Unfortunately I’ve been forced to bring my time in China to a rather abrupt end. Over the course of the last week I’ve been subjected to a series of increasingly abusive messages from the new director of studies (DoS), Elsayed (or El-SiSi-ed as I now call him in tribute to the Egyptian dictator he’s modelling […]
Category: China
Harbin(ger) of doom! (final part)
The minibus pulled up at a nondescript junction of a duel carriageway and the driver motioned for everyone to disembark. In both directions all I could see were snow covered fields and road, with the exception of the huge billboard marking the turning for Sun Island pointing back the direction we’d just come. As the […]
Harbin(ger) of doom, part 2
Tired, cold, sick and deflated. After being comprehensively defeated by the cold on the previous two days I was staring defeat in the face for the first time in my travels in China. After a second night of virtually no sleep in my boiling hot, windowless hotel room the thought of going out and facing […]
Harbin(ger) of doom! (part 1)
Just over two years ago, sat in a cafe somewhere in Cambodia, Leighton was showing me some pictures from his visit to the Harbin snow and ice festival in Heilongjiang province, China. It looked spectacular, a cacophony of ice, snow and colour with gargantuan sculptures between huge, illuminated buildings forming a mini-city made from ice. I […]
A year ago today….
Although it’s been a very busy few weeks in the run up to Christmas (which is odd given they don’t really celebrate it over here) I thought today would be a good day to reflect on the last year. I appreciate this is normally very much a New years day thing to do (usually while […]
Nobody should ever get that excited about BBQ sauce…..
PAYDAY!! It’s 11 months now since I handed in my notice at and walked away from my old job to start off on my ‘adventures’ and so when my first payday in nearly a year came around last week, a celebration of some description was obviously in order! That celebration took the form of a […]
My old enemy…..stairs.
I’m now 5 weeks and 80 additional working hours into the lesson planning project mentioned in my last post which has me effectively shackled to the desk and so I decided that for my next couple of days off I was in need of some serious leg-stretching exercise! Thankfully Ruian gladly provides in that respect […]
Wonderful West Lake
Having dealt with British Rail on a bank holiday weekend in the past I was expecting the worst. On the first day of ‘Golden week’, with almost half of China’s population on the move and an estimated 11 million people headed for the same city as us, surely the train was going to be a […]
Madness, madness, they call it madness…..
So tomorrow is ‘national day’ in China, a universally celebrated public holiday commemorating the founding of the Communist party and marking the start of 4 days public vacation. In keeping with the way things are done in China, they go big. When the holiday comes around, the cities shut down & everyone heads out either […]
You can take the boy out of Dublin Gospel Choir but……
Singing in Chinese is hard. Especially when you don’t speak Chinese your singing to an all-Chinese audience of Rai’an’s movers, shaker’s & bigwigs And so as I was ‘encouraged’ out onto the stage hand-in-hand with Camille, a 50-something long-time Chinese student of King’s, in front of a few hundred potential new clients at the new […]
Wonderboy Wanders 