Out of my comfort zone

The title of this post could apply to my life here in China and to be honest, sometimes I am tired of being outside my comfort zone: the constant staring and 'hallloooooo's, the lack of the usual leisure facilities, the lack of other foreigners (nice as my Chinese friends are, it's not the same), the lack of cheese, pizza and other western food, the difficulties of teaching and the poor facilities, missing family.... I could go on, but I don't want this to turn into a complaining post. What I really want to write about is last weekend.

As I write this, the sky has briefly brightened between torrential rain storms, but last week was quite warm and at times sunny.

Last weekend was a long weekend as we had Monday off as well. On Saturday and Sunday we visited Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi. We don't offen go there, as Changsha is closer and has Carrefour (for Western food!) To be honest, I prefer Changsha anyway. Nanchang still has the feel of a small city and Rick says it hasn't changed much in the last 9 years.

The weather wasn't great, so we spent most of the time in the shops, Pizza Hut and MacDonalds - never mind!

We found - quite by chance - a nice hotel. It was carpeted, which is never a good idea in China, but the carpet hadn't yet become filthy! Generally, it was of a good standard and a bit cheaper than the last one we stayed at in Changsha. We also met a really interesting guy there. He was a young Chinese guy working as a porter in the hotel. He showed us to our room and generally helped us out and his English was really good. Much better than a lot of my students. His accent was clear and his understanding was also good. Amazing. I asked him where he'd learned it, thinking he was maybe a university student with a part-time job, but no, it was just high school English and then practising as much as he could since then. It really makes me think when I meet people like that. Someone who obviously had a talent for English and was really keen. When I compare him to some of the students I teach who have the opportunity to spend time studying and really improve their English, but who just seem to be complete disinterested, it makes me feel a bit despondent.

Then on the Monday we went out all day on the motorbike. We ended up on some tracks that were really just wide footpaths, often quite bumpy and / or muddy and full of puddles. Quite exciting and a bit scary at times. I had to get off and walk sometimes because it was too much with the two of us on the bike. We went right up into the hills and saw lots of children walking down the track. My guess is that they were heading back to school after a weekend at home. They live so far from the school that they probably have to stay there during the week and just make the long trek back at weekends - poor things! Some of them were quite small as well. We got to one village which was completely in the middle of nowhere - only really accessible my motorbikes. It looked as if the road had been prepared so that it could be concreted, but either the money had run out or had been appropriated...

I have never been so glad to reach concrete again. Phew! My whole body was aching the next day from hanging on. Still, it was a good trip. Photos attached.