The Beauty of China

If you think of China, what comes to mind? For some it may be small people with funny hats on tilling a rice patty. For others it may the seemingly unending Great Wall or maybe the famous skyline of Shanghai. The great mountain ranges or even a spicy dish from Schezwan province could pop into your mind. These are all great ideas of China and would be enticing for anyone to come visit the country.

Then you get to China. The beauty of China is the little details that this blog will surely fail to convey that make daily life here a complete adventure for a foreigner like me. Lets just try to describe an average day for myself. This usually involves waking up around 6:30am. Shower, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, get dressed and out the door by 7. Seem's like a normal thing right, except for the gas powered stove is so strong you can crisp bacon in about 10 seconds and my ability to cook eggs has me scraping the pan most days. Brushing the teeth is a normal routine, until you remember you can not swallow the water unless you want to catch up on your bathroom reading for the next couple days. I am not even sure what brushing with the water is doing to my body, hopefully no long term consequences.

Take the elevator down from the eigth floor. Good days are when it is just me and one or two other people and I can laugh to myself at the size difference, prominatly displayed because of the mirron on the elevator doors. Bad days are when I share it with one person and an e-bike. They do not walk it in, they drive the damn thing in and give me a dirty look for taking up too much space.

The walk to school involves a couple stares from people, which I generally do not notice as I am trying to see what the ten to fifteen 65+ year ladies are doing. Every day some form of what I can only assume is Thai Chi, sometimes with swords, sometimes with swords and sometimes with something that is half sword half whip.

By now I am a block from my apartment. The walk to school is uneventful except for crossing intersetions as no one really uses the cross walks and since I want to fit in why should I. Add the fact that constructions blocks most drivers view of left hand turns and that the motorbikes and e-bikes dont really follow any rules at all. They never hit me but I get a nice breeze by how close they pass me.

I would say the real adventure is of the nose. Each day I get new smells, some bad some worse as I go by. I have realized that no smell at all to me is a good smell. I feel like a dog with his head out the window, though the dog probably has a less confused face then I do trying to discern what I am smelling and how near it is to me.

At school I get a greeting from the security guards, who are friendly everyday. My classroom is mine own so as soon as I show up I flip on the AC and try and cool the room down. I now have a reputation as having the second coldest classroom behind only my principal. Studends have learned to bring a sweater or coat. Either that or they find someone else in the classroom who likes the 'cold'. Cold obviously means a room of 18 degrees. I wonder what they are going to do in winter.

Classes are usually pretty eventufl as it is a crapshoot to what words the students know and what they dont know. Colony, Royal, Convert, Proclaim. Can you geuss which 2 words they knew and which 2 they didnt. Luckily, I have really nice students and I enjoy teaching them. I have been making an effort to get them to be argumentative every class and look at both sides of an argument. Basically just trying to get them to become permanent Devils Advocates.

Lunch is great here. If I do not have class before lunch I try to get to the cafeteria a little early to beat the torrent of students who literally run to get in line for food. Generally lunch is rice (1 Yuan) some sort of meat dish (4.5 Yuan), veggie dish (3 Yuan dish) and then some adventure dish (4 Yuan) which is usually around 12 Yuan, so about 2-3 dollars canadian. I so far have been happy with it and say it tops any chinese food I have had back home. I eat outside on a second floor balcony in comfy wicker seats with the 4-6 other teachers who eat lunch there. The others will eat on the top floor where only the teachers eat, I find the food there worse. Lots of bones in the food and I generally have no idea what I am eating. Granted i never REALLY know what I am eating but I have higher faith in the second floor cafeteria. I basically walk up and down past tons of dishes and just point at what I want and the servers put it on my plate.

As I waddle away from lunch, I have never been good at eating small portions, I return to my icebox of a classroom and prep for the afternoon. The afternoon classes usually fly for me and the nature of my class schedule has me teaching 2 different lessons as one class is always ahead. I only see each class 4 times a week for 90 minutes each time so by the time thursday comes I have seen one class 4 times and the other 2 3 times and finally get caught up with them friday. I would not say I am overburdened with school. I mean on Wednesday and Friday I do not have my first class till 12:40, so nice days to get a little extra sleep.

When the final bell comes at 4:05 (we start at about 8am) I stay for an hour or two to get ready for the next day, talk to students, gather the energy to walk home or do some prep for the week. Dinner will either be cooked at home but recently have seen me checking out local spots. Went to a Muslim noodle place last week, a favourite of mine in Dalian. Basically a restaurant run by muslims (identifiable by Arabic writing on the signs) that are always good and cheap and tend to be cleaner than most places.  Last night I had a Taiwanese version  of curry, was pretty good.  Also went to a classier restraunt where a colleague and I feasted on egg plant, fried beef and green onion, 15 dumplings, shredded pork and lettuce with noodles, garlic broccoli and watermelon (Watermelon is freaking everywhere here, kind of like corn at the end of august). So overall I am eating as much as when I was a 16 year old. Luckily I feel I am still sweating out more each day so maybe can fight off the buddha belly.

Night usually finds me fighting with my VPN to get working, trying to figure out if I want to clean the apartment or if I can deal with another night and leaving the laundry hanging up around my apartment. Since I dont have a drying rack, my underwear has become fashionable decorations. My apartment is surrounded by huge buildings that all have LED lights on them and every night put on a show. Usually something similar to if a doctor designed something to purposely prove someone had epilepsy by forcing them to seizure to it. For those interested you can look up Nanchang Light Show in youtube for a taste of what I mean. When the lights stop at 11 that usually means it is time for bed and get ready to start it all over again.

So e-bikes in the elevator, playing whats that smell and a human game of frogger at the same time on the way to school, guessing what English  words I will teach today, figuring out what meat I am eating and what part of that animal it is, finding a place to eat with pictures or playing roulette with my meal and a constant barrage of epliepcit lights to put me to sleep, that is the real beauty of China.

I wonder what those elderly ladies will be doing tomorrow....

Nice and Settled In

Well I have been here for about a week and starting to feel at home. I have been basing my comfort level based on how boldly I cross the streets here. While there are lights to indicate when cars and buses can cross an intersection, the tuktuks, motor cycles, ebikes, bicycles, and numerous pedestrians all seemed to march to their own beat. So I just join in now. I find the cars will get extremely close but not actually hit you. Definitely make sure you look both ways though.

The last week surely has been a unique experience. The fact that my fellow teachers are extremely nice and willing to help out has been a huge help.  Been out for a couple nice meals and what we affectionately call  "hole in the wall" joints. A place where for 5 bucks a friend and I got a meal and a drink, all the while the cooks child slept under the table next to us (their were only 3 tables in the joint). We have found a ton more similar joints but yet to try them out. Took an elevator ride down with a guy on a motorcycle, had some more late night BBQ (seriously the best part about china, will probably get a blog going just on this), accidentally tried frog and chicken neck (two seperate dishes and both completely gross). So ya, getting some good 'cultural' experiences in.

School is progressing well. The students are full of energy and questions. I never have any issues with disrespect or classroom management issues, usually just trying to control the energy. I had one student come and ask me about the War of 1812 which through me for a loop as I have no idea how he heard about it.

Still getting tons of stares walking down the street, usually it is the old woman who are most vocal about yelling what I have found out translates to "ha, what a tall foreigner".

So my two stove elements are gas powered and extremely powerful. First couple meals I cooked were so burnt even my dad would not have had them.  I am making progress with them, was able to to cook myself scrambled eggs without burning them this morning. Now, it is possible they were not fully cooked as I was so worried about burning them but I will take the small victory. Realized my favorite home cooked meal is frying up onion, potato, green pepper and bok choy with instant noodles.

Figured out the laundry machine, not sure how clean the clothes got but they were wet at the end (again the small victories).

Thats all for now, will update as more stories arise. This country is still blowing me away with how unique it is, and it will surely create more stories.