Welcome to Yinchuan 欢迎来银川

We've now been in Yinchuan a few weeks and it's fair to say that it's been a roller-coaster. Coming to a new city and joining a new company is a steep learning curve, but one that I feel like I am adjusting to relatively well.

The Drum and Bell Tower

We've survived our first month of teaching and it's been pretty fun. The much smaller classes (from 50ish to max 18) are great, and getting to teach a larger range of ages has been interesting and at point surprising. Before coming to Aston I would have said that my preferred age group was the little ones, but the more I teach the higher level classes the more refreshing and rewarding I'm finding it. Teaching tiny kids is energetic, crazy and fun but they just don't have the same language skills let you get to know the kids in the same way that you can get to know the higher level students. Low level classes may be filled with games, screaming and the occasional tears but the higher levels have their games too. The fun remains, but the tears and screaming go. Teacher and student can finally have a conversation and you get to see what your students are really about – last week a 14 year old student of mine went off on a massive rant about how he would never date a girl who smoked, and it was great! They have acquired the language to communicate their opinions and having a discussion about anything is more rewarding for me than finally getting a class of 5 year olds to say “It's a crayon” after an extensive uphill struggle of pronunciation and games.

My lovely teaching box, full of tricks.

Teaching at Aston is completely different to teaching in public school in Suzhou, but in a good way. It still has the manic Chinese style of nothing really happening as anyone expects it to, but Aston is also a well established company in China and it does show. We have a strict syllabus that we closely follow, the Chinese teachers (CTs) are great and so so helpful, and the school actually has resources – a complete revelation after our evening in Suzhou were mainly spent making flashcards.

Games have become a big part of my teaching life now and its amazing how poorly a game that worked amazingly for a class of 50 kids can completely bomb in a class of 10. This slow realization that my games repertoire may be more limited that I have previously though has forced me to get more creative and think of some way, any way, to inject that all important fun into a class. Luckily the CTs here are well seasoned experts in the classroom so they have an insane amount of games up their sleeves, and slowly this knowledge is getting passed down to us. The box I carry around from class to class is a mix of flashcards, toys, giant dice, bowling pins, fly swats, balls, sticky balls, and anything else that can make my job easier – I could elaborate what all these tools are used for, but for now I'll let imagination take over!

The first few weeks in Yinchuan we spent settling in and manically getting to grips with our heavy load of planning, but now everything seems to be under control and we can spend more of our free time exploring our new home. Thus far, Nish has been taking the reigns on our social life and introduced us to the existing group of foreigners and all their favourite hangouts and despite the complete lack of foreigners in Yinchuan, we've forged a solid group. It's amazing how many people seem to have come to Yinchuan on year contracts and then just sort of never left. From the perspective of a newbie it's encouraging to know that there is something that sucks people into the city and makes them not want to leave. At the moment there are 6 foreign teachers with Aston in Yinchuan, Jenny and I are two of them. The third is Nish, the Welsh-without-an-accent veteran at Aston; font of knowledge for all things school related and always up for a beer to unwind. Jake and Becky, the American couple and some of the nicest people I know with more hobbies and interests than anyone I've ever met, take our number to 5; and then there's Dan, the complete newbie who just arrived yesterday and is getting thrown in at the deep end. Oh, and then there's Lisa and Orion. Lisa is a CT at school, and while most of the CTs are pretty insular among themselves, Lisa is dating Nish and is completely lovely. Orion used to work as a CT at Aston but we'll still count him in the list because he's teaching us how to talk like a local (and letting us know when we're accidentally asking someone to make out, instead of saying “excuse me”!) and is a great guy - he's also promised to teach me to cook like a proper Chinese person as part of my big Yinchuan self improvement plans!. All in all I feel very lucky that all the people here are so friendly and that no one has shown themselves to be a weirdo just yet.

A who's who. Put the names to the faces.
Orion, Jenny, Dan, Lisa, Me, Becky, Jake, Nish.

So school is under control, we have friends, now it's time to explore. Exploration so far has been pretty successful, we managed to find the drum and bell tower in the middle of town and the other night Orion took us to a beautiful park full of stunning Islamic architecture all centred around a Taj Mahal-eque building in the centre of the park. With all the light and water fountains it's a truly stunning place in the night time. We still have plenty to discover and explore here, and what better time to explore than with a week long holiday?  欢迎来银川!

Islamic architecture meets Chinese