Rice terraces in YuanYang

As I mentioned earlier, we were given a surprise week off school. I have worked at this school for three and a half years and I remember it happening only once before. So we leaped into action and planned trips to the corners of China, or in my case the southern part of Yunnan province.

Knowing i was finishing school for good in a matter of weeks, i wasn't too concerned about making a long journey and so i decided to finally get to the terraces in the southern part of Yunnan.

I took an eight hour bus journey, which was hell, to the new town of XinJie. The bus was crowded, small, smelly and the guy next to me was a pretty heavy smoker (despite the no smoking on buses policy) so not pleasant. I managed to get through an entire harry Potter audio book so you should get a sense of the extreme boredom involved. We finally arrived and i was immediately shuffled into a smaller bus that would drop me off at the hostel i was staying in. David recommended it so i sort of knew what to look for, which helped as i had to follow a pitch black alleyway down into a valley to find the place.

The room itself was pretty nice and the electric blanket on the bed made things a little better as it was freezing cold and fairly humid. I spent many hours in bed debating the act of getting showered.

I arrived late on New Years Eve and ended up spending the evening with some enthusiastic (and drunk) Chinese grandparents. they insisted i rink with them, chatted about just about everything and then tried setting my up with their grandchildren. I refused based on the fact THEY ARE 19!

The hostel was just outside a little village and one of the main scenic spots for the area. In total I think there are 12 but i only saw a fraction of them. I went for a walk into the fields and sat with my cheese sarnie in the middle of some of the most incredible scenery I have ever eaten in. In every direction, climbing the valley walls, were steps of terraces and rice fields full of water and reflecting the sun.

I joined an existing tour to drive about the other scenic spots and spent an entire day either in car or taking pictures of amazing scenery.

After two days I had seen my fill of tereraces and made my way back in the general direction of Kunming. It's a four hour bus journey to JianShui from XinJie so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. There is however, only one bus a day and I turned up 3 hours early so I had some time to kill. XinJie is a brand new area that has been developed purely as a gateway arrivals place for the terrace scenic area. Nothing is more than a few years old adn they definatly dont get foreigners sticking around. so naturally me chilling on a beanch in the town square with my book caused a bit of a stir. all the locals kids kept creeping closer and closer, then I would look up and they would run away. It was fun for a while anyway, for them much longer.

Next stop JianShui.

Merry Kunming Christmas everyone.

After the chaos of the Christmas party, the rest of the Christmas season seemed relatively easy and stress free. We made Christmas cards with the kids and played musical chairs with Slade and The Pogues and they kids thought it was great. 


I planned a big meal at The Great Australian Bite, and it got out of hand very quickly. There were at last count, 36 people for dinner. I spent hours on the phone gathering names and then after that meal choices. God bless WeChat! Mostly it was Shane teachers and their various girlfriends and a few others from the random drinking scene but I believe everyone had a good time.

Dinner was amazing and food incredible, we had a few issues and confusion with some of the meal choices and a few people could have had two dinners but we got it sorted in the end. Christmas was made a  little better by the sudden announcement from school that we had a week off school for new year, we spent most of the evening planning where to go. EXCITING!

"It's the Shane Christmas party." "OH NO IT ISN'T!"

So as is the tradition in language schools, in China at least, all holidays that aren't Chinese are exploited for extra money and recruitment/publicity opportunities. Good for the school, terrible for any teacher who might actually like a certain holiday. I, for example, love Christmas but three Shane Christmas parties and I am beginning to rethink this absurd idea. Christmas means to work longer hours, to be forced to do shows for the locals entertainment and to give presents to already spoilt rotten kids right? NO? I must still be bitter from someone high jacking my Christmas.

So as not to mess with the tradition of destroying all Christmas spirit in teachers, we were told there would be a party and we were to perform a show at this party. And so the idea of the pantomime was born.

We found a copy of Cinderella on-line that was all in rhyme (yes that was intentional) and we divided up the workload. Somehow I ended up in charge of costumes, which with 5 guys in dresses was a mammoth task, and was to play the Fairy Godmother. All the guys in the office played the girls in the show (Cinderella, the ugly sisters and the step mother) while two of the Chinese girls played Prince Charming and his buddy Herald.

Rehearsals began, lines were learnt (sort off) and it occurred to us what a stupidly large task we had taken on. It took us weeks of going into the office early on a Wednesday to get to a semi decent level of confidence and to stop us panicking about not being ready.

The party was on a Friday night, so classes were cancelled for the week.

The party was at the Expo centre, which is miles away in the north of the city.

The room was massive with a huge stage and runway down the middle. When we got to the party room we were told we had to do a fashion show with some of the kids. In our school there are only two female teachers so we were told we had to go first. I spent ages stood on a runway with two terrified students clinging to me. Oodles of fun!

After the fashion show we had 7 minutes to get into costumes and get ready for the panto.

We had a minor problem with microphones, as in we didn't have any, but the kids didn't seem to notice. We had loads of kids sat on the front of the stage taking hundreds of pictures and they seemed to love all their teachers in dresses.

After the panto we had nearly 2 hours to kill before we were allowed to leave so we all got a little bored. The rest of the show was a mess of speeches and terrible dances, including one from McDonald's who sponsor the school.

Thankfully this was my last Shane Christmas party as I am to finish work in a few weeks.