Blah blah blah and blah blah blah. Where should I start? So many things to talk about that I dunno where to start. But anyway, I'm glad to be back in Singapore in some ways, but miss Wu Han in many other ways. 天下无不散之筵席。。。

Say goodbye to cold winter, to long, unsleepable nights, to crazy, rigid-minded teachers who scream at you when you are just trying to talk to your new friends, to hectic days, to toilets in which you can faint, and most of all, to the scariest traffic conditions present on Earth.

And here come's work, snowballing, how ironic... I so wanted to see snow in Wuhan, and I see work snowballing in Singapore instead, sigh...

Miss my new friends in China, miss my new RI friends, miss screwing around in China, miss chatting up waitresses and immigration officers...

I shall upload some photos first... Eh if you happen to be reading this post, please dont look at the pictures yet. I'm feeling very sian sorting through everything, so i'm just leaving the pictures there for now...

I dunno how to start, so I shall let the pictures tell the story... I shall try to leave out pictures of myself, since my hair was so ugly. Plus my smile looks damn freaking fake.

On 10th November, a group of 22 students dragged themselves out of bed and reached the airport at 5:30 am. That was the last time, for the next two weeks, that we experienced the luxury of Singapore, in particular Changi Airport.


Comfortable chairs for snoozing, good enough for Eddy to spend the night on.







Chi Hung and Ahmed relaxing. Sort of calm before the storm of attention they would soon receive from the China girls...







Leong Gen the Bugs Bunny, should see his food advertisement photo, seriously funny... Whoever has Leong Gen noodle advertisement photo please send to me.







Besides the novelty of flying, and maybe the take-off and landing, flying on planes in economy class seats seriously sucks. And we had to stone at the Guang Zhou International Airport.

Still cheerful and lively though...







After 5+ hours of flying and dunno how many boring hours spent at Guang Zhou Aiport waiting for the connecting domestic flight, we finally got our first view of China land, probably not wuhan though, just the land at the outskirts... Farms, Farms, more farms, some floods and acres of desolate land.







Our first impression of wuhan, the first building we saw as we left the airport.




Seriously, out of all the OIP groups, I think OIP Wuhan got the worst living conditions. Wish I could have homestayed more days instead of being cooped up in this hostel. But at least I got to empathise with how Chinese Students feel day in day out, locked in such a hectic daily routine.

Here are some grouses about the hostel.

Firstly, students' finish their day at 10pm and lights out is at 10:30pm, luckily we were exempted, but the stupid bell before lights-out and before awakening time seriously drove us nuts throughout the two weeks. One thing unique about the hostel is waking up to songs. But can you imagine students' life in China? Wake up 6:30, run down for morning exercise, eat breakfast at 7, in classroom at 7:15 doing their yue du, start lessons at 7:45, mug until 12++, eat and sleep, start lesson at 2??, mug until 5, eat and rest, mug from 6:30 to 10. Wow! That's Hua Shi Yi Fu Zhong life, think its a bit different from the other OIP China schools. But we really admired their discipline.

Second thing about hostel is there was no shower in the hostel. Well there was, but I think no one was crazy enough to bathe in 7 degrees water. To bathe, we had to dump all our clothes in a bucket, go down to a communal shower room, without doors, also known as a gay haven. Add a security guard who trys to chat you up whenever you happen to be bathing, or changing, or drying yourself, or why don't I just say, whenever you happen to be naked.

Third thing about the hostel. The beds creak, crazily, continuously. I think most of the beams supporting Yen Sen's bed have already fallen off, thankfully he's not as heavy as Leong Gen.

Here are some pictures of the hostel.

First up, the windows...






View of the corridor







View of staircase. Oh yeah, we had to carry our suitcases up 6 stories on the first day.







Chi Hung, act cute buay cute in the photo, Yen Sen looking on (disgusted?), and Leong Gen.






Darren and Yen Sen






Table-cum-Bed







Close-up shot of bed








Ultra-clean toilet. Not so later on...











But living conditions aside, we had really fun and gay (up to you how you want to interpret this word) times as bunk buddies, since up to 5 of us stayed in each room. Our room, better known as the Food Room, was always overflowing with Rubbish, and the kettle, the really really rare kettle, was in use continuously. And since Chi Hung has a penchant for forgetting to flush toilets, we either smelt instant noodles, or shit, or maybe shit with instant noodle smell.

Here is Leong Gen the Food King in action advertising blah blah brand Instant Noodles... He's got a really comical face














So thanks to Chi Hung, Leong Gen, Darren and Yen Sen for making the nights enjoyable, spastic, and loud (special thanks goes to snoring King Leong Gen).


I sure miss singing in a falsetto with Chi Hung, terrorising the other three people in our bunk, main songs being fa xian ai and xiao jiu wo. I miss enduring the Tall People Curse, a common curse emphatically experienced by Leong Gen and Havin, something to do with banging your head on the cursed upper bed bunk. I miss catching (bridging)especially with Leong Gen, although Sng Zheng might not agree on this point.

People caught catching









Maybe Leong Gen missed sleeping with Josiah, I dont know.

Sexy Josiah







I also missed talking cock and laughing my brains off telling sharing retarded jokes with everyone else, and laughing until we fell asleep. Still remember Chi Hung spitting out apple juice, that one more funny than any stupid thing I said beforehand, seriously.




So to more personal things.

After reaching Wu Han, we had 3 days of lesson observations with the Gao Zhong People. Here's a picture of me and Eddy with some friends we made.




Me, discussing chemistry with their chemistry teacher, dunno why everyone decided to crowd around at that particular moment... Maybe its when I'm most interesting,...






Dang cool, I look like I'm teaching their teacher now right?




And finally a picture of the entire class. Wasn't easy for us to take this picture because the teacher didn't really like the idea of us disrupting their mugging time.





After 3 days of lesson observations, we went to yi chang and jing zhou, cities outside wuhan.

Signs with broken English are quite common in China, can be quite hilarious at times, here are some examples.










































Scenery along the way to the Dam
Picture doesn't look that impressive, but this view of a cliff dropping steeply to a thin river stream hundreds of feet below had our jaws dropping, (with the exception of vincent, who decided to sleep.) Looks like a typical Chinese calligraphy painting...




Picture of a bay?








3 gorges Dam shrouded in mist




Another view of the dam





The stepped elevator thing at the dam. The only thing about the dam I found intriguing and eye-catching. The dam itself is ugly, only impressive conceptually and in its sheer size.




Here's the garden, the first site we stopped at before going to the dam.









Enjoying ice-cream in the cold. Chi Hung got infatuated with the picture of a chio bu on the ice-cream cover.







Resting...






Crazy ryan listening to a stone




Later on, at the remembrance garden...

Me and Ahmed, enjoying solitude




I am WC





Got stuck in a tractor, if you believe me...



Emo-ing on a bench...




Stayed in a motel overnight, found 3-star motel a luxury. Had hot showers, TV, proper bed, toilet seat, toilet roll, kettle, basically EVERYTHING!

Josiah, trying to bathe.




Went to Jing Zhou the next day. A rustic city, outskirts seem to be the proper industry while the inner city's sort of preserved. I think....






Roads are really streets, look like the kind of streets for horses last time, without the cobbles.




Ahmed trying to lift the replica of a typical spear (+ a few KG, people who made the replica are really cheaters)











2nd week of OIP

A lot of things happened between the first day and the day when I met my chu zhong class for the first time.


The students were really warm and welcoming, much more enthusiastic than Singapore Sec 1 students would be, seriously. And, they were chao cute and innocent, here are some pictures if you all don't believe me. They tried to teach me things like chinese tongue twisters, and scissors paper stone with variations, and things that I haven't done as a teenager, so i felt weird and a bit unsettled, and a bit old, and now in retrospect, i think i really should have joined in in their games, enjoy being an innocent kid again. Aiya, sian, 后悔莫及again.



初一（3）班 class photo

The yi er san, qie, zhi, doesn't work that well for me, even if it turns out well for the china kids. Shit, seriously damn cute. Can we take that kind of photo with S'pore RI sec 1s? Probably not...






Another picture of the entire class.







The All-Girls photo






The All-Boys photo





Picture of part of the school







We did a lot of things at the chu zhong bu. One thing about China students, at least for my class, is that they seriously pay attention during the zheng ke but show their naughty side during fu ke lessons, like art and, and especially history lesson. I think the history teacher hates me now, i saw her four times in five days, like wth? And everyday I was talking to the people around me, trying to hide my laughter when the guys threw globes and paper balls all over the classroom. I can't deny that the last time I threw a paper ball was maybe in October after EOY, but theirs was really reaching full-scale war proportions. And the students just did it blatantly in front of the teacher, sometimes even talking back, so even though, shit i hate to admit it, I enjoyed their naughtiness, I felt quite sorry for the teacher. Here's an analogy, think of the way you would react to Mrs Smith, and think of the way you would act in AO's lesson. Think again when you say china people mug a lot, actually its quite true, but the people I met had really fun characters.

This is art lesson. Fu ke, but students were behaving. Asked the teacher to draw our school badge but she couldn't. Do RI sec 1s still try to draw the school badge???







Anyway lesson observation was just a time to interact with students, but I didn't feel at ease most of the time, because of the history teacher's stare and because I felt a bit guilty. Other than interaction time, lesson ob was quite boring, because everything was in Chinese, I'm glad to say that I managed to impress the Chem teacher in the Gao Zhong Bu, even though I had to do mole concept questions written in Chinese. Had some fun PE lessons though.


Me playing basketball... Got to say that Theodore and I got owned by some guy called xiang jie. Didn't take basketball photos with that class though.






School had a nice playground too.








Leong Gen = OWNAGE. The instant noodle King pwns Darren and Xian Zheng!

Leong Gen > Xian Zheng + Darren??

Maybe, but most probably not, if you learnt moments properly. PS: Don't ask me, my physics EOY is like 10-19 percentile... and i failed the moments question.




And our CIP was to teach the sec 1 students English. Taught it would be quite an easy job, but it turned out to be quite a challenge, getting all 50 people to listen to you and ensuring that all of them actually understood what you were saying. SO my first lesson (or half a lesson) was a total disaster. And I actually taught them "your pants is 10 dollars" accidentally.

Picture of me trying to teach








But we all left feeling sorry for the children. They pay 8000 yuan per school term and get this. I am NOT a pervert, sorry to disappoint you, these are just factual photos.















And the scam food that the teachers get. If teachers get this, what do you think the students get??? :( Leong Gen was emo-ing over the students' meal, so he and Darren spent nearly 300 yuan on food for students.





Ok, these were the living conditions in hua yi. Now look at the other school half the group went to.

First up, luxurious, clean toilets...



Next, sumptuous, meaty meal





Should I spam farewell pictures now???


Farewell in corridor





While I was walking away...






Back to class, back to mugging...








Disturbed them during their lunch break to say more goodbyes. Dunno how many times we said our "final goodbyes"...










My first homestay is full of Huang He Lou pictures, and I feel very sian sorting through, so i shall just post pictures of my host's house first.

First dinner with his family! Felt a bit uncomfortable






His bedroom, small but cozy...






The living room...






Study room/computer room/???






View from window






Second week homestay was the best homestay day I had, out of the total of three homestays days we enjoyed. Totally different experience anyway, since I went out with my buddy and three other girls, so obviously we went to different places and behaved differently than when we went out together as a family. But I seriously haven't talked to a girl personally for a very long time, so it was a new experience. And I felt quite uncomfortable at the start, cause everyone was joking and bantering in Chinese, and I was moaning over my abject lousiness at speaking Chinese.

So we first went to wu da. Really beautiful scenery there. Think there are two places in wuhan where couples take photos, one is dong hu, the other is wu da university. Just wondering whether all wuhan wedding photos have same scenery, that would be seriously funny. Imagine sharing and admiring one another's wedding photos with the same backdrops...

I didn't take a lot of pictures throughout the trip, mainly because I'm so not photogenic and so not a cam whore. Here's a picture of beautiful natural scenery. Described it as having red trees, yellow trees, orange trees, green trees blended together, and the whole OIP group laughed, I really dunno why... I mean, seriously, there are red trees, yellow trees, orange trees, green trees, how much more poetic can it get??!!









Then basically stoned around, climbed up a hill (we ignored the path, just climbed up the muddy slope), talked a lot and pai hui, thinking about where to go, bought some great MILK tea. Seriously, I think we wasted one hour stoning and deciding where to go. Which isn't a lot, considering we stoned for two hours during the "3H (one-quarter 3H) inaugaral class outing".


So in the end I just suggested we go for KTV. And we really did. Took a bus there, bought some duck neck, some beer and some sweet thingies. Actually my singing probably sucks like crap, but anyway the girl I sang 发现爱 and 小酒窝 with said 我发现你唱歌不错，obviously euphemism, sign... Also sang 童话， 我要快乐，the 醉赤壁, 愛與希望, and maybe some more, but was really fun. And for once I didn't have to sing in a falsetto with Chi Hung, since I was singing only the guy parts. Haha Jian Wei... Anyway I was the lousiest guy singer there, my buddy and his buddy sang Jay Chou songs frigging well.

Some pics


Entrance to Wuhan University






KTV











Later went to the arcade, had a great time there too, most hilarious part was when we were short of tickets to redeem gifts and my buddy just went around tearing tickets out of the machines.

And then we had dinner... Talked a bit, helped out with their English homework, but we were all tired. And just as we left the restaurant, the opera "Time to Say Goodbye" started playing. Coincidentally, and fitting...


Dinner







Me and my Buddy



Have to say that that day was one of the best days throughout that trip, partly because it was practicaly the end of oip... Sob Sob