It's 8.45 pm here in Yangshuo. I'm dressed to go out to celebrate the start of the weekend. Thank God it's Friday!

Last week, I spent the morning preparing my classes by surfing the net for exercises, games and articles. I went to school around 11.20 am, so I could have lunch with the students and then I made one of the Chinese staff members go away, so I could use his computer and print the materials I'd found on the internet. That usually kept me busy until the class started at 2 pm. I taught English to 5 students from 2.00 to 4.30 pm every day and I usually stayed at school for dinner. On Monday, I had yoga from 6.30 - 7.30 pm, and after that, I was exhausted. On Monday, I was in bed around 9.30 pm. That's so early for someone who usually goes to bed after midnight! I find teaching Chinese adults extremely tiring. They speak very slowly, their pronounciation is bad and you have to ask them three times what they're trying to tell you. Explaining words and sentence structures also takes a lot of time. It took me more than 10 minutes to get them to understand the meaning of the word 'window shopping' - and even then, one of them asked:'Where can you find that shop?' AAAAAAA!!! I asked one of the other students to explain the meaning to him in Chinese, because I had run out of ways to tell him. I left school that day feeling very frustrated...

Normally, you don't have to attend English Corner if you're teaching, but of course, you can always try to take advantage of a foreign teacher... So, I attended English Corner on Tuesday night and after that, I went to bar '98 to play trivia (pubquiz). We were with a different team than last week and we didn't win, but we had a lot of fun and learned some interesting things (did you know that an average bee has 5 eyes?).

On Wednesday night, I went to yoga again and on Thursday night, I didn't have to go to English Corner, because I'd asked Joe if I could go to Kristen's goodbye dinner. I could have just told Joe, but I thought she'd appreciate a question more. Apparently, she did, because she gave me permission to go. Kristen is a 24-year old American who lived and worked in Yangshuo for a year. She was my yoga teacher and she also taught English at Zhuo Yue English College. At her dinner party last night, more than 20 people showed up. We sat at two tables, ordered some Chinese dishes, tea and beer and had a lot of fun singing Christmas songs (!). After dinner, around 7.30 pm, most of the people went to bar '98 for a drink, but I didn't feel like going. I had to pick up my laundry and I really needed to buy a duvet, because even though it's still hot during the day, the temperature drops at least 10 degrees at night. I'd woken up a couple of time during the nights before because I was trembling under my sheet! Kathy and I went to a shop where they sold blankets, duvets, sheets and pillows - most shops are open until 10 or 11 pm here. Bargaining about the price required a lot of acting and drama, but we succeeded in getting what we wanted for the price we wanted. Last night, I slept like a baby and I didn't wake up until 10.30 am (!), so it sure is a good purchase! Because I woke up so late, I didn't have time to prepare my class, but that didn't really matter. The topic for today was 'Review', so I just made the students talk about what they had learned the days before. The rest of the time, we played games and munched on some snacks that I'd brought with me. At 4.30 pm, Joe entered the classroom with two certificates in her hands that I had to sign. Apparently, today was the last day for Jun and Keira, two of my students. At 4.45 pm, there was a 'graduation ceremony' and I had the honour of handing out the certificates. A lot of pictures were taken and a lot of speeches were held. A bit weird that I wasn't informed about this, but after all, this is China, not Holland....

I'll be teaching next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as well (afternoons only). On Thursday, I hope to go to Shanghai for a long weekend (thanks, Paul!). It'll be good to leave Yangshuo for a while. I've already been here one month! I'm not sure how long I'll be staying here in total. My flight from Hong Kong to Auckland - step 2 of my journey around the world - isn't until Dec. 1. I'll see what I'll do. Still got plenty of time to think about it. Right now, it's time to go dancing(I miss you, Erick!).

I wish you all a great weekend!