September 2007 Journal
Finally, I'm a Teacher - Friday September 28, 2007I feel like a fraud, but I'm having the time of my life!
It's a strange mixed emotion. I don't have any kind of teacher certification and I don't know a thing about different schools of thought on how to successfully teach new ideas. I don't really belong in front of my classes, but they don't know that and I don't tell them. We end up having a great time! I wonder if all teachers feel like this at one point or another? If they just wake up one day and realize that they don't belong in front of a class, but they go anyway?
I really am enjoying myself, though. I started teaching on Monday morning. I have 6 classes each week. Monday - Friday, I teach from 10:10 to 11:50. Then I also have a Wednesday afternoon class from 2:00 - 3:40. Each course has a 10 minute break, so I'm technically working for 9 hours a week. That means I'm working 36 hours a month for Y4500. That's Y125 / hour, or $16.67 American money. Not too shabby! (It would amount to more if I counted my free accomodations.)
My classes are pretty big... I can't say exactly how many students are registered for each because 1) I don't have an official roster provided by the University, and 2) many students come to my class without actually being registered because they want the chance to see / listen to a foreigner. My classroom seats 120, but my biggest attendance so far has been 68. I think roughly 45 students are actually registered for my classes and the rest are just coming to check me out.
I plan on using the same lesson plan 6 times a week because each class is supposed to be comprised of different students, and each class is a postgraduate level Oral English course. However, I've already noticed some students coming to my class more than once in a week just to see me. One student came to hear me 3 times this week alone! I hope the novelty wears off quickly and I'm stripped to a bare-bones group of students so that we can more easily do group activities.
My students are all studying in very science-heavy areas. I have a class of mostly medical students. Another class is filled with mechanical engineers. I have a lot of various engineers, computer science, and technology students. They're nerds! And so am I! So we relate with each other pretty well. When I say that my hobbies are designing websites and video games, everyone wants to know which sites I've made and which games I play. They're also all close to my age. I'm 24 and the majority of my students range from 21 to 27.
I don't know how I lucked out so much... when I first decided to move to China for a year, I had no idea who I would be teaching, where, how much a week... anything! I knew nothing. Now I'm at a big university teaching postgraduate science students in oral English classes... that's just about exactly what I would have devised as my ideal situation here. My living situation is great: computer in my apartment, kitchen, Western-style toilet, a big bed... am I just the eternal optimist or is this really a pretty great place to be right now in my life?
This first week, my lesson plan was really simple. I discussed my rules and expectations for the class. I talked about how I would assign grades and how our class sessions would be organized. Then I spent a lot of time introducing myself, talking about my family and my home, and then we started talking about public speaking. I asked my class to prepare a very short speech to present to a group of people. Then I explained how public speaking can help out the confidence of a speaker because it gives you the rare opportunity to prepare what you want to say before you actually have to speak. I think they'll enjoy it.
The University is rearranging next week for the National Day holiday break from school. We'll get a whole week off, but in order to do so, they are moving the Thursday and Friday classes to Saturday and Sunday. I basically have to work this weekend to earn my entire week off next week. I don't mind, but since it's only two of my classes, I don't want to give them a huge prepared lesson because then they will be a week ahead of my other 4 classes. I decided that we'll just play oral English games like 20 questions and maybe invent a big tandem story. I'm trying to think of fun ways for them to speak English, to get to know me better, and to not get ahead of my other classes as far as homework assignments and units go.
Well, that sums up my teaching experience from my first week as a teacher here at the University. I'm sure I'll come up with more details and stories as soon as I leave my computer, but those will have to follow in subsequent entries. Until then!
Shanghai, Trip 2 - Sunday September 23, 2007
Yesterday, I got back from my second trip to Shanghai. Justin, Kellen and I went on Wednesday morning. We caught the bullet train, so the trip to Shanghai was only 1 hour and 30 minutes. When we got there, we went straight to the hostel and checked in. They had upgraded our room from the 8-bed dorm to a 4-bed dorm, and there was no fourth person. The three of us got our own room!
The first excursion we took was out to the rip-off market under the Science and Technology Museum. The subway station basement is filled with shops selling questionably-authentic goods. We had an amazing time just bargaining with everyone for everything. At one point, I had one vendor on each arm pulling me back and one vendor blocking the door so I could not exit. I showed interest in a Polo cashmere sweater (questionably cashmere), and the bargaining started at Y780. Soon I had the "special friend" discount, Y680, and after that, the usual "best price" of around Y500. By the time I left the store, I had it down to Y50, so I bought a nice dark green sweater. Shortly after at another store, I got a nice white sweater (identical, but white and with a v-neck) for Y50 again. I think Justin and Kellen were really enjoying the bargaining process - they got some Quiksilver and Billabong shirts for Y25 each (after I think the lady probably started around Y300). We're all finally getting better at bargaining.
I just googled the Polo sweater - it's not cashmere, but it's a "soft blend of cotton and hemp," and it retails for $149. I got it for Y50, which is $6.67. Awesome!
Wednesday night, we didn't do much. We went to Carrefour, had a few drinks, met a Scottish (maybe Irish?) guy named Allister, and ate at the Be For Time Tea House, which had really good black pepper fried rice.
Thursday, we went to Yu Garden. It was busy, touristy, and cheesy as usual - and the line for fresh dumplings was really long! We forsook our quest for good dumplings and went into this cafeteria-style eatery. Best decision we made in Shanghai! The crab fest is going on and the delicious hairy crabs were in the eatery for only Y22 / plate. It was a big plate stacked full of hairy crabs cooked in butter, sesame oil, and crushed red peppers. They were delicious! I had hairy crabs in Shanghai during the Crab Fest. That's a pretty major event I can check off of my list of "things to do before I die."
Eating the crab was really good but also messy. I got butter and oil all over my shirt. I had to go back to the abusive t-shirt vendor at Yu Garden to get a nice green tshirt with a red communist star on it. She got out her calculator (the sign that hardcore bargaining is about to commence), but I just said, "Please, I've been here before, I know what I'm going to pay for the shirt, and so do you." Y20, and then Justin and Kellen both got matching tees for Y20. Some night out, we all want to wear them - as if we didn't get enough strange looks already!
Thursday afternoon, we did more regular tourist stuff in Shanghai. I don't remember whether it was Thursday or Friday, but we walked up and down the river front, we took a ferry across and shopped at the Super Brand Mall in the Pudong area (where we ran across two people in BEAR SUITS riding our elevator, dressed like a bride and groom ... it was very surreal), and we walked the length of Nanjing East, ate lunch at Taco Bell, and walked the length of Nanjing West. The Taco Bell was great - it was a nice, sit-down Mexican food restaurant with really good dishes - not the usual 99-cent tostadas that I usually get!
Anyway, Thursday night was amazing. We found a bar called De La Coast that had a Y100 cover ($13), then open bar all night. The open bar had some great drinks, too! I started with a few gin and tonics, but ended up having mainly Johnnie Walker Black Label and Coke. We got there about 9:05 (it started at 9), and we were the only people in the bar. We stepped outside onto the terraced roof to find a view overlooking the Bund on the left, the Huangpu river in front of us, and the lit-up Pudong skyline in front of us. The view was gorgeous and absolutely surreal. We sat for about 30 minutes undisturbed, admiring the view and refreshing our drinks, until some Australians showed up. They were really cool - 2 guys and a girl, and we ended up hanging out with them until about 3 a.m. But slowly, the magic of the bar deteriorated as more and more foreigners showed up. Luckily, as the environment lost its novelty, my brain lost some oxygen and I started to get drunk.
The people in the bar were crazy. There were three Chinese girls dressed up like tennis players (complete with racquets!) who spent the night dancing right in front of the DJ's sound system. We met a group of students from all over the Eastern U.S. who were studying at some nearby University. Mostly, though, the crowd consisted of what have been labeled "LBH's". That stands for Losers Back Home, and it's an understatement. The sleaziest, douche-baggiest, weirdest people seem to flock to Shanghai. They come from all over, but the majority are Western European. I'm embarrassed to be a foreigner in China after seeing the stock with whom I'm being associated. The three of us and the Australians were very relaxed, enjoying the view and just going out to see the nightlife, but almost everyone else was - for lack of an even more cynical term - trolling for booty.
Despite all the weirdoes, we had a great night. At one point, I was about to get my ass kicked because I was popping my collar and making fun of all the douches in the bar, but fortunately everyone there was a lover, not a fighter (to the extreme), and I got to have my fun without getting in a big fight that would result in my deportation out of China.
Sometime around 1:30 a.m., we were sufficiently drunk and the Australians wanted to show us Attica, one of the "top dance clubs" in Shanghai. It was just a few blocks away, so we stumbled down to that club and, who'd have guessed, it was filled with what could have been a cloned population from the bar we had just left! Anyway, I danced with an unattractive redhead, I walked into a mirror on a wall because I thought it was a hallway, and Kellen almost got into a fight with a belligerent Italian guy. Finally, it must have been around 2:30 a.m., we caught a taxi and somehow made it back to our hostel without a problem.
But we didn't go right into the hostel. We were hungry and the nearby McDonalds was open 24 hours. We hit it up, had some deliciously greasy American food, and then tried to get back to the hostel the back way. We came up on a big cast-iron gate that was locked, but instead of walking the extra 100 meters around, we decided it would be a good idea just to scale this 10-foot wall. It was almost 4:00 a.m. now, and Justin just hopped up onto the hood of this car next to the gate to start climbing over. The car had a silent alarm and the lights started flashing, but he just continued on over. Not to be outdone, I hurried and jumped up this side gate with some cement. By the time I dropped down, I had a big red scrape and bruises along my left forearm. I think Kellen made it over unscathed. We got upstairs and into bed.
The rest of our trip was pretty normal - we ate at the BBQ skewer place where I had spent so many meals with my Korean friends and with Kirsten, only this time we had them light up our own barbecue pit so we could cook the skewers ourselves right at our table! We caught a bullet train home on Saturday afternoon, but since we didn't have a seat from Shanghai to Suzhou, we ended up playing Hearts on the train floor. We finally got seats when 90% of the train car alighted at Suzhou, and soon we made our way back to Zhenjiang. Getting home was strange. I felt that familiar relief when you're done with a trip somewhere. I got back to my apartment and just kicked off my shoes. I can't explain how weird it is to return to my little city in China and feel like I'm home. It's a good feeling, but definitely strange.
All in all, our trip to Shanghai was a huge success, mostly because of our ridiculous and fun Thursday night. I have pictures of everything from the view at the bar to the bears in the elevator, but those will have to wait before getting posted - I'm hungry!
An Evening on the Riverfront - Tuesday September 18, 2007
New Pictures! I updated my Zhenjiang photo album. New pictures from the Lava bar, downtown Zhenjiang (both day and night), and the river front! Check it out here.
Today is really rainy. Justin, Kellen, and I ventured down to the cafeteria for lunch, but other than that, I'm just shut up in my apartment today cleaning, doing laundry, playing video games, and getting ready to go to Shanghai tomorrow.
Sheila, mine and Justin's boss, called on Sunday to tell us that we would have a meeting on Wednesday to discuss our teaching schedules. She also
told me that I'll begin working on Monday, September 24th. I started working on my lesson plans. I'm trying to tailor them specifically to oral
English and spoken language, because in my experience, the Chinese students can memorize, write, and read English just fine - but when you try
to have a conversation with them, they can only recite previously-memorized sentences to you. "How are you?" "Iamfine. Thankyou. Andyou?" I want
to make them more confident in their English ability, so I'm making lesson plans that revolve around debates, preparing speeches, and personal
conversations with me. (One assignment early-on will be to call me for a 2 minute conversation. That way, I can judge the different abilities of
the students in my class.)Anyway, since we'll be starting work soon, Justin and I decided we should visit Shanghai for a few days while we still have free time. Kellen doesn't start teaching until after the October break, so he has nothing but free time, too. I'm excited to show them around - hanging out with them is great because they're happy and optimistic to be here, too. Too many of the foreign teachers I meet seem really disillusioned or frustrated with China. I hope I don't get that way after a few more months. People wanting to move here to teach should do more online research to figure out what they're in for.. maybe that would help with the culture shock they seem to all have. (Or it's possible that I'll get to that frustrated point sometime in the future! But I hope not.)
I'm torrenting the Wonder Pets show. My nephews love it and they got me hooked. Great, I'm a 24-year-old single male, and I'm downloading the freakin'
Wonder Pets. Maybe I can use that for a class lesson sometime: we'll watch an episode and then we can talk about colloquial phrases from the show,
like "This is serious!". Oh man, I'm going to be the best English teacher.I looked up roundtrip airfare to Bangkok - it's cheap! I want to take a week and visit Bangkok sometime... maybe during the October break?
I was at the supermarket and I got in the checkout line behind a guy who was getting ready to celebrate the Autumn Fest. He had a basket filled with mooncakes! TONS of mooncakes. He dropped Y700 just on mooncakes. They take moon cakes seriously!
And as a side note... the Shanghai hairy crab fest during this time of year is actually fed by crabs from the Jiangsu Province, so my local grocery stores are stocked with big, hairy crabs! They're kind of expensive, but I think I'm going to make steamed crab soon. I did have fun boiling those first two, I bet steaming them is even more fun!
Last night, Justin and I went down to the river front. There's a big temple area up there, and at night it's completely lit up with spotlights, christmas
lights, and really cool lights along paths through this bamboo forest. It was awesome. A guy came up to us and started talking with us. I think he wanted
to take us on a boat to Yangzhou, which is across the river from us. He was going to charge us Y10 each, but when I asked him if it was his boat, he said
no... I know I missed some key element to the conversation, because it sounded like he was going to give us a ride in a boat that wasn't his across the
river at night for only Y10... weeeird. Man, I wish my Chinese was fluent.
We went to Lava on Saturday night - it's the bar right outside the back gate of the University. We met a few new foreigners who are in town teaching
elementary-aged kids at a school downtown. Altogether, I think there were 12 foreigners at Lava, coming from: U.S.A., Germany, Canada, and Australia.
Quite the crowd! Anyway, we enjoyed a few too many drinks and spent the night goofing off, dancing, and I met a Chinese girl whose major is Spanish. Her
English is as bad as my Chinese, but we talked for a long time in Spanish. How weird?!Tonight is poker night. We've got 6 guys playing and the buy-in is Y20. We just use change for the poker chips, we have 1 jiao, 5 jiao, and 1 kuai coins to play with. The jiao coins are practically worthless in China - the cheapest things you can possibly buy cost Y1. The only reason you need jiao are because things at the supermarkets can be Y4.30, or Y5.80... so it's just annoying, but it works well for our poker night.
I guess I'll go play some more nintendo. Not much else to do today - it's still raining pretty hard, so I'm definitely not going out today. I'll just chill out and get ready for my trip to Shanghai tomorrow. Watch for another update after Saturday - that's when I'll be back!
10 Weeks and Going Strong - Friday September 14, 2007
Here I am finishing my 10th week in China:
Today I celebrate 10 weeks in China. That's two and a half months. My trip to China is 20% of the way done.
I feel like a lot has been going on, but nothing too big. I got my residence permit from the Security Bureau. I'm legal to live and work in China until July 10, 2008. Any traveling I plan after that will have to begin in Hong Kong so that I can apply for a new visa. I also have a bank account through the Bank of China. I will be paid through direct deposit to that account. I have an ATM card for getting out my salary, and I can convert up to 70% of my salary to American cash each month. I'm planning on saving $300 for each of my 10 paychecks. Then I'll have an extra $3,000 to help me land back on my feet when I return to the U.S. Given the amount of money I have in savings, that should help minimize the time I have to spend leeching off my parents and friends.
Yesterday, I didn't want to spend my whole day moping around thinking about my now-ex-girlfriend. Kellen and I decided to go downtown and explore. We did hours on hours of exploring the city, and we found a lot of new areas, stores, and clubs to visit. Tonight, I think we're going to this combination rec center - they have restaurants, a bowling alley, and a huge underground dance club. When I say underground, I mean literally, not figuratively because I'm trying to sound cool... this club is literally under the ground.
I got my first real Chinese massage yesterday. From a blind man! This was actually the first professionally-done massage of my life. Up until now, it's just been me and whoever I happen to be dating swapping massages... but wow, is there a difference! I could barely move for 5 minutes afterwards, and then I felt euphoric for the following few hours. I even felt better this morning when I woke up. The massage cost about US$9 and lasted over an hour. Kellen and I found a lot of spa / massage places that only catered to women, but finally we found a building titled "Blind Man Massage Center". Sure enough - a blind man massaged me. I didn't have to get undressed or anything. I just laid down, he threw a soft, thin sheet over me, and worked me over from head to toe. I flipped over and he did my head, face, arms, and legs. It was cheap enough that I will definitely be heading back!
At lunch yesterday, a freshman student came over and sat with Kellen and I. She introduced herself and just sat down to chat in English. She invited her two roommates over, but they were too shy to speak English with us. She's studying in a new program here at the University where her degree will be teaching Chinese to foreigners. Needless to say, her English needs to be perfect for that major, so she wants to practice with us. We didn't exchange any contact information with her, so I guess she'll just have to run into us again somewhere if she was serious about learning.
I'm a 5 minute walk to the Yangtze river. I've been running up and down the dykes of the river. Unfortunately, I can't run right next to the river because it's moving so slow that it created huge wetlands on either side of itself. But there are large flooding dykes with soft dirt paths on top where I can run within sight of the river. It's gorgeous there! And the air is very clean for China. Pollution here is pretty bad, but I don't believe it's worse than most major cities in the world. Running makes me feel great, and up on those dykes I don't get the weird stares - because nobody else is up there! It's the most solitude you could ever hope for in China.
The buses here are funny. They get so packed! Yesterday, Kellen and I were on a bus around 6:00 p.m. I kept laughing to myself because every time I decided the bus must be as full as possible, we'd stop at another stop and let 5 more people on. I was accidently groping the girl in front of me, I was being groped by two guys behind me, and every time the bus driver would slam on his brakes, everybody would just grab onto each other and flail around. Then to top it off, every new person who got on the bus would tap someone, point at us, and say "Laowai! Laowai!" Yep, crazy foreigners! There are 800 people on a tiny bus groping each other and flailing around, and yet the color of my skin is the weird thing here. :)
I sound cynical at the end of that paragraph, but I'm really not - I enjoy the attention and I'm glad that Chinese people are, for the most part, really friendly to foreigners. Man, people in the U.S. who don't speak English get harassed all the time. How many times have I heard people say, "This is America, they can learn English!" Well, I'm glad the majority of Chinese people don't share that mentality. They're happy and helpful when they see us. Which is good - my Chinese is still elementary at best!
All the freshmen are doing military training until the October break. I can't run on the track in the mornings anymore because there are thousands of freshmen wearing unusually-bright camouflage and marching around the track. The foreign teachers who have only freshmen courses don't work until after the October break. I think I might start on Monday - I'm not sure though until I get a phone call from my supervisor. The postgrads start school later than everyone else, too.
Big update! I guess I should make some lunch and do some laundry. I need to keep myself busy to keep my mind off of sad things, like relationships and what I'm going to do with my future. As usual, I'll just promise more pictures soon and end the update!
Good News, Bad News - Tuesday September 11, 2007
Well, anytime someone asks me, "Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" I always answer, "The bad news." So here's the bad news: Kirsten and I broke up! I don't want to talk about the details on here, but let it suffice to say that 7,000 miles can prove to be too much when you leave with just a few months under your relationship belt. We were naive, we had our heads in the clouds, and we learned a valuable lesson. Maybe my life will point back in her direction in the future, maybe not. Who knows? If I could know, would I want to? I kind of like having a big chunk of uncertainty in my life to look forward to.
I got crabs. Ha ha - real crabs! I love eating crabs. Ever since I arrived in China, I've seen these guys walking around the grocery store like they own the place. Well, I put them in their place (i.e., a big boiling pot)! Check it out - here's the before picture...
and here's the after picture:
The crab didn't have a lot of meat - he was too small to be scrumptious. But buying him, chasing him around my kitchen, and finally getting him into the boiling pot was everything I ever dreamed it could be, and more!
You know my motto? "When in China..."? I bought a bike. When in China, why not bike everywhere? It's yellow, it's brand new, and I talkd the guy down to Y120. That's about $15 American. The bike doesn't have multiple gears, shocks, or anything fancy. It's a basic, bumpy bike. I love it! Hopefully it won't get stolen. I've heard a lot of horror stories from teachers having their bikes stolen. Mine has a lock, but I think the best theft prevention is that it's a really cheap model that most people won't want to steal.
Me and the 3 teachers from Oregon went to Nanjing for a day. We visited the Confucius temple area for some annoying touristy shopping streets (I love those). Then we hit up the Carrefour international grocery store. I bought gin and tonic - it's weird, gin is actually cheaper here than in the U.S. even though it's imported. I'd like to get into the import/export business, I bet you can make some crazy money doing that.
We took a train to Nanjing. It only cost us Y13 to get there and Y19 back! That's really really cheap. I'm excited that Nanjing is close, gorgeous, and cheap to get to. I really could see myself living in Nanjing with a real job someday... I like it that much!
Last night, our Australian friend Matt took me, Kellen, and Justin to dinner at a cool Japanese restaurant. The food was really delicious, but the most fun we had was doing sake bombs. We took our cups of beer, balanced a cup of sake over the beer with chopsticks, and then slammed the table until the sake fell into the beer. When that happens, you have to drink the whole thing as fast as you can. It was so fun! The Chinese waitress thought that seeing four foreigners slam sake and beer was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Here's the setup:
And of course, here's me after doing a few sake bombs:
I also updated some of my online photo albums - the ones for Nanjing and for Zhenjiang. Check out the links below, good pics all around!
I took pictures in Zhenjiang!
Jiangsu UniversityMore photos from the downtown areas and just life in general will show up soon. For now, enjoy seeing my University!
Living the Easy Life - Friday September 7, 2007
I still don't know when my actual teaching semester will begin. Justin and I are waiting for a call from the postgrad teaching supervisor, Sheila. She'll call us when our schedules are finalized - it might be today,it might be in two weeks. Meanwhile, I've just been vacationing away my free time: making trips downtown, shopping, hanging out, visiting a few Chinese bars, and even learning a little more Chinese.
Yesterday, Justin and I bought 2 live crabs at the grocery store for dinner. We brought them back, boiled some water, and opened the bags they were stored in. We just opened one first, and the crab started running all over my countertop! Justin showed me how you can grab them from behind without getting pinched, but that crab was wiley. He never pinched me, but we ended up using my big metal spatula to scoop him up and toss him in the boiling water. The second crab was even more wiley (wileyer!). He got around behind the pot where the first crab was cooking. I chased him around with my big spatula and eventually scooped him into the pot. About 10 minutes later, we had fresh cooked crabs and butter. The crabs were small and didn't have much meat, but they were fun and pretty delicious. I might buy some bigger crabs for a meal soon.
Yesterday, we saw a fight on the street. There was an older man with keys on his belt and a billy club - he might have been a security guard for a store? The second man was a young guy about my age. I don't know why they were fighting, but the old man clocked the younger in the side of the head with his club, he got a huge gash and started bleeding, they were choking each other, it was hardcore! Anyway, after a few minutes, they were both tired and they walked away together ... why together? What were they fighting about? Did someone call the police? Man, living in a foreign culture is confusing sometimes.
The good news is that I got bittorrent to work. I just downloaded the new Wilco CD and the new Reel Big Fish. Yes, new American music!
I got a copy of the contract I signed. I was surprised to see a few bonus perks that I didn't know about before. For example, at the end of each semester, I'll be paid a travel bonus of RMB 1100. That's on top of my normal salary, my paid vacations, and my flight reimbursement. It's just an extra RMB 2200 on my contract that I didn't know about. According to the other foreign teachers, it also sounds like the winter break in February will be longer than just 4 weeks... maybe as much as 5-8 weeks. I'll definitely have to plan a trip to somewhere interesting in that time. Echo has a volunteer teaching opportunity for me in a hard-to-reach city near Tibet that might be really cool. Not sure if I'll do it, but I've always wanted to see the Himalayas!
Kirsten's trying to arrange a trip out here, too. I really hope she can make it. I want to spend as much time with her as I can - but more than that, I want to show off my campus, my new job, my new friends... basically my whole new life! It's hard having so many things change in my life while I just have to leave her doing the same ol' stuff in the U.S. I try to tell her the interesting stories and things that happen to me, but there's no possible way to describe everything in China using words. China is something that you have to experience for yourself! (She was here for a few weeks in Shanghai - but trust me, comparing Shanghai with small cities in rural China is like comparing France to Paraguay. It's not the same! :)
I've been reading up on the American candidates for the presidency in 2008. Looks like the gap between the parties is going to be big this time. I wonder who I will end up voting for? Right now, I'm thinking Barack... Hilary is a queen of inaction, Romney is a fundamentalist, and now Fred Thompson is making more sense than anybody else - I love his views on the actual ROLE of a federal government - but he's also a fundamentalist. Why aren't there Republican candidates who don't oppose same-sex marriage and abortion?? I'll tell you why - because they're all ridiculous fundamentalist Christians. If you don't believe in abortion, great. Don't get one! But why do people feel like it needs to be "illegal" for other people? The government has no right sticking its nose into their business. The same thing with gay marriage - don't like it? Then don't marry someone of the same sex. Grrr, American politics are messed up and completely blinded by religions, special interest lobby groups, and corporations.
Actually, Bill Richardson is BY FAR the best candidate for the presidency. Don't know about him? Look him up online. He'll have my vote if he can win the primaries. I can't vote in the primaries because 1), I'm in China, and 2), I'm a registered "independent". Technically, I'm a Libertarian - don't know what that is? Look it up online, too. I think more people are Libertarian than they realize, they're just not intelligent enough to do the research to figure that fact out. All I can say is that if the election comes down to Hilary and Romney, then I think I'll just stay in China for another 4 years. I like it here.
I got my Foreign Experts Certificate. Now all I need is my residence permit and I will be a legal immigrant working in China. My certificate looks like a red passport.
We went window shopping at a pharmacy. I just wanted to see what kinds of things they sold. Everybody kept asking what I wanted to buy, and I was like, "I just want to look around..." They gave me the funniest looks! Why would anybody possibly want to just look around a pharmacy? Man, foreigners sure are weird. :)
Whoa, Reel Big Fish remade "Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Collins. Awesome!
I'd better eat lunch and go out exploring this afternoon. Maybe I'll see another fight somewhere. I want to find the loading docks on the river so I can watch! I love ships, I love rivers, I love docks. And I have a map of Zhenjiang now so I know where I'm going.
In the next update: more pictures! More stories! Same bat time, same bat channel, all the jazz.
My pictures exist:
Huai'an
Nanjing
Shanghai
Watch for pics from Zhenjiang someday soon. I'll probably take some!
My New Teaching Schedule - Sunday September 2, 2007
Wow, is it really September already?? Life is good! This morning we had a meeting with the Foreign Languages Department to discuss our teaching schedules for the semester. School starts tomorrow for most teachers, but Justin and I got a special assignment to teach the post-graduate students. This means that we have at least one week before we begin teaching and we might even have as many as three weeks before we start. We'll both be teaching Masters and Ph.D. students conversational English courses. We'll also be working together to teach a class of non-traditional MBA students who need to improve their English. I'm most excited for that course - I think the MBA students will be older people who already work in business, and so maybe I can make some friends in the community outside of campus. I'm really glad Justin got assigned to work with me because he's the coolest guy I've met in China so far - I couldn't have planned a better teaching load for myself, so I think I really lucked out here!
Last night, Echo came to Zhenjiang with Maia, Katie, and Scott. Echo is our Chinese recruiter (and friend!) and the other three are all people from Colorado. I knew Maia before we came to China, so it was nice to see a familiar face. We all went out to dinner and had some delicious food, wine, and we took some group pictures together. We were all recruited through the same method, so we are calling ourselves the Mark Bolding Club (or something goofy like that). Some guy in Texas who none of us have ever actually met has a club named after him in China!
I'm really getting settled into my new apartment. I have a coffee maker, filters, and REAL coffee. It's not high quality coffee, but it tastes about 450 times better than the instant coffee. Instant coffee tastes like hot chocolate and smells like hot dogs. But real coffee... oohhh that aroma arouses some feelings in me. They should invent coffee-scented perfume for girls! It would at least work to attract me.
I have a lot of bug bites on my lower legs and ankles. How annoying! I even use bug spray.
I found the exact building I live in on Google Earth. If you have the program (free download here), you can search for: 32 12'09.34"N, 119 30'58.58E. Just copy and paste that, you'll fly right to my new home! You can see how close I am to the Yangtze, you can check out the University campus, and you can have a nice aerial view of Zhenjiang. Granted, the Google Earth satellite images are too old - the whole city looks kind of brown - but it's a good overview. Since those were taken, the season changed, plants grew, and a lot of construction has been done all around campus.
Life in China is great. I love the night markets and the whole community lifestyle. When Americans finish with work, they go home and lock themselves into their private homes and yards. I certainly enjoy my privacy, but seeing how well a community works together and seeing how social everyone gets around dusk is exciting to me. People are happy, social, and they really enjoy other people's company... even strangers! If I try to start up a conversation with strangers in the U.S., they think I'm either weird or trying to hit on them. We have a personal bubble (both physically and socially) that we don't want people to interfere with. Here, though, life is all about relationships, friends, and people in general! The sites in China are nice, but the real beauty of China is people! Annnd I'm done being cheesy. I'm just rambling on about cultural differences between China and the U.S., and in this case, China wins.
I need a nap. I'll keep updating with more and more information on Zhenjiang, because I've only written about half of the things that I want to say... if only I had motivation enough, and time... :)