China Update

Wow! What a busy week! Sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve put up any blog entries.

So what have I been up to this week… I’ve had training at the Great School in the afternoon. Mostly it was pretty boring but they did give us some good ideas for the first day of class and teaching games to play. I have my class schedule now. I’m one of the few teachers who actually has a weekend which is nice because I have two consecutive days off but bad because I have to work all day Wednesday when most of them have off. In the afternoons, I teach 5th grade. I also teach on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I’m not sure what level, I think 4th or 5th grade. My schedule sheet just says the names of the books I’m using. Overall, I have 20 hours of class in a week which doesn’t sound like a lot but the returning teachers have assured me that it will keep me plenty busy.

I’ve been learning this week that anything that seems like a simple task will take at least twice as long as expected in China. My medical examination is an excellent (hopefully extreme) example. The three newbies plus one returner who needed to renew his visa first attempted to go on Monday. We were told to be at the school office at 10am. About 8:45 we got a call saying we should be there as soon as possible because we needed to be to the doctor’s by 10. In the van on the way to the doctor’s, we were asked if we ate breakfast. Of course, we said. Oops. They forgot to tell us that we couldn’t eat before the exam and the exam is only given in the morning so we’d have to go another day. Take 2: Wednesday morning 8am. Tuesday night around 9, they told us that actually only two of us would be able to go and I was one of the chosen. So I got up early, did not eat breakfast and took a taxi with the other guy to the school. We got in the van and started driving to the hospital and continued driving for 2 hours. It wasn’t that far away and the traffic wasn’t that bad: the driver didn’t know where he was going. Funny, huh? A little after 10 we got to the hospital, which we had previously driven by over an hour before but no one noticed. The exam itself was easy: height, weight, blood pressure, blood sample, EKG and chest x-ray. By the time we got back, it was after noon. Oh and I found out yesterday that I was denied for a Z visa and would need an F visa. The difference: a Z visa is for a year and requires the med exam; the F visa is for 6 months and doesn’t require the med exam.

Oh! I forgot! I got a cell phone finally this week! If you want to call me or send me a text the number is 138.. Ok so I don’t actually remember the rest of it and there’s no one else home that I can find it in their phone. I’ll have to post that later. So you know how whenever we buy electronics in the States, the instruction manuals are in like 6 different languages. Not so here, I had to find a manual online to figure out how to set my clock…

What else did I do this week? On Wednesday, I went salsa dancing! Catherine, one of the returners, goes a lot and invited us all to come. It was so much fun! It was so crazy to be hearing Spanish music sung by a Latino band (live music!) with Chinese people salsaing all around. Some of them were amazing dancers! Me, not so much but I have a whole year to improve. Hannah’s Chinese friend Emily was in town this week. I was so excited to meet her after hearing so much about her. She as nice and funny as everyone has said. I wish I could have had the chance to get to know her better. Hmm… I think that’s about all the exciting stuff. Today I don’t have much going on, just prepping for classes, grocery shopping and other fun activities like that. I’ll probably be pretty busy the next couple weeks but I’ll try to be better about updating my blog. Keep sending me lots of e-mails! I love hearing news from home!