Getting back into the swing of things was a gratifyingly quick process; by Thursday I was ready to make our weekly trip to have Pollo with Tom, and I rediscovered the value of my laptop’s collection of classic Western films to enjoy in the evening. Slightly less classic was the series finale of Doctor Who, which had to be imported from the UK after the good ol’ Beeb put a stop to iPlayer out here. I’m still missing the Christmas Special if anyone fancies sending a spare SD card to Number 7 Middle School, Karamay…

Towards the end of the week the desire to cook had all but left us, so we trooped over to Essen Restaurant for our latest fix of Western food (usually involving pizza and chips). While there we happened to be introduced to a couple of other foreign teachers, one from the US and the other from Canada. It also turned out that Tyler’s girlfriend, Paris, lives next to us (we had actually said hi a few times). They invited us to a meal a group of foreigners were having that Saturday, so after a day of enjoying the weekend (which means doing very little, writing blogs and sorting through photos) we found our way to a banquet restaurant in the middle of a residential area. And I mean, right in the middle, no shops around it, but there was this one restaurant. It was great meeting all these new people, as well as some we’d already met.

I also did my first (and only) marking of the school year; I’d been asking students to write me four sentences about their holidays following a class-led spider diagram of ideas on the board. One student’s response made me laugh: ‘Broken morning, broken night and broken day in between’. A song quote, and not especially relevant; neither was it four sentences, but you have to appreciate the comic value (given the student in question, I am confident it was fairly tongue-in-cheek). They got an equally sarcastic comment from me.

—TJC

Featured image: Smiley faces, bought by the kilo from the frozen section of our supermarket…