It was JD's half-birthday yesterday - born six months ago. How time flies! So, a blog entry to reflect on my little son's progress...

Well, he's certainly the sweetheart of the nighbourhood, admired for his large eyes and long eye-lashes. Other young mothers suddenly start ignoring their own kids when JD rolls up! He's recently started to experiment with different sounds and levels of loudness, though no "googoos" or "gagas" just yet. He's very inquisitive and enjoys knocking over plastic bottles and tearing up paper. We're told he's "too thin", despite guzzling vast quantities of milk and mushed fruit. He hasn't yet mastered "flipping over" onto his tummy, but he knows how to and often tries ("not fat enough to roll" they say!). He enjoys his fortnightly swim, although he prefers holding his toes and floating to anything more strenuous [see photo]!

He gets lots of cooing, tickling and peek-a-boos from the three women in the  house and, of course, a  "systematic, didactic, non-peripatetic, educational foundation" from his Dad! He is a calm and reasonable little chap - seldom screaming or  even crying(without good reason, anyway). Needless to say, we are besotted with him and are looking forward to the "speaking, crawling and food-smearing" stages of the next 6 months!

My good friend and colleague Kelly [right, in photo above], got a nice little write-up on Lattitude's blog recently [click here] and rightly so. She is Lattitude's Country Coordinator for China, which means she sets up projects for the volunteers, liaises with the schools and Universities concerned and visits the volunteers once they are at their placement. That, plus coping with lots of admin and hassles (it's a role I myself once managed to "nearly" do for 6 months, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone!). She does a magnificent job though and we enjoy working together during the 8-day "Teaching Skills Course" which I run twice a year. She's also a part-time teacher at Robert's School, where I work, and a regular reader of this blog. So, she's diligent, unflappable AND blessed with great literary taste!! Great combination!

I showed a picture of Prince William and Kate's baby to my good wife the other day to see if she was keeping abreast of world news...

"Know who this is?" I asked.
"Sure, it's that prince baby from Britain" she replied.
Surprised, I probed deeper, "...bet you don't know his name, though".
"I do actually," she went on, "It's George Alexander Louis".
Now I was very impressed (our last royal conversation was when Jiajia asked me whether, when Elizabeth died, her husband would become the King or the Queen of England!?).
"Wow, darling! How did you remember the baby's full name?" I asked.
"Easy," she explained, "George=Giorgio Armani, Alexander=Alexander McQueen, Louis=Louis Vuitton!!"

...welcome to my wife's mind! No really, you are very welcome to it!

My Grandad is a marvel. His had his 102nd birthday yesterday (yes, that's 1-0-2!!) and has only recently started showing signs of deteriation in body and mind. I've already said my "last goodbyes" to him twice, and I may have to do it once again if he's still around in another year's time! He's led a fascinating life, as some readers may know, including being a "concientious objector" in World War 2. So I wish him a really Happy Birthday with (dare I say it?) many more years to come!!

The final destination on my tour of remote countryside schools was LongJie (Dragon Street) Middle School. It’s very poor. The photo shows a typical dormitory - 12 students living in a room the size of my kitchen. As usual, the day started with 2-3 hours in the car, then observing 2 lessons and giving feedback. After lunch, I gave 2 model lessons and an hour’s training. Then supper and 2-3 hours onward journey.

The observed lessons today couldn’t have been more different. The first was a new teacher, with the English name “Shrimp” (!?). She was teaching a Grade 1 class - students who had been learning English for just a week. Shrimp’s English is excellent and she kept it simple and clear. The students eagerly volunteered to come to the front to recite simple greeting dialogues and copied down new letters of the alphabet into their notebooks. The second lesson was from a more experienced teacher called “Ryan”. 90% of it was conducted in Chinese, and it involved the teacher, and later the students, drawing various things on the board and on paper. I was trying to work out the point of it all (with my limited Chinese) right until the bell finally rang and the lesson was over. The other teachers observing the class with me also left very confused. One asked me, “Was that an Art lesson or an English lesson?”. I managed to catch Ryan alone later, but when I asked him about the lesson he suddenly started crying! Once composed, he told me he had planned a lesson from the textbook, but changed his mind at the last minute and decided to try an idea he had read in a newspaper!? The other English teachers had apparently criticised him after the lesson and he now wanted to apologise to me! I ditched my planned feedback about “Teaching Aims” and “Lesson Plans” and tried to encourage him instead. I commended his willingness to try new teaching ideas(!), his bravery in letting others watch the experiment(!!) and assured him that for every failed idea there’s a successful one (right??). 

My own self-esteem took a battering between afternoon lessons. I had a bit of a wobbly tummy and had to rush to the school toilet. Staff and students share the same block - a series of holes in the ground with no partitions, let alone cubicles! Now, the sight of a foreigner in your school is enough for stares in itself, but a squatting foreigner trying to keep his balance amidst the filth is simply too much to miss, and I managed to attract a crowd of 10-15 gawking boys as I did my business! I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me …until I remembered what lay beneath!

I'm pretty hopeless at remembering names, but I can usually spot a familiar face. No such luck last week, though, when I was approached outside my school by a young lady with a cheery, "Hello Paul. Remember me?". Slightly embarrassed I had to confess I didn't. "I'm your old friend Josie, from Guiyang", she explained. I wish I could say there was a sudden burst of memories, but it was only the name that sounded vaguely familiar. Thoughtfully, Josie had brought along some photos of me from that time and a couple of letters I had written to her, too! We've had no contact since then, so it was shock, but a lovely surprise, to meet an old friend. Unfortunately, she caught me right at the moment I was due to take my Lattitude volunteers to lunch, so I had no time right then to stop and reminisce.

However, yesterday we met for lunch and I was able to pore over her old photos and find memories of my time in Duyun, some 16 years ago, slowly creeping back! I was working for V.S.O. at that time, and Josie had just graduated from the Teachers'  College as I began my teaching placement there. I met her socially amongst other friends a dozen times. In my defence, she did look a lot different in those days! The one photo that did ring bells though was me standing in front of a Mao Zedong wardrobe [below], which I spotted in her grandma's house, I think, when I visited.

Josie is now living in Kunming, and married with a 5 year old son. She heard I live here too through a mutual friend and tracked me down to Robert's School on the internet. Unbeknown to me, she'd been waiting for me outside the school for over an hour, poor thing. I'm jolly glad she persevered though.

The "Mei's Mandarin" department of my language school which teaches Chinese to foreigners is picking up new students very nicely these days and proving to be yet another "string to the bow" of the school. I suppose we should take it as something of a compliment then when another language school in a nearby citiy decides to try and copy our approach. My friend Chloe, a fellow foreign teacher at Robert's School and a regular reader of the blog here, spotted this advert in Dali - a city some 4-5 hours away. Spot any similarities to the advertising banner we're been using for a couple of years now (above)? Cheeky, right? Now where's the phone number of that lawyer...?

My previous record for the number of people visiting my blog in one day was a huge 482. Now, excuse any self-indulgence in this entry, but I've just found that on Sept 9th a bewildering 586 folk had a look! Now that's just silly! Who are you all?

After much deliberation and weighing up of pros and cons, Ava and I have decided to try and get a British passport for JD. The other option was to get a Chinese passport at first (free education, no need for visa renewals, certain nationality rights, etc) and then switch to a British one later. But overall, a British passport from the very beginning seemed to have more benefits. We also found out that were I to die JD would no longer qualify for one at all which could create problems. We've been warned that, because we don't actually reside in the UK, JD doesn't automatically qualify for a passport by right but, with a British father, he has a good chance of being granted one nonetheless. We send it off this week - fingers crossed. Here is his passport mugshot!

My Lattitude course finishes tomorrow. Most of the volunteers have stayed well and attended the training sessions with enthusiasm. The Teaching Practices at Robert's School at the weekend went well and today we visited a local Middle School to watch some lessons. After a final day tomorrow, the volunteers fly off to their projects around China for five months of teaching. I'm looking forward to a day off!

My Lattitude course is continuing and we're already over the halfway mark. The other evening I took all the volunteers out to visit Kunming's "English Corner", next to Green Lake, where local Chinese, and some foreigners, gather together each week to practise speaking English in an informal setting. The arrival of ten foreign newcomers caused something of a stir and they were instantly descended on by dozens of eager English speakers, keen to practise! Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience though.

Tomorrow, the volunteers do their first Teaching Practice at our school and I look forward with interest to see the results of their studies and lesson preparation.

Regular blog readers may recall I train a new selection of foreign teenagers for Lattitude every 6 months. The latest intake - only 9 this time - arrived a few days ago and we are already in the middle of the 8 day course. There is a British and an American guy and the rest are Australians. As can be seen in the photo above, the welcome meal on the first evening was "cross the bridge noodles" with a free dance show thrown in for good measure!

JD hasn't shown any sign of speaking or crawling just yet (a bit early, I suppose) but he does impress a bit when a book is given to him, scanning the pictures and turning the page all by himself [pictured here with our live-in nanny]. It's quite funny to see him "reading" and if you've not chosen the book he fancies, he just turns all the pages at once... "...nope, another one please!"