WITH THIS ENTRY ALSO COMES A PROMISE TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY ALONG WITH EVERYONE WHO READS MY BLOG THAT THIS IS MY LAST ENTRY WHINING ABOUT CLASSROOM ASSISTANTS.

Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

Unless those in the countryside prosper, those in the city can hardly rest easy!

Wanna smoke mate?
Nah, I’ll just go outside and breathe for awhile!

In my last blog I wrote that it was the end of the rapeseed harvest well it seems I was a little too hasty as I think today and tomorrow will literally mark the end of the harvest as outside we can barely see the tops of the small multi-storied buildings due to the smoke coming from the fields. The farmers are now burning both the fields and the leftovers from the rapeseed harvests and my eyes and throat are now dry, itchy and very sore.

It’s ok though, I’ve got some coldies readying themselves in the freezer to sooth the throat and I just had two hay fever tablets and when combined they should relieve how crappy my head, eyes and throat feel at the moment.

I had such a wonderful and uplifting experience after a horrible afternoon with my noisy Grade 4’s today. After class Jennifer and Lilly (two of my favourite Grade 4 students) after giving me a small present each thanked me for trying so hard to teach them each class even though we know it will never be as it should. They always sit and wait patiently for me to try my best to and begin each class before taking it upon themselves to leave their seats and race around the classroom beating the horrible boys over the head with their rolled up books.

Over the term they’ve had many of the boys in tears begging for mercy.
They then wait silently until I nod for them to do other homework.
No matter how hard we try, the three of us try we never win.
That takes me to my whereabouts next term.

I can tell you that it won’t be bloody here mate as I’ve had more than enough of this school, its disrespectful students and some shifty goings on such as 'secret contract pages’ that find daylight when it benefits the school that weren’t part of the contract that I signed at the beginning of term. Last month I got the very raw end of some prawns and spent the morning running from my bed to the toilet and as I love teaching, I stupidly went back to class after lunch feeling like crap to then leave class feeling even worse as I had Grade 4 for the afternoon. All schools here in China offer their teachers several ‘sick days’ with pay but at the end of the month when it was salary time this school produced a ‘secret contract page’ and no matter what I said and argued I still lost half a day’s pay even though I only missed two classes.

Even though I have tried, I am yet to obtain a copy of that page to give to Buckland’s.

So after several emails between my Fujian friends, Buckland’s and myself I have decided that I will be more than happy to head back to my old school in Shaowu city in Fujian Province where I spent all of 2007 to mid 2008 living and teaching. I have had other schools to choose from one of which is a very wealthy Private School that comes complete with;

NOT A SINGLE CLASSROOM ASSISTANT TO BE FOUND FOR ANY OF THEIR CLASSES!
Gee the parents and students are getting their value for money there!
Yeah for schools that pay so much to show a foreign face!
That even goes for the tiny grade one and grade 2’s!

I think anyone who has been following my blog all these years will have noticed a big change in not only my writing style but also my personal happiness since I have arrived in this school in Hanzhong city. I have spent the last hour reading over my entries for most of the past term and when I compare them to my all my other schools I find that my writing is now full of bitching, moaning and whinging and whining and to be serious I no longer love my job.

I hate the feeling of rising each morning dreading the days classes before me.
I also hate the feeling of being worthless more than anything.

The latter so much so that this month after walking out on one of my Grade 4 classes and one of my Grade 5 classes several days later I was happy to lose half a day’s salary simply not to have to get out of bed and teach the same two classes again. At the end of this month when the school brings forth their ‘secret contract page’ when I collect my salary I will be more than happy to inform them that I was happy to pay them the money just so I didn’t have to waste my time walking out on two of their many assistant-less classes.

I loved my time in Shaowu so much and the school has easily been my favourite school for the nearing five and a half years I’ve been here in China.

The school is wonderful and I really do miss all my friends and the fun times we had together. I still keep in constant contact with Joyce, Mary, Yan, Yuwenjin, Yujin and several others so we are all getting very excited at seeing each other at the beginning of September. Add to that the fact that it is surrounded by fields and hills full of awesome bike rides, some of which that took me over a year to piece together so there really isn’t much to think about when it comes to what to do next term.

Believe me, I only have one more month here and I am more than over all of this shite.

BUT it does show that no matter what you do and no matter how much you love your life and job stupid decisions by greedy management can still ruin things for everyone and in this case it actually involves the education and the money of around six hundred students and parents each week. That is the reason I feel so worthless and continue to write about it so enough is enough and now it’s time to move on.
 
Sp let's get amongst the buffalos that can be found mostly to the south west of Hanzhong city.

Of course water buffalos can be found in all other compass points but strangely there seem to be more found to the south west of the city. Obviously the photos for this entry are from what we call the ‘Water Buffalo Ride’ which begins across the Han River in English Sarah’s ‘South Central Hood’ and from there we simply follow the river side tracks that take us through many villages until we find the first ferry that takes us back to the western villages of the city and from there we slowly ride through the villages to our ‘Northern Hood’.

Sorry for the ‘Hood’ stuff, it is childish but Ice T and Body Count came on the iPod before and it took me back to ‘the Rodney King’ riots in South Central LA. Ice T was soon after robbed and relieved of all his music equipment and the first number he dialed was that of the police and the whole Cop Killer thing was quickly hushed and forgotten.

Now for a little bit on the Water Buffalo here in Asia

In the wet areas of rural China one of the favorite beasts of burden is the water buffalo.

These ponderous, slow beasts are used in the wetter parts of China, particularly in the rice growing regions and it also supposedly takes a lot of patience to manage one of these animals. Mid-February marks the start of spring rice planting season in southern China and around twenty five days after sowing, when the rice shoots are several inches high, workers dig them out of the crowded seedbed for transplanting into the rice paddies which have been plowed by water buffalo.

Water buffalos are only used in the wet areas as they need lots of water to live and the adult male Water Buffalo range in size from four hundred to nine hundred kilograms for the domestic breeds, while the wild animals are nearly three meters long and two meters tall and weigh up to one thousand two hundred kilograms.

Females are about two-thirds this size.

River buffalo are usually black and have long curled horns, whereas swamp buffalo can be black or white (or both) with gently curved horns and the largest recorded horns are around two meters long. There are differences between swamp buffalo and river buffalo. Swamp buffalo have swept back horns and are native to the eastern half of Asia from India to Taiwan and all are similar in general appearance and river buffalo generally have curved horns and are native to the western half of Asia.

Domesticated for seven thousand years water buffalo are one of the oldest breeds in the world. They are distributed throughout the world and it has been said that they are also one of the world’s most adaptable animals. Although considered exotic in most western countries they are a regular farm animal in the rest of the world and have a world population of one hundred and eighty million.

Water Buffalo therefore can hardly be considered an exotic animal.

They are a very durable and hardy breed and are mostly found from the lowlands of Southeast Asia to the arid lands of Egypt and north throughout the Balkan countries and Italy and can thrive in areas where cattle will starve and this is one of the reasons for their explosion in numbers throughout South America.

Water Buffalo meat is very tasty, it is a naturally lean red meat and many say that it is ‘beefier than beef’ when describing the taste and can be substituted for any regular beef dish. Water Buffalo milk is very rich and many products can be made from it such as butter, ice cream, yogurt and condensed and evaporated milk.

Other worthy attributes of this animal are their life span which is around thirty five years and their disease resistance is unquestionable.

Beers N Noodles toya…..shane

PS: Sadly tomorrow will be another of those many wasted days as all day I have Grade 4 and with Grade 4 comes complete with NO FARKING classroom assistants so i will teach next to farkall and stand looking out the window wishing I was elsewhere.
PSS: Yes you may think that it is easy and that I'm getting paid for doing nothing and that I'm bitching but try doing this in front of sixty students for four forty-five minute classes.
PSSS: I know so many people who hate their job but they do it solo sitting behind a computer screne or at a 'point' on a production line but now sit back and think about doing it with sixty screaming kids before you for forty to forty five minutes for five months in your year...it's a real killer in the self worth department and believe me I know the procuction line and I also know the behind the computer screne thing.

You can not compare...you simply can not compare!
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That’s not my job! My job is eating these doughnuts!
The soundtrack to this entry was by Body Count
The album was ‘Cop Killer’
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