Pay Day

Pay day was Tuesday, three weeks and five days after I first arrived in China. I was expecting to receive forty-five one hundred yuan notes stuffed into a fat brown envelope; instead I was handed a plastic bank card, deposit slip and pin number. This came as a slight surprise, possibly because the word bank had never cropped up in conversation before.

After moving to the UK, it took Katka a couple of months, two branch visits, a signature and four official documents before she could open a bank account. Here in China things are evidently a little simpler.

To mark the halfway point of our teaching contracts, ten of us are off to Shanghai this Saturday afternoon on an overnighter, returning late Sunday evening. Hopefully the city will live up to expectations. As usual, the organisation of transport and accommodation hasn't been entirely straightforward - if only the Chinese bank account principle extended as far as someone booking a hostel and sorting out bus and train tickets for me before I even realise I'm going to need them.

This week I've also managed to whittle my preparation time down to around two and a half hours, which means I'm now working eight hour days with an extra two hours on top for general time wasting, Internet surfing and eating. Life's a blast.