wielding students to sing a song (!)), I abandoned class.  Two of the students stayed and waited for me to pack up and then guided me on my way with their mobile phones.

3.  Took speakers to class in order to play a song from the textbook via my mp3 player.  Of course there is a CD and a VCD to accompany the book, but no such thing as a CD player or a high likelihood of my getting my hands on one of the multi-media classrooms.  The speakers are quite heavy and as I was leaving the building, the class's form tutor (? - often called 'Head Teacher' here, but that's just confusing for me!) told two of the students from my class to help the 'laowai' [foreigner] with her bag...

Now I know that that last example was due to prompting, but I'd had offers before to help me with my stuff.  In fact, one of the boys from another class actually did help me (unprompted) on a different day.

As for fame, in Pingixang it comes easily and un-asked-for if you are not Chinese or Chinese-looking.  The cooler weather has left me able to have my hair down again (after weeks of having it off the back of my neck at all times).  I'm not sure if this makes me more noticeable or not, but this morning R & I attracted quite a lot of stares, though remarkably few 'hallloooos', it has to be said.  We had a fan club of small girls in the dumpling restaurant at lunchtime, but they were quite cute.

Well, we're on holiday now and the campus is noticeably quieter as some students have gone home.  Not sure what we'll do yet.  Today we went on a shop investigation to a new department store that actually sells proper coffee, Ferreo Rocher (sp?) and plastic cheese.  Hurrah!

It's all about the little things...