This week’s lesson was British Slang. I did it as a Multiple Choice team game: split the class into two, write the word on the board with four options for what it means. I had things like sup, alright (neither of which are actually questions), banter, chav and on fleek among others. The only problem with the game is that, since it was essentially luck as to whether they got the correct answer (I did give clues such as using the words in sentences), there wasn’t a particularly high success rate, which meant the classes generally lost interest after about six words. They don’t like it when they don’t get answers correct. I thought the fun was in learning new words. I thought wrong.

The week took a downturn on Thursday night and didn’t get any better on Friday. I probably shouldn’t have taught at all that day, let alone five lessons back-to-back starting at 9am. For dinner, we were invited to an outside place along from the park with the other foreigners, including Tony and Carlos. They’re both pilots from the U.S. whom I hadn’t met before (though Calum and Tom met Tony a few weeks prior when I was in Jiayuguan). I was meant to be going up to Fuhai again, but (for the second time) I had to cancel at the last minute because I felt too ill.

Saturday was a blur of paracetamol, dioralyte and plain rice, though there’s a chance it was a blur because some of the paracetamol might have been sleeping tablets. The pack was out when I woke up on Sunday, and I honestly have no other explanation as to why the sleeping pills were there. Sunday was more coherent; I even watched the second part of Harry Potter 7 with Kieran (we watched at the same time, despite me being in Karamay and him being in Fuhai).

I took an annoyingly long time to get better, which meant no lessons the next week, just a lot of sleeping and avoiding spicy food. Tom got me cake on Monday which earned him many brownie points; even better it was just like a Swiss roll with icing and sprinkles. Thanks Tom. On Tuesday I got worse again, though I refuse to accept the possibility that it was the cake (how could something so nice make you ill?), which is why it took the rest of the week to be properly better. And just in time, too (see next week’s blog).

—TJC

Featured image: (possibly anachronistic) Karamay blossoms.