Back to school

When I enter China I feel a little bit lost. Where should I go, what should I do. When coming from the border, a group of man trying to exchange money surround me. The advantage of a bike is that with a few turns of the pedals you can leave people behind, thus is what I do, although one keeps running behind me. I first search for an ATM, but when I can not find one I go back to one of the money changers. After negotiating for half an hour I get a reasonable conversion rate and enough yuans for a while. I ask the direction for Urumqi, the only city I remember I had "planned" to visit and got on the way. When in the centre og Khorgos I see an ATM and take some extra 2000 Yuan, not sure when I am able to find another one again. After 25km I stop to have dinner and get the best meal on my trip so far and a crash course Chinese, for only 6 Yuan. I now can say hello, thank you, goodbye, yes, bread, eat, drink, good, paprika, tomato and I can count from 1 to 100 in Chinese.

At the moment I want to start looking for a place to stay, a Kazakh trucker pulls up to invite me to come with him to Urumqi. He had seen mee in Zarkhent in Kazakhstan and at the border. I do not mind not cycling the 600 something km to Urumqi and put my bike on the truck and climb in the comfortable cabin. We do not share a language, so it is a quiet ride. The trucker feels very save in his big volvo, overtaking cars when clearly there is not enough time is standard, the oncoming cars just have to slow down. At one stage when he cannot make the turn because the trailer rams into a parked truck, he keeps on banging into the truck till someone wakes up. After some screaming back and forth and continous colliding cars, the other trucker chooses to move his truck.

At three in the morning we arrive in Urumqi. I get the top bunk. This would have been a nice sleeping place were it not that Viktor, the trucker opens the roof window a bit, which makes it rather cold in the truck. All my warm clothes are in my backpack on the trailer and I only am wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In the morning we drive the last few km into the centre, where I thank Viktor and start searching for a place to stay again. On internet I find a cafe, Fubar, run by an Australian and from which they say, they can give advice about accommodation. After a long search through town I finally find the bar. It is still relatively early, but it is open. While drinking a couple of beers I talk to the owner and a German guy. The last one is staying at a cheap place, which he advises me to go to. This time I find my destination quite easily and I finally can have a proper rest.

The next day I meet a local Uighur girl in the Fubar and we decide tohave dinner at a proper Uighur Restaurant, when we are finished it is rather late and she says there are no taxis and buses to her house and that she is scared to walk alone. Always the gentleman I suggest to walk her home or better,why does she not jumpon the back of my bike. When she eventually gets on the back she wants of just after 10 minutes, because she does not feel well. We end up walking for more than an hour and I have to rush bak to the hostel to be in before curfew which is one o'clock. In the hostel I meet Kirsten, a german girl with whom I go to a nearby internet cafe. I have trouble opening hotmail and are not able to update this blog, because the site is blocked. In the evening I go to the movies, Mission Impossibe 3. And even in Chinese it is a pretty bad movie.

On monday I am invited by the Uighur girl, Karima, to be a guest in her class English on the local university. I look really forward to this opportunity to have a look at the Chinese teaching methods. The class starts with the teacher asking a girl to recite a text. She manages to do 3 lines, but then gets stuck, the next person was asked to continue from that point onwards, but does not speak English at all. Volenteers are asked to finish the text. Surprisingly there are none. The assignment is moved to tomorrow and all students are happy with this generous gift of the teacher. Then it is my time. I am invited to tellsomething about my self. So I come to the front of the class onto the podium and tell something about my self for 10 minutes. The remaining time of the 2 hours class I stay on the podium being asked questions from the class and teacher. The first question I got ofcourse is if I am single, second, if I would consider marrying a local girl, third, if I would marry a girl even she had a different religion.
The level of English is so low, many students do not speakEnglish at all, that most questions are asked in Uighur translated into English by the teacher,who also translates my answers back into Uighur or Chinese. Being an English teacher in this class must be very hard. Not ony do the students not speak English, most of them even do not speak Chinese.

All together it was not a bad experience, but I had hoped to so more of teaching, instead of me being the show and tell of the day. In the evening I meet Dave. With his enthousiasm he manages to convince me to go into the Uighur part of town an wander around. I don't regret it. We try to speak Uighur to all people we meet, with the help of Dave's little list of words and in the process find a really nice meat filled bread.

When I leave the next morning I find the wordlist on my bike, thanks Dave!