Going Somewhere with Kathainchina
This is a translation of a German post. View original or Never translate German
... with interjections by Nils and Katha
Goodbye Shenzhen. Not that sad actually, we are especially looking forward to see a smaller town (or anything but a city in general) for once. So far we mostly only experienced large cities.
We have to collect our train tickets at a counter — and hope that we'll manage that somehow without any Chinese skills. Luckily we get to know Cole while waiting for our turn, an American who currently lives here teaching football and knows rudimentary Mandarin.
Once we arrive at Guilin North, we look for a taxi while about 30 sketchy cabs and mopeds offer us their services. No thank you — we're good, even though we look as if we had money, which unfortunately isn't true either.
The employees in our hostel, the nicest one on our travels so far by some margin, are almost creepily friendly at times and always try to help out even if we are managing alright ourselves.
At the hostel we meet our dear and long-lost friend Katha. Okay okay, it has "just" been two months ... who orders some noodles for us from a small stall on the side of the road in fluent Chinese right away — what would we do without her? My Chinese only sounds at all fluent for a complete layman (sorry). But what would you expect from someone who says "westwest" instead of "thanks" (xiexie = thanks, xi = west)...?
Meet Katha
On our tour through the city we notice for the first time how people stare at us as foreigners and sometimes even secretly take pictures of us. Some ask beforehand, though.
Which, by the way, is not common sense. Supposedly some people even leave the flash on while sneakily taking pictures.
You don't even see the selfie stick
In Guilin we check out the Seven-Star-Park. After we accidentally ended up in an abandoned playground / theme park searching for the botanical garden...
Windstruck
While walking around and climbing one of the mountains we have a wonderful view of our surroundings.
Guilin City from above
Here, pretty paths and steep steps lead us to different temples, lakes, and a camel-shaped rock formation.
Camel Hill — Name checks out, don't you think?
Stand-up paddleboarding?
Our lunch, which Katha orders in perfect Chinese, turns out to be not really satisfying. We get a soup with noodles, snails, and something we can't really recognize — tortoise?
I have to defend myself here. In fact I wanted to eat pizza all along, but Jan and Nils wanted to stay 'authentic' at all costs so I followed them selflessly.
Back at the hostel we decide to chill out for the rest of the evening — good thing we have uncensored Internet here, too. The withdrawal was noticeable by now. The Internet at the hostel is on an entirely different level than the Internet on my room. There I'm already happy for every photo sent on WhatsApp...
And while we're at it, we have to ask Katha a question of course: #666 — What was a turning point in your life? Every time I spent some time abroad or engaged with people from abroad a lot, actually.
Gongcheng Skyline
On this Wednesday we visit Katha in her new home and get to observe an elementary school lesson by her room mate, an experience that I won't forget anytime soon: As soon as we enter the school grounds, we are swarmed by hundreds of children who want our autographs and ask us (in English) how we are — overwhelming, sure, but very cute.
Autograph session
Like, seriously... 60 elementary school kids going full-on crazy — giving us little notes, waving at us excitedly and giving us all sorts of things to sign. And all that continues into the lesson: Theresa's (fellow volunteer of Katha) "What colour is the jacket?" is met with the entire class screaming "ORANGE" and the students having an orange jacket waving said jacket around with pride. The same goes for socks and/or shoes.
My personal favourite moment: A cute boy in the last row offers the girl next to him his yoghurt drink but she rejects him coldly.
The elementary school students are insanely motivated especially in comparison to my High School students. Although given the amount of work/studying the students have to do here every day, the lacking motivation is understandable and you can't really blame them. As my students have their mid-semester exams this week, Jan and Nils unfortunately (or luckily) cannot visit my classes.
We are excited to go to Fengyan, a small village with not much in it, tomorrow. I'm sure it will be a cool experience.