Tuesday 23rd October 2018

Another early start for breakfast so that we could be in the junior high school to meet our Chinese buddies. They took us to their first and second lessons with them, each lesson lasting 40 minutes. The students in China remain in the same classroom all day and their teachers come to them. The size of the classes range from 40 - 60 students.

We were all in different lessons but between us we saw Chinese, English, Chemistry, Physics, Maths, History and PE.  At 9.40 the whole school went outside for morning exercise. We were gobsmacked at how quickly so many students got into their positions and also very proud that the boys joined in (we have video evidence to prove it don’t we Harry!). After morning exercise we went back to class for two more lessons. We were once again overwhelmed with the gifts received from the Chinese students - we are not sure how we are going to fit everything in the case - we haven’t even been shopping in Beijing yet.

After a lovely lunch it was time for a rest before we had a short tour around parts of the school we hadn’t yet visited.

Then it was time for The Match! We knew it was going to be a big deal when Mrs Hogg was called to a meeting to discuss the opening ceremony! Think Sky Sports.... Stadium type atmosphere with ‘St Aidans Catholic Academy’ written across their digitised screen, TV cameras and two drones! The only thing we were missing was our national anthems.

The teams were introduced over the PA system then entered the field hand in hand with their counterparts. Their principal along with Mr Sanderson were called to the pitch to shake each players hand before kick off.

St Aidan’s started well considering they put a team together from the 19 lads travelling (Daqing had the pick from around 500 boys), closing the first half 0-0.  Mr Sanderson will claim that what happened in the second half was down to his inspirational  half time team talk... it may have spurred them on to play out of their skins, but it was down to the hard work and perseverance (heard those words anywhere before boys?) from every player on the pitch. The game finished 4-0 with goals scored by Matthew Norman, Zac Tivnen, Harry Thompson and Callum Mckitterick.

We also had some amazing support from the rest of the lads and from a large group of Chinese girls who were all waiting for photos - they felt like celebrities.

After our evening meal we were invited along to the the schools United Nations Conference. This is an after school club run weekly which emulates that of the United Nations. This weeks topic was ‘Sustainable development of the Amazon forest’. We were pleased that 8 of our group volunteered to help out with four of them speaking publicly in the formal arena. Well done boys.

We were all exhausted after such a busy day and had an early night.

‘The lessons we’ve been into today were really different to back home. I also love the football game, we were over the moon to win’ Harry T

‘Lesson were strange at first but but the end of them I really enjoyed them. I also enjoyed taking part in the morning exercise.’ Matthew N