I could take this opportunity to elaborate on why I felt it necessary to self-censor this blog, but by leaving it unexplained it sounds far more interesting than the reality of the situation.

I calculate all that has blown over now, so I've reopened the archives.

Forget it, Sticksville is closed for business.

wo bu shuo hua le

This week was pretty nightmarish at the start.  Not that it's terribly easy say where the week began as we haven't had a day off since I began on the 3rd.  Recently we've worked a fair few 12 hour days and I feel permanently brain dead.  Putting on a plastic smile and adopting game hostess poses in front of the camera is becoming nigh on impossible. I was about ready to walk out of this job and throw the towel in of this whole godforsaken country on Monday.  And I may well have done were it not for my current lack of financial resources.  And I remembered that I don't like England much either.
I'd be tempted to believe that this whole exercise was a scheme to use me to make westerners look stupid, but it's obvious that all the 'them and us' attitude and the superiority complexes are just ingrained and not premeditated.
To be fair most of my colleagues are ok, on the whole.  I'd go as far as to say that one is actually nice.  However I feel like I'm working in an environment of stereotypes.
I'm having my pronunciation 'corrected' whilst Chinglish is heartily embraced.  One thing that's constantly confronted me throughout my 2 years here is that while people often talk about wanting 'real' English, when it comes down to it, they don't.  People want their English with no illogicalities.  They don't want to 'get off' buses, when they can 'get down', like they do in Chinese.  Basically people seem to want Chinglish with a white face and an RP accent.
So my former burning rage has gone, but I'm left feeling very jaded.  It's finally happened, though I hope it's only temporary- like so many other teachers who come here, I've had enough of China.  Now as I walk around with a smile hearing saying 'foreigner, foreigner' and seeing their undisguised stares, I'm secretly thinking 'stop staring at me you ill mannered bastards'. 
And it's not a cultural difference, I've heard many a time that it's rude to stare here, too.
Hopefully I can come to terms with my current disillusionment,  given that my boyfriend wants me to stay in China for ever and all.

There I was yesterday saying how great it was to have my free time limited and suddenly it all got sucked away.  All of it.  I'm talking about a work day of over 12 hours.

So after the filming we had to revise the script for the first lesson.  Our 3 hours of filming ended up being 10 minutes long instead of the required 20 minutes.   So we had overtime, in which they discussed the lesson at one end of the room and I surfed the internet at the other.  I've found that people don't seem to like it if I add my suggestions (hmm, yes, we'll think about it) so I generally keep a low profile.  On occasion they asked me for ideas so I reeled off a few, which were all subsequently ignored.

At about 9.40pm they proudly produced the revised script.  Five pages long as opposed to the former three.  I was a bit disappointed to find that much of the new content was stuff we'd already filmed, just written out in more detail.

Today we rehearsed and prepared in the morning, then filmed in the afternoon.  It wasn't as painstaking as yesterday.  We did most of the scenes in one or two takes, except the one where I came in as I kept forgetting to say what my name was after I'd greeted the students.  Then when I got it right the students were so bored they forgot to pretend to be excited when I entered.

Still it gets better as we do it more. These early days of me with my uncontrollable haystack hair and my co presenters occasionally making mistakes in their English may be like those first episodes of the Simpsons that look all stange and wobbly drawn.  Then, as the Simpsons, perhaps it will develop into something pretty presentable.

It's six pm now.  Maybe I can go back to the hotel in 3 and a half hours.....fingers crossed....

After seeing that the set was looking pretty resonable the other day I thought there was a good chance of this TV show coming off alright.  We went for a meeting with the carefully selected students, who could barelyt see over the boardroom table.  The studio had all these little colourful tables and backlit pictures on the walls. I carefully studies CCTV International (China Central TV) to pick up some tips on how cheesy foreigners should act on TV.

Then toady I realise that it might not live up to my dreams of a slick yet cheesy production.  There's no continuity for a start.  Stools appear and disappear between scenes.  Books arbitrary appear and disapper from our hands.  The last few props were cobbled together at the last minute, so there seems to be a great deal of irrelevant and unitentional product placement going on.  I camped it up especially, but I was told off for looking too natural.  So to begin each scene we have to vacantly smile into the camera without averting our gaze until our turn to speak.  Each speaking part has to be accompanied with exaggerated game show hostess gestures.  Upon watching the recordings I realise that my accent wouldn't really wash with a native speaker as model Received Pronunciation (leaving me feeling like a bit of a fraud), but people here think I sound the same as the people on the BBC.  The good news it that I don't look fat on the tapes.  So everyone's happy with that one.

It's surprisingly tiring, but the 6 kids keep it amusing by running around like monkeys every time there's a break and playing with the cameras.  They make smart-alec comments and forget their English names too.  It takes the heat of me for forgetting my lines and fiddling with my microphone too.

Considering how avidly I wrote about going to the hairdresser when I was in Sticksville, I may as well write about goign to the hairdresser here in the big city yesterday.  My 2 co-presenters wanted to go and get their hair done, and suggested I go to get the front part trimmed.  After having out hair washed we had to wait for ages for them to start.  I got my colleage to explain my requirements and I also reiterated them several times:
1.  Don't cut the back.
2.  Trim a tiny bit off the front.
3.  Don't even think about feathering it.
The boss cut my hair and wandered off several times for prolonged chats with other customers who were waiting.  And everything I said not to do he did it anyway.  It's quite difficult for a reserved person like me to protest against a hairdresser forcing his Chinese fashion aesthetics on me.  People here think helmet hair with frizzy bits is nice. However when he started feathing the back I had to firmly command him to stop.  But then he started again.  In the end I had to try to explain that it looks horrendous when its featherd and almost burst into tears.  Then he stopped feathering it.  But it's too late.  I have horrible shaggy aging male rock star hair, and god only knows how unsightly it will look when the effects of the straightening wear off.  Bastards.  And he got someone to take pictures of him cutting my hair.  I made sure I grimaced.

And he had the audacity to criticise my former hairdressers for, god forbid, cutting the ends straight (which is what I asked them to do).  Next time I get my hair cut I'm going back to Sticksville.