Living on a Narrowboat
Usual rent-a-laowai activity. Consisting of white skins and smiley, white faces. Our boss invited us to take part in the outing to Farmfull electronics.
Wasted a lunchtime and we won’t get paid for it.
They wanted to take pictures of us with their semi-conductor components.
It was all very staged and false. But they seemed happy.
Got this shot of a dinner at our Kindie.
You can see that we’ve switched to fish here. After the spate of recent poisonings, pigs and bird flu.
This is the government issue meal which looks very delicious.
The thing on the left is an apple.
On the right we have a healthy helping of fish heads. These are more tasty than they look. And they do look…. but don’t let that put you off 
In China lets get some Chinese food, (except here its just called food):
Do you fancy Sweet and Sour Pork 糖醋里脊?
-but pork is off the menu since 16000 dead pigs washed up in the city’s river.
Okaaaay lets get some Gong Bao Chicken宫保鸡丁?
-erm… about that, Chicken is off too since bird flu killed 20 folk this week.
Fine then, how about Peking Duck 北京烤鸭?
-actually all poultry is out!
Fuck it!
I tried your culture…. it doesn’t suit me.
So. This is one of the Kindergartens I work for.
Kids are having a little competition, something the Chinese seem to do so well at…
They have to get their yellow pyjama’s on before the time runs out.
Not sure who won this one, think the guys name is Eric. He’s very smaalll.
They have a tradition in many countries where they treat young children just like little adults. Just like you’ve been in a coma, woken and your not knowing anything again.
That’s a kid.
Maybe it works.
It’s better than treating them like this and working it so they learn quicker.
Then I can treat the adults like kids.
It’s a great deal for everyone.
So this is where I’ll be doing some of my work.
It’s the training suite for Linestart Kunshan. I’ve captured a picture of one of the ‘English Corner’ type lessons that we’re paid to organise along with Kindergarten and company training sessions.
These take place at different times during the day.
I’ll be doing more Kindergarten tomorrow, after having had my first lesson today, which went very well, considering I had no lesson plan or anything else prepared before hand.
Tomorrow, I have to catch a taxi, which should be a nightmare. Must have spent over an hour waiting for taxi’s in Kunshan so far and I’ve only been here for 6 days.
Still, looking forward to the lessons, they should be fun judging by todays.
Invited to night out in Kunshan to round off Friday I guess.
Went to place called Fubar which was an English style pub at the top of a three storey waterfront cylindrical tower block.
Pretty posh. Nice beer.
Played Scrabble which was pretty unusual.
Moved on to place called the Whale bar in Kunshan which had a live band playing and was a lot more lively.
More bar-ish, no scrabble boards in sight.
Had a few drinks and a shao kao to top it off. Nice.
Last night went to the KTV, which I had been warned about. Had the full room laid on by one of our pupils, as much weak beer as you could possibly wave a stick at, or a microphone. They had a little booth, you could stand in or you could walk, or sit.
Was fun, much more fun than doing it in a pub full of people.