laughing traveler

This weekend I have had my feet washed, my back massages, my feet and legs massaged, my hair washed and scalp massage. A girl could get used to this! I met up with a few friends who had done the project last year and we ate a baked spaghetti dinner, not the same in China but they sure tried. We walked around to find a tailor to order some tailor made clothes since my clothes are falling off of me I have lost so much weight the last 2 months here. Everything is fresh here, even the fried noodles are light and not greasy. Plus they don’t sell all the salty snack foods that I crave so I just don’t snack . And I sweat buckets just walking down the street or up 5 flights of stairs to my apartment. But anyway we decided to waste some time since everything is closed for the holiday. We find this hole in the wall place advertising food washes and take a crowded elevator up to another world! This wooden smelly elevator dropped us off in this huge hardwood floored, chandeliered, matching furni...

I am finally settling into the teaching routine. I teach 15 classes a week; 10 classes of 7th graders every week and 10 classes of 8th graders every other week. Each class has 50-60 students so I literally have over a thousand students! After this realization and the first class I quickly decided there is no way I am going to be able to take pictures of each students and memorize their names. So far I have taught 5 classes and only one was awful! And luckily that is an 8th grade class that I only have to see every other week. I walked into the class and this boy in the back row stands up and says, “oh foreign teacher, so beautiful!” in English. So I said, “Thank you.” And the class went crazy! I guess he didn’t think I would hear him or that I wouldn’t understand his English, I don’t know. I thought that thank you was the correct response. But the rest of the class was constant chatter and my angry teacher look apparently needs work. So maybe I introduced myself as Ms. Christy from W...

So 2 days after my internet got hooked up in my apartment it stopped working again. So once again I am at the mercy of friends to relay my group messages. I feel very lucky to have American friends here. It is incredible how much better it feels to laugh with people going through the same thing after a CHINA RAGE day like my last blog. I must tell the story much better in person. Bc on paper everyone said it made them cry which was no my intent! Hanging out with American friends also helps you meet people. I had been in my apartment for 2 weeks and was almost convinced the rest of the rooms were abandoned. I never saw anyone in the hallways or with the doors open, understandable it’s hot as crap! Yet when 3 blondes are laughing all night long my neighbors came to introduce themselves. He was smoking a cigarette, which are seriously less than a $1 a pack here no wonder everyone smokes, outside my room and hear us. Then he went and got his roommate, who woke up my other neighbor who wor...

Today was quite possible the worst day of my life. I am dieing without internet! The group of teachers are emailing events back and forth and then I will get a text 5 mins before the meeting saying “Hey are you coming to dinner?” No! I didn’t get the memo! Then it’s “oh just take the 334 to the k115 to SeaWorld, they will know what you mean if you say Sea World, it’s a huge fancy area.” Well how about I just cry in my room alone because that was actually happens. So I text my contact teacher and say I am going to SeaWorld and just wanted to double check my directions. And she texts back “this is not possible.” Thanks for clearing that up, do you know the best way to get there? “22” I hate texting! 22 from where? Which direction? How long dose it take? Is there a McDonalds? These are the answers I was looking for. So I walk down to the bus stop and see if maybe there are signs or something. Oh there are signs alright, in all Chinese characters, none of which include the 4 characters ...

I arrived in my new apartment I will be living in for the next year this afternoon around 1pm. I finally learned that the school is grades K-7 in US terms. And I will be teaching the 6th graders! I don’t know how I feel about teaching middle school, but I am hoping I will be able to use some of the lessons I did for my primary kids in Beijing and just make it a little harder. Although those summer school kids were very advanced! So it may be perfect. My contact teacher Betty is super cute and speaks better English than me I am afraid! However, she was quite frazzled when we showed up to the apartment with a note from the previous teacher that everything was broken. No one had looked at the room since the last foreign teacher moved out in June. Betty said the last teacher was very shy and wouldn’t tell her anything unless she asked so please tell her if anything brakes. He had left a bunch of random junk that I am guessing didn’t fit in his bags. So the maintenance man met us in the a...

I have never in my life studied so hard for a test that didn’t count towards anything. I think I am becoming Chinese. I respect my Chinese teacher so much I don’t want to let her down. I have never felt like that about a teacher before. I feel if I don’t do well in her class she will take it as a personal failure. And if we as a class fail she will feel she failed us as a teacher. I can see how much effort she has put into teaching us, developing lessons and vocabulary that we could use and would need immediately. Overly praising every mispronounced word and broken sentence we put together. She spoke so freely and respectfully about her personal life, Chinese laws, travel, and cultural differences. No topics were off limits and she laughed with us at our observations. It seemed like every other day she had a treat for us, rice cakes and cereal bars, rice cookies. She sincerely wanted us to enjoy China and the food always giving us suggestions of where to visit, shop, and eat. It is a ...

And yes, it was painful! The Chinese sayings is “he who has not climbed the great wall is not a real man!” I had seen pictures so I knew it was going to be big, but wow! The night before I was laying awake in pain from my blistered feet throbbing and I contemplated skipping the group exertions, assuming I would come back another time. This was our first day off after a 7 day work week/ intense training so I really would have liked to sleep through the 7 am alarm. I am so glad I didn’t! I thought I would be smart and take the cable car up and then walk down, it was the best $7 I ever spent! Especially after the walk to the entrance was like 15 minutes of sidewalk straight up! The view was amazing, everywhere you looked was picture-perfect. And yes I went crazy over board with the photos. Every gosh I don’t know how far maybe like 3 blocks was an observation tower, and I would rush to the tower for shade from the blazing sun. It was no joke 20 degrees cooler inside the tower and a re...