I have no photos of Beijing that I can put on the blog because there are kids in all of them! So here is a nice photo from book week dress up day, when my team were, of course, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. I thought we looked rather splendid!
I went to Beijing on the Sunday just before the last week of term started. There were 9 teachers, and we were taking 72 8-11 year olds to our Beijing school for our 'Olympic Games'. We had to meet at school at 7am on Sunday, and then spent several hours at the station, then 4 hours 30 minutes on the train to Beijing, then another hour to the (very nice Crowne Plaza) hotel. Exhausting, and that was only day 1! I only had 2 rooms to look after, of year 4 girls, so they were pretty well behaved, and I only got woken up twice on the first night with 'I can't sleep!' The next two days, I think they were too exhausted to stay awake. Monday and Tuesday were full of sports from 8am until 5pm each day. Day 1 I was doing girls basketball then girls football. I had my own team of year 5s for football, and really got into it, yelling at them! haha! They were so bad at playing, but scored a goal in their last game, which was great, before losing on penalties. Still, they came 4th in their group, so not bad really. By the end of day 1 we were shattered, and my throat was raw from the shouting, and also being outside in 500 pollution. To put that in perspective, in Shanghai if the pollution is over 150, we keep the kids inside. We were outside in 500. One day, the pollution went up to 1000! It's like walking through soup. Seriously nasty. I couldn't live in Beijing in pollution like that every day.
On day 2 it was athletics, and I was doing the running races with another teacher. We stayed on it for girls in the morning and boys in the afternoon since we knew what we were doing by that point. That was actually really good fun. Every child managed to get a medal too, which was great. There was a disco on the Tuesday after the athletics, so we didn't get back to the hotel until 8pm, then were up at 4.45 to catch the bus to the train station for another 4 and a half hours of loud children, and me, pretending to sleep!
The teachers on the trip were a great bunch, and we had a real laugh, which was good - teachers can make or break a trip like this one. It was seriously hard work though, and the food was awful in the school canteen, which didn't help. 5* hotel breakfast was great, but there is nothing worse than being hungry all day and night.
The trip is in Myanmar next year, but i'm not sure I can cope with another trip, followed by the final 2 days of school. Teachers and kids alike were exhausted on Thursday and Friday. Still, Mum and Dad arrived on Friday, yay! It's so wonderful to see them. On Friday night, they joined Tequila Club at the local Mexican watering hole, after walking to school for a short tour and meet-and-greet with my colleagues.
Saturday, was straight into being touristy, with a day spent at the Bund, and on a river boat cruise and eating Yang's dumplings!
Sunday, was brunch at the fabulous Westin hotel, a ridiculously decadent experience of all-you-can-drink champagne and 2 floors of food covering everything from curry to smoked salmon, seafood, Italian, and all the desserts you could imagine. You can also get any drink you want from 11.30 until 2.30. Needless to say, you overeat and feel fairly disgusted with yourself all evening! It's a great experience though!
There is a different theme each month, and this was, of course Easter, what with it being Easter Sunday. There were little chocolate eggs everywhere and bunny ears on the tables. We had a deal that every time we went to collect food, we had to come back with a handful of eggs, so we did and now my fridge is full of 81 of them!
The entertainment at the brunch was spectacular as always. There was an ice-sculptor, opera singers, and orchestra, a fabulous acrobat, violinists and a changing-faces/mask act that was pretty cool.
It was a great afternoon anyway, finished off with a stroll along the bund.
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