yi, er, san, si.

Towards the end of October, I had just finished class and on my way back to my apartment noticed that a load of students were parading on the playground below. They were senior 1 and junior 1 students - the junior 1s being mine, and my favourites, so I ran back to get my camera and watched the rest of the parades. Each class came forward and had to do a routine in front of a panel of judges.

You won't find this in UK schools and it was a little reminder of the fact we are in a slightly restrictive communist country. Most of the time, we are completely unaware of this. The place is
as everyday as you could imagine. It hits you unexpectedly, like when I tried to send a CD of pictures home to my family but was refused at the post office because they couldn't check what was on it first (This is also a sharp reminder of the poverty - the main town post office doesn't even have a computer).

From the general shittiness of some of the parading, it seems clear that most of the people here don't take it too seriously either. The top classes were good, and it was really interesting to watch, but it all seemed a little forced and out of place.

After the parading, some of my junior 1s asked me to go play ping pong with them. Cos I had a camera with me, it meant that many photos had to be taken. I don't mind, I like these kids.

The photos give you a little glimpse at the school campus, which I haven't gotten round to photographing properly for you all yet. The top two parading pictures show firstly the animal sheds which substitute as the students' dining halls, and secondly the junior 1 classrooms on the top floor of the two-storey building facing the playground, with department offices underneath.

The next two show the main teaching building in the background. All the classrooms are accessed via outside walkways and there are about 6-7 classrooms per level.

This photo also shows standing in front of me, second from the left, a kid who is ping pong mad.
And ever since I played with the junior 1s and spoke some Chinese with them, he always races up to me with his ping pong bat and shouts 'fa ping pong qiu!! fa ping pong qiu!!' (don't check up on that spelling there, it's probably wrong) basically, 'play ping pong ball!! play ping pong
ball!!'. He's a persistant little bugger. He even comes to find me when I'm eating lunch. It's cool though. He's a good kid, and the 11-year olds are only a little bit better than me at ping pong, so I prefer to play with them anyway!!