Yuxi, Home Sweet Home

So this update is long over-due but I have been so busy these past few weeks it's so hard to find the time to update this. Anyways, after my week long teaching course in Kunming I finally was picked up by a personal car to take me to the school I will be teaching at in China. My school is called ' Yuxi No.1 Middle School', its the top school in the area and possibly in my province, Yunnan. When I first arrived I was pretty overwhelmed at the size of the school, number of students (over 3500) and the most incredible mountains everywhere. Yuxi is a pretty urban area for countryside China, the place is pretty cool, lots of markets and things to see and the people are great. Although I am getting a little tired of people constantly staring at me and asking for photo's! I suppose that comes with being the only white person for about 100km (excluding some of my fellow volunteers).

So when I got into my appartment I was pretty shocked, the size was fine, I had to give it a pretty good clean, but the lack of internet and a working landline was a little too much to take. It broke me down being on my own in such a remote area. The first few days here were, in all honesty, hell. I have never felt so homesick and alone. It was one of the hardest thing's I have ever had to deal with, I know that when you read this you'll probably just think I was over reacting, but imagine having no one to talk to in your native language, not understanding anything anyone says and not being able to read basic road signs. It was so overwhelming it made me not want to leave the safety of my flat - or so I had convinced myself.

The students were incredible, on the second day there was a knock at the door with some students wanted to take me out to dinner, and although feeling pretty low I jumped at the chance to spend some time with people....and from that first meal I havn't had a single day where I have been alone. They have become such amazing friends of mine that show me so much of the culture and teach me the language. That's the experience that I wanted and why I came out here.

I also got the oppertunity to go to a traditional Chinese family reunion party at a local flat, which was fantastic. I finally got to see the 'real' China and they kindly showed me around the City, what Yuxi has to offer and gave me advise on how to deal with the homesickness. One of the women in the family has been on an exchange to England when she was my age so she gave me some great advice.

So after the first couple of days I finally got into teaching at the school. In the first lesson I may have taken advantage of the Chinese students not understanding my sarcasm and asked them to adress me only as King Lewis, which lasted a whole hour until I finally cracked! ha, I didn't realise how much har work goes into teaching one lesson, since being here I have so much more respect for my teachers wish I payed a bit more attention.

So there you have it, my first few days on my own in China, I will put some pictures up soon and update a post about the awesome weekend I had! Come back soon!