Funny story, actually. The Kuitun trio were invited to attend a Hallowe’en party by a friend in Kuitun. Said party turned out to be in Karamay, so we were invited too (since we live here), and Kieran came down from Fuhai.

The previous week’s lessons were occupied by a Hallowe’en theme: I asked all of the students to draw a monster, then we went over monster vocabulary on the board using my own monster drawing (done on the fly). Words like, ‘tentacle’, ‘fang’ and ‘claw’ aren’t particularly ‘useful’ per se, but the lessons were fun (I think – it can be difficult to judge but they seemed to be enjoying them) and gave them a chance to be creative. It was nice to see original creations and not just animé characters or the like.

I also had the slightly unnerving experience of trying to use Chinese in my lessons with a word I do not know. I am well aware that, being tonal, it is all-too easy for non-native speakers to completely mess up the pronunciation of a word. I was trying to introduce the word ‘monster’ in Chinese: yāoguài in Pinyin. ‘In today’s lesson,’ I announced, ‘you get to draw monsters – yāoguài!’ Cue all the students to roll around laughing. Uhhhh. I wrote the word on the board. More laughter. ‘This word. Did I say it wrong?’ The reply wasn’t altogether helpful: ‘No, teacher!’ Next break I checked with Cindy, another English teacher. She confirmed that the word does in fact mean monster. My best guess, then, is that me using Chinese is so innately hilarious they’ll laugh whether it’s wrong or not. It’s probably my accent.

But back to my opening paragraph: this weekend, Becca, Jordanne, Liesbeth and Kieran came here for Hallowe’en parties organised by an English School. We were banqueted and given hotel rooms (an odd experience given we live here, but we didn’t like to pass up on the opportunity. I can now confirm that Karamay hotels are very nice indeed) before meeting the next morning. We were each given a costume (I was a clown) and led to a classroom. The ensuing, uh, ‘activities’ were apparently a party! We started by singing nursery rhymes with 8-15-year-olds, before walking through Karamay in fancy dress to a shopping centre where we played games. We probably should have read the small print, but by the end it was fairly clear that we were there as token foreigners. Don’t get me wrong – it was a laugh – but not at all what I’d expected from a party. For the second half we were just there to look pretty and give out prizes – we weren’t even helping with any English in the (educational) activities.

After a long day (two four-hour parties!) we were all tired and hungry, so we met Mike at Essen Restaurant for Western food. Essen is a German-owned restaurant by the river in Karamay; it serves all sorts of European food: pizza, chips (OK, so Western food), bolognese… They also do very nice home-brewed beer. After an evening of stimulating conversation and lots of plates of chips, Mike even got us a discount by telling the staff that we were volunteers (being fluent in Chinese he can do that…). We headed home and finished the day with a more traditional (ahem) celebration: watching Sinister in front of the TV with all lights switched off. Not that I was scared, but I slept on the couch with the others that night.

The weekend was nicely rounded off with supermarket chips (they sell them from a freezer so you scoop them into a bag), spring rolls and prawn crackers the next day, all deep fried (of course) in front of another Disney film – Tangled.

—TJC

Featured image: Rearranging during my Hallowe’en lesson.