Baotou To Beijing

On July 31st, the 12-day camp in Baotou Number 9 Middle School (its sports field pictured above) finally came to an end. The camp was tiring, due to the early starts and late finishes but the students’ enthusiastic attitude made it worthwhile. They were patient and approached every piece of work with enthusiasm. These students also showed a great deal of creativity, which surprised me greatly. Students I have previously taught were middlingly (yeah, I know it’s not a word) creative but these guys broke new boundaries! Makes the job all the more enjoyable.

After the final day’s teaching, the principal of the school brought us all out to the “Genghis Khan Palace” restaurant for a feast of meat. He also managed to get pretty much everyone drunk – on Baijiu. What started off as a standard Chinese dinner ended up a chaotic booze-fest! Go on ya good thing!

This was the only bit of Mongolian-style culture that we witnessed during our stay. Most of the population of Baotou is, as I mentioned in a previous post, comprised of Han Chinese. I did notice that some street signs and shop signs did have Mongolian script (see below) to pay lip service to the fact that it is Inner Mongolia. Seems similar to the bilingual (English/Irish) signs in Ireland – the fact is that few people in Ireland can actually understand Irish)


Returned to Beijing to find it in the grip of Olympic fever! People were getting geared up for the impending arrival of the Games. We, on the other hand had a day to rest before starting another camp – no Olympics for us, I’m afraid!