And then there were 6...

So Sean left us this week to go to a much better paid job in Xiamen... so now 6 of us are left including Phil who is pretty much loving life as the now only boy in our apartment. They're hoping to send us someone to replace him, so fingers crossed for a fluent Chinese speaker so we will never be lost again (in our dreams)....

Yesterday was a bit more exciting as during our afternoon classes, an announcement came on over the school tannoy about 20 minutes before the end of class... of course it was all in Chinese, so I didn't understand a word, but this hasn't happened before so it caught my interest. My assistant told me "class is over now" and when I asked what the announcement was she said there was "bad weather" and the children needed to go get their lunch. Very odd seeing as it's been raining a lot the past few weeks and I've never had a class cut short because of it, but I wasn't complaining and hurried off to get my early lunch. When I left the staff canteen with Iris a little while later, the sky had turned completely black. No exaggeration, normally the sky remains a shade of white all day from the sun and the mist, so seeing pitch black in the middle of the day was a bit concerning, especially after the Chinese announcement that still hadn't been translated to us. We ran into the head of English to ask what the hell was going on, to which she told us there was a "typhoon" coming and that we should stay in our office and not go outside. "Should we be worried?" We asked, being new to these tropical climates. You can imagine our response when she said... "Yes". We ran to Phil's office to take cover (as ours is up on the top floor and Iris reckoned this was a dangerous place to be), with all our worldly possesions, sitting and waiting for the typhoon to hit. Sadly this is where this story gets a lot less interesting, as we sat and watched the rain (pretty heavy, I'll give it that) fall and the black sky gradually turn back to normal. If that was a typhoon, I am thoroughly disappointed. Either it was a mistranslation, or the typhoon got really pathetic before it finally hit Houjie... maybe we'll never know. All I know is next time I get warned about a typhoon I might not act with such panic, kind of a boy who cried wolf situation maybe? All in all, my first typhoon experience was a complete utter letdown.

Last night was a unexpectedly good night as we went out for "one drink" with some foreign teachers that work at our partner school across town. This ended up in going out for some incredible street barbeque food with some locals, being toasted about twenty million times (remember a Chinese "cheers" translates as "down your drink in one"), heading to our local English bar for the pub quiz....and losing.

                                                                  Epic street barbeque food

Also, I'm on the hunt for a second job this week, not because my job isn't good enough but just because I've never been the type of person to be satisfied with just the one job. Hopefully some private tuition or something in the evenings so that I can still travel about on weekends, and save enough money to add to my Thailand fund for after the internship!