Birthday Grandma
Sunday
Septeber 8th
Today was my host mothers mothers (lao lao) birthday. She got 74.
We left
home at 10:30 AM and drove to the city to buy a cake (Chinese always get a cake
for birthdays). In China you just go to the bakery choose a type of cake and
they will make for you. Awesome: DD We waited about 20 minutes. I filmed the
women while making the cake :)
Then we
went to a restaurant where we met my host mothers brother, his wife, the
grandmother and her husband, my father and my sister (she came directly after
school).
There was a
lot of food haha :D On birthdays you always eat noodles (instead of rice) after
the dishes, because noodles are long with means long life. The grandma got the
special birthday noodles, which are extra wide.
Military Training
On
Wednesday September 11th the military training started. We had to be
in school at 8:30. It started with School meeting where all the rules and stuff
was explained, but basically it was just one hour of boredom. Then every class
was assigned to a soldier. At 9:30 we started the standing: straight back,
hands attached to your legs, no moving… marching with arms in 40 degrees angle
to your legs and fists. Carola and I didn’t understand anything and just copied
our classmates’ gestures haha.
We
‘trained’ for three hours. September 11th is our classmates
LiuXionas Birthday. She invited us to eat with her and 10 other friends. She
ordered 5 dishes and rice for everyone, some friends got beverages and cake.
The cake was like the grandmas cake freshly made and full of cream.
We had
training until Sunday. It started everyday at 7:50 (the soldiers usually
arrived at 8) lunch break was from 11:30 to 14:30 and ended approximately at 5.
But Carola and I always left at 4 to attend sports class until 18:20.
In the
morning and after lunch we had to stand still for 20 minutes, but our soldier
preferred us standing for 30 to 40 minutes. Awful! If you feel sick you can ask
to sit down, you don’t have to maintain standing, but actually nearly nobody
does that.
After the
standing we trained mostly marching or running. Which is extremely difficult
with 57 people because it should be synchronous. You actually don’t do much in the training, but it is
exhausting anyways because you have to stand the whole day on the sports ground
in the burning sun. There were 2 or 3 10minutes breaks in the morning and in
the afternoon, and sometimes the soldier allowed us to sit for 2 or 3 minutes.
Except the
long standing our soldier wasn’t really strict, he laughed a lot - mostly at us
because our performance looked rather awkward.
Haha, our
class was a little incapable so we learned everything like one day later than
the others, and on Sunday we still couldn’t really run or march synchronous.
On Monday
there was an ending ceremony, but only the well performing students took part
in it, which is why Carola, I and 6 other people from my class were sorted out
hahah!! This performance was graded, each class was surveyed by the
head teacher who then determined the ranking. My Class somehow managed to become
8th (out of 20)…
My sister
also didn’t perform well enough, but she had to go and watch the others though.
I didn’t go, rather slept…
I am extremely
glad this is over now!! It makes absolutely no sense to me, why would you do
that to the students? It’s terrible haha!! The teachers think this is good to
show the students, who is chef and to ‘renew’ their discipline after the summer
holidays. The students who have to participate are all new in school: Senior 1
and Junior 1, but some other Junior Schools don’t have a military training,
that’s why it was the first time for some students and some were already used
to it.
