Good morning class!

Whoops, sorry, I seem to be using this strange, chirpy teacher’s tone even outside the classroom; I think I might have lost my adult mind by December. I’m getting into the swing of things now though, and feeling far less worn out generally - I stayed up until 10.30 last night which is the early hours for me, even by pre-teaching standards.

One thing I’d forgotten whilst being a lazy bum was how much you look forward to the weekend, and this one got off to a cracking start when we were inexplicably dismissed from school at lunchtime on Friday (things operate on a need to know basis at the school and, as a rule of thumb, the foreign teachers don’t need to know), to allow the children to go home and practice for their national day celebrations, whatever that means. So we found ourselves three hours early for our Friday teacher’s meeting in the pool hall down the road and had a nice long afternoon of student-free relaxation. By the time I wandered home I was a little bit tipsy and promptly fell asleep on the sofa - another rock and roll Friday night for me.

On Saturday James and I met up with our friends Stelios and Hee-Jeong, who were passing through the city with their family on a mini-tour of China: Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai and Hong Kong in the space of not very many days – more than we’ve seen in six weeks.  Seeing them was rather surreal since we kicked off our trip by staying at their apartment in Qatar (we would have returned the favour of accommodation but our flat is the size of a biscuit tin) so we’ve seen them more regularly than our parents over the last seven months.  James took them camera shopping in Beijing’s massive electronics district while I rudely excused myself to go and watch a rugby match.

On Sunday I woke up with a mild, rugby-related hangover and a sense of impending doom – I teach  at a private school every other week and have the class from hell, but a call from Stelios inviting us to dinner with his parents offered some light at the end of the tunnel. The only thing I look forward to more than dinner is free dinner, and this is exactly what we ended up getting thanks to Stelios’s ‘connections’ (you have to have them in China). His dad is some kind of dimplomat (sorry, Stelios, I don’t quite know how to describe his job), and he brought along the Cypriot ambassador and a very nice Chinese business man who, for reasons unknown to but fully taken advantage of by James and I, insisted on paying for several courses of fantastic sushi, sake and beer. Five months of rigorous chopstick training came in useful, since every time I reached over to hook some food I risked an international relations upset by potentially throwing raw fish eggs or similar all over the other guests. Luckily I didn’t disgrace myself (except for eating more a little bit more than my share of the food I suspect) and we had a lovely, international themed evening (two Eastern Europeans, a Korean, a Chinese, several Cyrpriots, and American and two Brits were in attendance) before Stelios and hee-Jeong jetted off to see the Terracotta Warriors. ..another Chinese sight we haven’t got round to seeing.