Holidays Abroad

My first holiday season abroad is drawing to a close....and I must say, while I did miss my family and friends back home, I am thankful for my friends here who made sure the holidays were festive and fun instead of lonely and depressing. I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving with a (mostly) traditional meal and a reflection on what I was thankful for this year. I decided that I was most thankful for the support from my placement agency that made my transition to China relatively smooth. For Christmas, I enjoyed an amazing brunch with some friends who live near campus, who are fabulous cooks as and well as musicians. So in addition to stuffing my face, I also sang renditions of Christmas carols accompanied by 2 violins, a guitar, and a recorder. It was pretty sweet! So far I have received one box of Christmas/birthday loot and I know that 2 more are on their way. Getting packages from home makes me feel warm inside!

Here are some photos from the past two months (whew, has it been that long??). I took a trip to De Tian, a waterfall at the Chinese/Vietnamese border, which was lovely. This weekend a high school friend of mine who now teaches English in Japan will come and stay with me, and I am planning a trip to a nearby historical city called Guilin. (Pronounced like Gway-linn). More photos to follow!

Students at a Christmas party given by the student union. Those are glowing antlers, not devil horns. The party included sexy dancers doing the Macarena and The Bunny Hop, as well as a fashion show. I told my students it was the most interesting Christmas party I had ever seen.

A student at my make-up party.

A make-up party at my house, facilitated by Elaine, my Mary Kay friend.

My students. I baked 120 sugar cookies for Christmas, and we did a little cookie decorating party in class.

This little lady always fixes my bike. She and her husband run a little business on campus. They think I'm funny when I try to speak Chinese.

A bashful shrimp at Walmart, with the lovely and fabulous Kimberly.

My friend Elaine cooked me a delicious fish dinner. A side note: though the fish was gutted and carried in a plastic bag for 40 minutes, his tail would still flip a little as we were putting spices on him. I guess that means it was really fresh.

Edible gator!

De Tian Waterfall

Chinglish!

Mary and Isaac. Awww, so cute!

Close up of the waterfall from the raft

Happy Halloween!

The SCIC students decided to throw a Halloween party on Saturday. Halloween isn't a "thing" here, so it was interesting to see how the students chose to dress up. Many of them didn't, but those that did had rented elaborate costumes and painted their faces. Their attention to detail is pretty amazing. Likewise, they throw some pretty elaborate parties.They started by having foreign teachers and other "guests of honor" parade through the crowds of students in our Halloween costumes, and do a kind of parade around the campus. There were games, a legitimately scary haunted house, an MC'ed costume contest, and dancing. The dancing, of course, was all pre-choreographed. The students had requested that I teach them the Chicken Dance, the Bunny Hop, the Macarena, the Soulja Boy dance, and the Electric Slide during the week prior. It was actually really fun!

Midterm week is fast approaching, which means I will have my hands full with marking three sets of 40 exams. Luckily I just met my TA, Celine, this week. She will be a marvelous help when it comes time to weed through all that ESL writing.

I wore this to school on Halloween. The funny thing was that I got stared at, but not significantly more than I do on a regular day.

Some students also being fierce cats!

A tug of war competition between classes.

This comforter is as soft as a...ferret? Hopefully it smells better.

Chinese Song

Last weekend was the 10th anniversary of the language school I teach for, Sino-Canadian International College. Students had been practicing for over a month to perform on the night of the celebration.

Some of the foreign teachers had been asked by the Student Union to perform Auld Lang Syne (the new year song) in Chinese. All of us, few of whom speak Chinese, had about 2 weeks to try and learn two Chinese verses and a chorus. We tried our best, and nearly pulled it off, if I do say so myself. Luckily we had prerecorded our song and we just had to sing along Milli-Vanilli style. The students had choreographed the routine for us, and here is where I could clearly see a difference between American University students and Chinese. The student choreographer had the teachers standing in a horseshoe and waving while about 20 students sat in a line in front of us, swaying to the music. It was quite cute, but definitely something you would never see a 19 year old college boy do in the US!

I've been a terrible blogger lately! I haven't updated this thing in over a month....which is due to the fact that school has started and I've been busy learning the names of my 40 students, lesson planning, and teaching.

So here's the update: I have really been enjoying teaching. My students are awesome, and I am reminded why I wanted to come to China in the first place. They are such respectful and fun people to teach. I've been a little run down physically because of the sudden increase in workload. I hadn't worked since early July, so going from zero to 60 was a little taxing on the old immune system. I had a pretty gnarly cough for the first couple of weeks of class. I felt bad for the students, who had to listen to me rasp and hack though the first several lessons on top of being unsure of my foreign accent and teaching methods. I'm feeling much better now, but I'm still a little hoarse. I think that's mostly due to having to speak loudly for several hours a day.

I have this entire week off school in honor of National Day, the holiday set aside for celebrating the founding of the People's Republic of China. In typical Chinese fashion, some of the days off need to be made up for, so I will work on Saturday and Sunday of this week. It's been nice to take a little breather, but unfortunately we have been dealing with the fall out of a cyclone this week, which means it has been chilly and pouring rain the entire time. So, I've celebrated National Day by snuggling up in my apartment with a good book. Right now I'm reading "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series by Alexander McCall Smith, a series that I really recommend checking out. It's set in Botswana, and it's quite charming. An awesome foreign family that I met here a couple of weeks ago, who happen to have a pretty expensive library, loaned me the first couple of books in the series.

Anyway, I wish I had some photos of my class, but more will follow later. Here are some pictures from the past month:

All students are required to complete a military training during their second year of University. It was hot and miserable, and these poor kids had to spend all week running around in their heavy wool uniforms. 

Chinglish!

Many of the cakes in China look so appetizing, but taste like sawdust!

This was actually a pretty tasty dessert: it's super-finely saved ice with mangoes and mango syrup. The texture is unlike anything I've ever had before. Yum!

Train to Hong Kong and New Apartment

Well, I'm back from Hong Kong after my visa securing adventure. I'm thankful for Stuart, who helped me navigate the Chinese Consulate in Hong Kong, and to Ethan for showing me all about the overnight train. I should pause here and explain a bit about travel in China: people travel longer distances by overnight trains or busses. In my case, I boarded a train at about 7pm and arrived in a Chinese city right on the edge of HK at about 7:30am. In America, sleeping is kind of a private thing...but this is not so much the case in China. Everyone has an individual bed, but there is usually some random dude about three feet from you, snoring away. It's kind of like sharing a king sized bed with a stranger. Oh well, we made it safe and sound! The next step is officially "exiting" China, walking across the border, and officially "entering" Hong Kong. Here are some pics from the sleeper train. Sorry about the quality, I will get a new camera at some point:

 Hong Kong is a really neat place to visit, if you ever get the chance. It's a nice way to ease into Asia as well, because it was under British rule for a time so it feels pretty Western. It's quite clean and the traffic and crowds are more orderly, plus there is some fabulous shopping! I met up with some people from Jian Hua, the placement agency I used to find a teaching job in China. Here we are enjoying some Korean barbecue.

I moved into my new apartment on Thursday. Yeah, I totally live on the wrong side of the tracks. In a funny way, not an "I'm scared of drive-bys" way. But check out the bathtubs in the "lawn!" They're on the other side of the ripped futon.

This is the stoop where I drink my 40s.

And a panoramic

view of

what I see when I

look out of

the front door.

This is an abandoned building behind my complex that the forest is slowly reclaiming.

The living space is bigger than I thought it would be. The furniture is nice too. You can't really tell from the pics, but its all made out of this pretty, shiny dark wood. The bathroom is a little scary and the kitchen is basic, to say the least, but all told, it's quite comfortable. And the AC works great, which is a  must!

The floor is all tile, so I bought a pair of house shoes. For those not familiar, it's customary to remove your shoes when you go into a house, and put on a pair of inside-only shoes. Usually people have extra to offer to guests. Not only is it much more comfortable to walk around in these shoes versus being barefoot on the hard floor, but it's cleaner, too!