Subject: greetings from Beijing

Hey y'all

So, it’s been nearly thirty days since I left England and it seems like a lifetime ago. Its such a strange experience being here – I’m not convinced I have a grip over what is happening yet, but I’m hopefully in a position to at least send you some of my thoughts as to life in Beijing. I must apologise for the fact that large chunks of this letter will be sent to everyone I know – I hope you won’t hold that against me, but for those of you who know me well, you should be grateful I’m actually writing at all.

So then – where to start? This is the bit I find difficult – I’m not going to give you a running commentary about each day I’ve been in Beijing, but rather a snap shot of life. I’m living in a place called Chateau Regalia, which is near the airport (if you type it into Google Earth, you’ll find it). I have a nice two bedroom flat on the third floor, which I am very slowly making my own. I don’t have much in the way of my own stuff here, so it still feels a bit like a hotel suite, even though I went to IKEA in the first week and bought such useful things as an iron and a pasta strainer!
We have security guards who salute me as I walk through the door (or even go past the door) which is a bit bizarre. The complex has a swimming pool that I have used a couple of times, a nice restaurant where we have eaten for a few evenings and a shop called Jenny Lou’s that sells such Chinese products as Lurpak, Bovril and Pop Tarts! I still can’t get over how much you can get here – the only thing I am really missing is Salad Cream, which I don’t seem able to get anywhere, but apart from that, I could basically find anything I want (even Party Ring biscuits I found yesterday)

There are loads of new staff living in Chateau alongside me, so I have managed to get into a nice little friendship group. If I’m being honest to myself, I have only had about 5 nights out of 30 that I have stayed in my apartment – it’s so busy. My friends include Kat, who teaches Drama, Chris and Sheena who are the Head of English and deputy Bursar respectively, Mike and Jo who are PE teachers, Shane, who is a music teacher and Bridie, who is a lovely Aussie primary school teacher (more of her later).

School is so different to Birley. The actual building used to be a shopping mall, so if you imagine somewhere like meadowhall, the library is the Oasis where all the chairs are and then the classrooms are all where the shops used to be. Its very quiet – classes of 20 maximum – my GCSE class has 8 students in it, but slowly they are warming to me – apparently the parents like me though , which is a good thing. We’ve had two parents evenings already, which has been a bit annoying, but we’ve got through them now.

First field trip is next week – I’ve managed to get onto the Year 10 trip to Inner Mongolia, where we are going to do all sorts of things, such as visiting temples and monasteries, watching Mongolian wrestling and horse riding, which should be a challenge. I’m going to be building a yurt and sleeping in it as well, which I think will be an experience.

What else have I been up to? Well, this weekend we went to the Beijing Pop Music festival, which had such musical luminaries as Brett Anderson, Public Enemy and the New York Dolls playing. It was good fun – lots of drinking and the like.

I’ve bought a bike – a big red machine with red wheels, which I am loving at the moment. I ride it to school everyday and also take it to the supermarket if I need something interesting to eat. There is a Chinese supermarket about a mile away, which I have been to a couple of times – it isn’t as bad as the Carefour, which is the major supermarket in town. I’ve been there twice, and the top floor is fine. It’s the bottom floor which is just horrible. You come down the escalator into the fish section, which is like being in a pet shop – tanks full of fish, with buckets of live crabs and shrimps, which I avoided like a particularly horrible version of the plague!

Beijing does have a Decathlon store though, which I found recently, so I can buy some clothes that actually fit me – Chinese clothing sizes certainly leave a lot to be desired.

What else am I doing? Well, I’m in charge of the U14 football team, cricket team, volleyball team and the school newspaper, which is keeping me busy during the day, and when I get home, I have loads of DVD’s that I can watch to my hearts content. They are all the new ones that have just been out in the cinema (such as Knocked Up, Transformers and the Bourne Ultimatum) and they cost about 70 pence, which is brilliant. I’m halfway through Heroes, and then I’ve got Lost Series 3 and 24 Season 6 lined up to watch! Bring on Prison Break!

The only down side is that it doesn’t seem like China yet – I know that seems like a silly thing to say, but I am living in such an expat bubble, and it doesn’t seem right at all. A lot of us are planning on moving into the middle of Beijing next year, which will be a bit better, although the taxi ride into school might be an interesting expense. As for the language, I can say turn left, turn right and go straight on, but important things such as ‘more rice’ and ‘where are the toilets’ I just point and shout and hope they understand me – I hope they can understand me!

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve missed loads of stuff out, and other things will occur to me, but I’ve got to go and get ready to play football soon – I’m in a five a side league which is fab.

Rich