Days 130-136 - Teaching our way to a wicked weekend

With work becoming more and more uneventful Adam decided to add a new element to the English lessons - with the sun shining down he ventured outside and up the mountains behind the university to give his good classes a lesson in using volume (Chinese students generally speak so quietly it's next to impossible to hear them, let alone understand them). Soon Adam had 20 students spread out amongst the mountain. Broken into pairs the students were instructed to hold conversations with the little twist that their partner was between 5 and 20 metres away! The end result was a fun class with happy students. We are becoming very used to the students who are constantly 'sick' not coming to class, and although they may think they are fooling us, we are just glad to have one less student in the class, who doesn't want to be there in the first place. All this means is that we have more time to help those students who actually want to learn - oh no! we really are becoming teachers ...

On Tuesday while the devoted teacher spent time helping a student prepare for her test, the other teacher took his skateboard for a cruise, dodging cars and buses on his way to scout out a nearby mountain to find a path we could follow in the weekend.

Wednesday brought with it the routine of attending foreigners night (for Adam anyway) - this is a great chance to speak English and be understood, drink lots if you want to, and enjoy some great meat kebabs. After eating and drinking the night away at Wei Weis, Adam felt less than enthusiastic about doing anything on Thursday, so the first half of our day was spent doing absolutely nothing (except for Adam moaning), until Adam built up the strength to venture into town for some shopping.

With Adam's adlibed path finding adventure to draw upon, on Saturday we found ourselves ascending one of the many mountains that surround the university, and cut it off from the pollution and noise that exists on the other sides of the mountains. These are the mountains that we feel happy to wake up to every morning (when we can see them through the haze). On this particular mountain there are 3 pagodas scattered amongst the trees, but before we could lose ourselves in the forest of green we had to negotiate a path through the rubble left behind after the destruction of an entire block of houses. The reality of our path really hit home when we came across painted partly intact sections of houses poking through the piles of bricks and stone.

After picking our way through the rubble we found ourselves on a narrow dirt path that weaved its way around shrubs, rocks, and trees up to the first pagoda which seemed to appear out of nowhere. After clearing the spider webs off our faces we were able to enjoy sitting in the sun under the pagoda's colourfully decorated beams, but the height of pagoda number 2 beckoned and we were soon on our way. Pagoda number 2 was bathed in even more sun, which naturally prolonged our rest there. Our resting was interspersed with eating and drinking the new (and usually scrumptious) snacks we're slowly being brave enough to put into our shopping trolleys, and Adam monkeying around trying to scale the pagoda!

On arrival at pagoda number 3 (making it to the top via a flash stone path that we come to expect on all mountain climbs here) we were met with an astonishing panorama of the university, the city in the distance, and the rest of the mountains of Jinan(including a couple of the other mountains we have already climbed). Hanging out in the sunshine we used the advantage of height to search around for the next mountain to conquer.

Stumbling upon a new route down, we soon found ourselves walking through a new Chinese 'sub-division', complete with its own bank, doctors clinic and a restaurant. Relatively hungry from our exertion, we needed no persuasion to duck in for a feed. The short of it is that we left almost as quick as we arrived (and no less hungry) after Adam's attempt of point and choose led to some rather interesting 'food'. Dish number one left us looking forward to something yummy for dish number two. However when dish number two arrived, we couldn't have been more thankful that we had dish number one!! Number one was a cold vinegar-soaked diced cucumber and rice noodle dish with cold meat sprinkled on top. Number two was fermented eggs (of some variety) - the white of the eggs were anything but white, but instead were positively brown and some how crystallised, while the yolk was an appetising black. After a mouthful of the eggs just to try, we decided to leave the rest and make a dash for home.

Adam is making good use of the new addition to the adlibing crew (his skateboard), and is doing a very good job of skating very badly. But hey, he's having fun, getting hurt, and he's pretty sure that if he's getting hurt he's doing at least something right.

Saturday night saw an adventure into the nightlife of Jinan, when we headed to Banjo Bar for a live punk rock performance by Chinese band Sko - they call their style "Beijing Melodic Punk" and were pretty friggin' awesome! While Liv showed her sophisticated, mature side and enjoyed the music with the other sane concert-goers, Adam moshed his way to the front and lost himself amongst the Chinese rockers! We had to question whether Scotty had indeed beamed us right back to Wellington, as looking around the western-style bar we saw patrons drinking beers, knocking back shots, and generally dancing and chatting the night away - it was kind of a surreal experience to realise that partying and bar life is the same, world over. Though the night wasn't without the normal Chinese adaptions - such as the portable beer tap (basically a big cylinder with an ice compartment in the middle, to keep the beer cold), and the ability to buy an entire bottle of spirits to have on the table (and then return it once you have (or are) drunk enough). Oh yeah ... and of course, the fact that most of the music was in Chinese as were most of the patrons.

After the headliners were finished, we were treated to the house band, who absolutely rocked - the female lead singer warmed up with a powerful Tibetan melody with a rock backing. We were also spoilt with a few English favourites, including "Take me home, Country roads" and "Yellow Submarine". While the rest of the laowai sung away to the familiar beats of the Beatles' classic Yellow Submarine, Liv buried her head, as she had taught this song to her class a few weeks ago and really had had enough of hearing the very repetitive song!

After a late Saturday night, Sunday morning was spent sleeping. By the afternoon we were ready to brave the outside world and cut a track to catch the 115 - one of our local buses which delivered us back to the trendy Shan Shi Dong Lu for some lunch (made much more successful than Saturday's, due to Liv taking charge of the ordering) and shopping. Liv managed to come home with a pair of jeans, complete with the Chinese essential 'frills' (Adam kindly spent an hour removing them at home), and an English newspaper (they are really hard to find!). After checking out numerous trendy shops, Adam needed an energy top up and managed to fill his belly with a Chinese adaption of the doner kebab with shaved meat, spices, and herbs.

After a great weekend, we headed back home to the drudgery of planning for a new teaching week.

Adlibing the local mountains and bars.