Rural China : adaptation phase

Daily Life, Teaching English in China, Things to do Leave a comment

Myself, Alex and Dan decided to head into the main town of Hangzhou for an evening to check out the bar areas. We still had a couple of days left of the public holiday, which we thought we would utilise, especially as it seemed that my stomach bug had all but passed. In most countries, taxi drivers would jump at the chance of taking three westerners on an hour long journey, yet the opposite seemed to be true here. We waited for thirty minutes outside our apartment block watching on as a number of taxi drivers spurned the job that…

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Nick: China – Round 3

Accomodation, Chinese Places, Daily Life, Food, Teaching English in China, Things to do Leave a comment

My arrival in China this year was very different from my previous experience. I had been to Beijing for a month in 2007, and Dalian for a year in 2010; this time I was headed for Hangzhou. The purpose for my visits was also becoming progressively more serious. Beijing was just one big bar and club crawl combined with a big fake shopping adventure. Haggling was so much fun. I bought so many fake clothes, trainers, Zippos, and replica fighter pilot helmets that I ended up having to pay $300 USD in excess baggage charges on the flight back, which…

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Daniel – My first week as a foreign teacher

Accomodation, Daily Life, Food, Teaching English in China, Things to do Leave a comment

It feels like a long time ago now, the lengthy flight from London Heathrow to Hangzhou, that included a two hour bus journey  from my place to the airport and a four hour stop-off in Hong Kong. By the time I arrived at the hotel Echo English had arranged for me, I’d pushed through the tiredness barrier and barely felt anything anymore. My first impressions of Hangzhou were reasonably positive; I’d been told many horror stories about China’s pollution and it’s chain-smoking population, but Hangzhou was far cleaner than that. There were a lot of trees lining the streets, no…

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Simon- My arrival as a new teacher in rural China

Teaching English in China Leave a comment

I have decided to publish my first post today due the number of challenges myself and Alex have faced in the first 4 days of our time here. Lets rewind 4 days… We arrived in Hangzhou at about 1pm on Monday afternoon after 24 hours transit, and were immediately greeted by Lynn from ‘Echo English’, the agency that recruited us. We were taken back to a hostel for the night where we headed straight to orientation where everything about our jobs was explained to us. We were slightly disappointed to learn that we were going to be working outside of…

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