Well although I still haven’t been paid for this month I feel slightly better after being informed nobody has been paid, so it’s not just us. It still leaves me scratching around and unable to do any serious shopping but hopefully it will be resolved tomorrow or at the latest Friday, otherwise I am in shtuck.
Anthony came a couple of nights ago and presented me with a week’s worth of China Dailies. Thinking he had bought them for me, I thanked him but he told me he had just happened to go to the campus post office and they had been arriving and the woman had no idea how to get them to me. Apparently I had subscribed to the paper. It was the first I had heard of it and I said that I hoped nobody was going to be looking for me to pay the 2y a day it costs, especially as I can read it online.
When I arrived at my class today a student gave me a letter and the envelope stated it was from the State Administration of Foreign Affairs. I thought bloody hell, what have I done now? Am I to be deported unceremoniously for some infraction?
I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter, which had helpfully also been provided in Chinese as well. It was a standard letter every foreign expert has been sent, thanking us for our work in improving social conditions and bridging the culture divides. It went on further to say that selected experts would be sent free copies of China Daily from now until the end of the year! Mystery solved. They are trying to elicit foreigners’ views and experiences of and in China. As I think they pay a couple of hundred yuan for the tales they publish, I may have a crack at submitting one.
The preliminary round of the national English speaking contest takes place on Friday. This evening Queenie (one of my students) and Anna both want me to go over their speeches and critique them. Queenie I can understand but Anna does this with everything, she leaves all to the last moment and she has known the topic since before the summer holidays. She will also read this and Anna I hope you are embarrassed by your lack of application! I will go over both speeches tomorrow after my class, following which Anna will probably do what she did last time - recite it ad infinitum all night and not go to sleep.
The Borrowers (Andrei and Juliette) have this afternoon more or less wiped out my supply of crockery, cutlery and glassware. I can’t wait for her to get paid so she can buy her own! However they have bought tonight’s food and he has spent all day preparing a Romanian soup, main course and two rather large apple strudels currently cooking in my oven. Sadly I need to conserve funds, so I will be taking one bottle of Aussie wine and one of my cheap stuff. It also seems that they will know within a week whether in fact he will be given a job teaching here or not. Quite where the classes will come from I have no idea but if they can rustle up a position for him I for one will be happy. It makes a pleasant change not to have to cook at all for the Bucharest Beanfest (I couldn’t find any cities in Romania beginning with W to pair it with Wednesday!). I will remember my camera this time.
Thursday 15th
Still unpaid.
However, eight of us sat down for dinner last night, from left to right in the two photos are Richard, Andrei, Juliette, Anthony, Jane, Ann and Joan. Having never tried Romanian food before I was a trifle concerned I might not like it. It was certainly different!
The soup was a strange chicken affair with liberal amounts of lemon juice in it and with which you are meant to eat vinegared chillis with (blew my tongue off), whilst the main course was a crock-pot of fatty pork, cabbage and rice filled dumplings accompanied by a very salty yoghurt sauce. Both were tasty and of course apple strudel is apple strudel but naturally there was no cream or custard seeing as they are difficult to obtain. Anthony had brought a bottle of baijiu to the party and both Andre and Juliette sampled it. Whether they will repeat the experience remains to be seen.
Just before my class this afternoon I had a call from Jane (another one, this is the Dean’s assistant) asking me if I could be a question master at the speaking contest tomorrow afternoon. I can, although if the salary is in the bank in the morning I will go shopping first. I was also asked to tell Richard about it, which I did about an hour ago. He can’t do it because they have scheduled his initial medical exam in Anqing for tomorrow so I have no idea whether I will be the only one or they will get a Chinese teacher to take his place. Annoyingly the first time I will see the speeches will be when the competition starts. In the past Kevin and I were given them a couple of days in advance so we could ensure our questions weren’t the same, not to mention that coming up with questions on the hoof rapidly isn’t easy when they expect you to ensure they aren’t too hard for the speakers. Puzzlingly, this is only the first of two preliminary rounds and normally we aren’t asked to be question masters until the school final.
So my three days off will be anything but. The contest tomorrow and then Saturday and Sunday I am expected to put a couple of hours in manning the language stall. It could be worse, at least the weather is nice.
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