Hi everybody back home!! Hope everyone is well and for those lucky ones coming to Vietnam only 7 weeks to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been having fun teaching, lots of games and excitment, pissing more teachers of with my loud classes (only Joking)....This week I was lucky enough to be invitied on a school excursion to Turpan with grade 3. Turpan is ment to be the 2nd lowest lying place on earth, it was HOT!!!! So very hot but just like being in Australia's desert in the middle of summer.
Turpan is also one of the big stop offs along the silk road, its where all the grapes are grown and where Xinjiang provence grows all the best fruit mmmmmmmmmm. The excursion was in Chinese so I only understood a little as I was put on a different bus to the Chinese english teachers, so it was fun trying to interpret what was being said. The kids were really good, though some poor kids had motion sickness, not good but lucky the bus was air conditioned so it didn't get to ripe for the rest of us :-)
We visited the worlds lowest growing garden and got to see some of the underground irigation systems, it was nice and cool down there. Then we moved on to lunch where the kids hated most of the food...Most didn't like rice, thats funny when you think of China you think rice as the staple of the country, shows you not to stereotype. At the place we had lunch there was a big crowd of western tourists, the kids got all excited one even asked me if that was my mum and dad. The westerners took photos of all the kids and I had given my camera to some kids to let them take photos and they preceded to take photos of the westerners.
we then went to an ancient ruins called Gaochang. It was outside of Turpan, most tourist sites are located outside of Turpan, with lots of ruins from the silk road. There is a lot of Buddist monastries and statues all from the silk road. Gaochang where we visited had a huge Buddha statue and remains of an old monastary. It was beautiful, though its funny that it was run by mainly Uigur (the Muslim minority in Xinjiang province) and sold all these Uigur tourist souviners. It was a really interesting place set within huge mountains, well from the chinese I could pick up...
I really recommend that anyone thinking of coming to China should visit the Northwest province of XinJiang its full of really beautiful and interesting sites as well as offering a whole different experience to China than the Eastern cities. Turpan was lots of fun!!!
I only have 3 weeks of teaching left, it will be sad to leave the school. Missing everyone back home. Lots of love Katie XXOO
