Walruses... Walrie... The Walrus

¨The time has come¨, the walrus said, ¨to talk of many things....¨

I haven´t, of course, posted since I went to the beach. This is because I am lazy, not because there has been nothing to say. In fact, this has been a week filled with fun and adventure, most of which I forget right now.

So let´s start at the beach. Last weekend (being last Monday and Tuesday, because that´s how I roll), we all squeezed into a bus made for people with little legs, and travelled to the beach. Now, already I can hear statements along the lines of "Beach? In China? Must have been terrible, with millions of people running around."

You are incorrect. Unless you weren't thinking that, in which case you aren't incorrect.

Point being, the beach was fantastic. We rented tents from a little shop near here for 25yuan, climbed into the bus, and drove for about 2 hours South or
East or Southeast. Arriving at the beach was quite something. See, in South Africa you know that you've arrived at the coast for all of the final 100Km before you get salt in your carburettor. Here, we were about 200m from the sea without realising it. I don't know why - I don't know if we can maybe smell the sea from where we live, and so are used to it, or because there are no waves. At all. Barely a ripple. It was like swimming in a big salty bath with your clothes on.

Whatever the reason, we only realised we were at the beach when the driver stopped and said "There's the beach". We then ambled around for a while picking a beach to visit, because they're all really open, and completely lack (thank God) the plague of housing that infests every single kilometer of South Africa's coast.

Eventually we chose to go to a resort type place, where we paid very little to be allowed to camp on the beach itself, literally 30m from the sea. What a fantastic experience. We spent the day playing touch rugby, touch rugby, a little frisbee, touch rugby, and a game called Radball, which involves hitting a ball as far into the water as you can, for the "fielders" to fetch. That may not sound like much, but it entertained us for a good 2 hours.

We ate lunch at a restaurant on the beach, where they served the freshest seafood I've ever eaten (except for the oysters & mussels I ate with Bill straight off the rocks), and then played more beach sports.

The evenings activities involved a bonfire, some beers (hehehe... Ok, lots of beers), and a fair bit of trying to sneak into the water for a swim, followed by getting chased out by a security guard with the patience of Job (Repeat. Many times). Lovely guy, but I wouldn't want to be him.

The long and the short of it is that we had a magnificent time at the beach, and all returned to Huizhou really well rested and ready for the week. Not.

The week consisted of a great deal of teaching (which I am starting to grasp slowly). I had my first observation last week, and the feedback was surprisingly decent. Our training is also in full swing now, so learning a lot on that front.

Outside of school, this week saw the mid-autumn festival, which all of the western staff approached with great enthusiasm after a rousing talk by our fearless leaders. Essentially, as I understand it, the festival is to celebrate the middle of autumn, and the full moon, and some other stuff. It's massive. (cue Chinese people laughing in the background).

Turns out, it used to be massive, some years back. This year, all the Western staff and all the Chinese staff, walked down to West Lake (a beautiful big lake in Huizhou, where the festival is held) with lanterns and mooncakes to celebrate. West Lake, unfortunately, looked exactly the same as any other night, with the exception of a few more people, and more kids than you would expect carrying little lights and things.

It turns out it's compulsory for the Chinese staff to go (and semi-compulsory for us), but they are all bored stiff every year, because they know it's rubbish. And they laugh at our eagerness.

In the end, we didn't have a bad time - we hired a couple of peddle boats, which brought out my competitive streak (I knew he was hiding in there somewhere), and resulted in a race over about 200m. The key problem here is that the peddle boats are made for Chinese people, and while I may have mentioned that they don't seem that much smaller than me, they definitely have shorter legs. So I kept hitting my chin with my knees. We won though, which is what counts.

On the bicycle saga, good news. Unfortunately it covers bad news. Next week we have a ten day holiday, which everybody is of course very excited about. My plan, when I heard about it, was to fly out to see Mike in South Korea. Unfortunately, my passport only got back from the Chinese visa office yesterday, and there is no possible way to get a Korean visa in time. So I will have to do that another time.

You may be asking how this links up to the bicycle, and I'll put you out of your misery (and the ongoing misery of the longest bloody blog post in the history of forever) - I am going on a cycle tour. I don't know where just yet, but somewhere into the mountains. At the moment, I'm planning it, and rallying the troops (which is not going well). Still, it will be 5-6 days outside of Huizhou, in the fresh mountain air, cycling around, camping, eating at dodgy little restaurants, and all in all having a great time.

On that note, I hereby end this long and somewhat rushed ramble, because I'm supposed to be at school planning lessons.

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