Bulgaria with Noodles

Dear Ryan, Congratulations on the Hangzhou jobs! If it is an American-style school, then I hope that it will pay you both some American-style salaries. Now I am trying to search my memory for all of the things that I wish that I had known BEFORE we went to China... First of all, Mandarin. Yes, Mandarin. You need to be absolutely sure that Mandarin is the language that you (and your children) will come across in China, as there are in fact several (rather different) languages. Cantonese is spoken in Guangzhou and HK, whereas most of mainland China speaks Mandarin. Just to be awkward, the people in Shanghai have their own language. Yes, there are some similarities between these different languages, but you need to be absolutely sure which one you are going to need before you start learning it and you definitely should make a start immediately, as soon as you have finished reading this e-mail! DON'T try to learn all of the characters (there is no alphabet). Mandarin has about ...

Here is another reply to a message on the TES . It gives me an excuse for including a few of the excellent photos that were taken by my friend Peter when he came to stay with us in Shenzhen.  In a nutshell, DON'T take the kitchen sink with you. Try to find out as much as you can about what will (and what will not) be provided by the school. Think very carefully about what you really need to take with you and what you could actually do without.  Are you going to get an apartment provided by the school? Or will the school's HR people put you in contact with some letting agencies, so that you might get some choice about your accommodation? Or will there be some other arrangement? It really would be silly to bring with you all kinds of bits and pieces, only to find that those things have already been provided!  Of course you could ask the school's HR people, but an even better strategy is to ask for the e-mail addresses of a couple of the present staff. Most pr...

Our freight has arrived! Yes, it has come all the way from Shenzhen. It took nearly three months to get here and now, at last, it is safely in our home in Kalotina. All we have to do now, of course, is to work out what we are going to with it. (We are not even going to bother trying to answer the question, “Why did we bring all of this junk from China?”) Why is it that you can do without it for three months and then it arrives and then you always wonder why you bothered sending it in the first place? It would have been so much easier (and a lot cheaper) just to give it away or simply throw it all away. In case you are wondering, there is in fact something that is more time-consuming and frustrating than trying to transfer money from a Chinese bank. Can you guess what it is? It is called IKEA furniture. The big yellow-and-blue place is on the wrong side of Sofia and that means driving on the ring road. Argh! Then you have to find what it is that you want and find your way out ag...

Not my favourite place in Sofia If you have been dutifully reading my blog, then you will know that one of the most annoying, frustrating and time-wasting activities is trying to arrange an international bank transfer in a Chinese bank. Slightly less irritating and exasperating is to visit the office of the Bulgarian electricity company in Sofia. In some ways it was a bit like our endless visits to the Microwave Woman. Yes, you have to wait a lot. And then so me more. Finally, when my number came up, it was my turn to talk to the lady at the desk, but my wife had not arrived yet and she had all of the important bits of paper. So I had to take another number and start waiting all over again. Woman with a desk, not a microwave Then my dear Irisha duly arrived and our number came up, so we went to talk to the lady at the desk. She told us that we were in the wrong queue.  After getting our third number and doing some more waiting, we spoke to another lady behind another desk...

Our apartment is full of bags and suitcases. The wardrobes, walls and the bookcase are looking decidedly bare. AGS are supposed to be coming on Thursday afternoon, to take all of our stuff to Bulgaria. 14,000RMB! Well, we thought that it might be a lot less than that. Oh well! The other day our landlady asked us to take some photos of the apartment, as she wants to find a new tenant asap. I am including the photos as part of this post. So do you know anyone who wants to rent a two-bedroomed flat in the centre of Shenzhen? T he good news is that it is central, right in the heart of Shenzhen. We love living right next to the park. Lianhuacun MTR station is a few hundred metres away and the Children’s Palace MTR is only a bit further away. It takes me about twenty-five minutes to walk to school in the morning. The bad news? The smells are dreadful. Sometimes there are ghastly sewage smells coming from the drains and sometimes horrible cooking odours come under the do...

Just over a week ago we had the World Scholar’s Cup at Green Oasis. For most of this semester I have been coaching the twenty-four students in Years 5 and 6 who were going to take part in this competition. It is a rather academic mixture of general knowledge quiz, essay writing challenge and debating competition.  All of the students who took part in the WSC were given an alpaca. They had to promise to be good alpaca parents, to look after their alpacas properly and not eat them. I was also given a small alpaca, but it looks as though he is going to be left behind in China. I know a little girl who would be a good alpaca parent. Judy and Wyatt, two students from my own Year 5 class, did rather well and of course I was very pleased about that. What was not so good was that it went on (and on) and in fact I did not get home on the Friday night until 9pm. After a long week of school, that was tough. Yesterday the man from the AGS freight company came to our apartment, t...