Manners

I really can’t go 3 months in China without writing a little something about Chinese manners. It’s a subject I’ve been avoiding, because it’s not very, well, “glamorous.” I don’t want to seem as if I’m ragging on the Chinese, but the Chinese standard for manners is just very very different from western one. In fact, it’s one of the biggest cultural differences I’ve noticed in my time here. It’s difficult for me to understand this part of their culture, and I know it may be hard for you to understand as well. So where do I even begin….how about spitting. Everyone spits. Men, women, everyone. You can’t walk down the street without hearing someone clear their throat LOUDLY and hock a big lugey on the sidewalk, no matter if you’re 2 feet away or not. But it’s not just outside. Today I was at Wal Mart and my cashier (a woman) spit on the floor while she was ringing up my stuff…I couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s come to the point where I hear that snorting sound of someone clearing their throat and I just cringe. But you know what they say…when in Rome! I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t spit on the sidewalk when I feel the urge…but don’t worry mom, I’ll break the habit before I get back in the states :)

Another area where manners are very apparent is at the table. I have to be perfectly blunt here…eating with Chinese people makes me loose my appetite at times. They chew with their mouths open while talking and chomping their food LOUDLY. Anytime there are bones or anything else in the meat they’re eating, they just spit it out on the table. Most of the time Chinese food is served family style. They don’t usually serve the food on their plates and then eat it though. Instead, they have a small bowl of rice that they hold in one hand, and they just reach around the table and eat off the serving plates with chop sticks. They don’t ask to pass dishes, or really use any table manners that we consider “polite.” When a group of Chinese people leave the table, it looks like it was hit by a tornado. It seems that, in China, where there are people, there is also loads of food, which also equals loads of trash. It wasn’t 5 minutes after I got on the train to Beijing that there just seemed to be bowls of noodles and snack rappers everywhere. They just never stop eating!

Chinese people are by far the pushiest, most impatient people I have ever encountered. Pushiness is just a part of their culture. If you need to get by someone, you don’t ask them to move, you just push past them. If you bump or shove someone, there’s no need to apologize because that person isn’t offended, it’s just normal thing. You can’t stand in a line anywhere without being pushed by the person behind you…that is on the rare and miraculous occasion that a line is actually formed. I’ve had to become a lot more aggressive than I’m used to being. If you’re not aggressive on a bus, you won’t get on (or off). If you’re not aggressive in line at the store, you’ll get cut in front of. One time I was buying a ticket for the subway at the automated ticket machine in Beijing. I had chosen the line, and as I reached in my wallet to grab my money, a woman came of from behind me and tried to put her money in. I couldn’t believe it! I had to elbow her away. Elbows come in very handy here. Sometimes life in China feels like a constant push and shove. There are just SO many people and so much chaos EVERYWHERE you go it’s overwhelming. I know in the states we talk about overpopulation becoming a problem, but it doesn’t even compare to how it is in China. Overpopulation isn’t just a statistic here, it’s in your face every single day and you just can’t get away from it!

Now we come to the weirdest thing I’ve encountered of Chinese manners…potty training children in the streets. I mentioned a while back in my “fun facts” that diapers are rare here, but instead children wear pants with slits in the crotch and the mothers create a signal, usually a whistle, to instruct the child to go to the bathroom. Well as neat of an idea as this is for potty training, it does include having to see kids peeing (and doing other things) in public. Kids are held over garbage cans, street grates, or just the sidewalk when they have to go. And that’s just if they happen to be outside. One of my friends saw a child peeing over a fake plant in the mall not too long ago. Oh, and bus floors aren’t out of the question either, and there is that unfortunate occasion that you are riding on a bus and see the remains…not fun but again not something that seems bothers the Chinese.

And that brings me to my last point…nothing seems to bother or annoy the Chinese at all! I’m just continually amazed at how they seem to block annoying noises out and go on with their lives. I have so many examples of this I can’t name them all, but here are a few. Chinese people like to play music on their cell phone/iPods on the bus or in train stations. Many times they do this without headphones so everyone can hear it, and it’s all fuzzy and out of tune (aka really annoying). But people don’t care. Chinese form of advertising a sale in a store is to say the same thing over and over again on a megaphone (something like “oranges half off”). Sometimes they’ll just record it on the megaphone and set it on a stack of merchandise repeating itself. This could possibly be the most annoying thing I’ve ever encountered while shopping, but I’m the only one who seems to be bothered because everyone else just goes on shopping. My guess is that it has to do with the chaos and amount of people in China that they just sort of learn to block things like this out.

Doing a little bit of reading online, I found out that China is more than aware of it's reputation for having bad manners. Chinese people who travel outside of China are warned not to embarass China by practicing some of these behaviors when they are abroad. I was reading this article that had me laughing because it named so many of the things I just wrote in this blog, plus some more. Click here if you want to read it.

Apparently there have been "anti-spitting" and other such campaigns run in China since the 1950's. These intensified in Beijing before the Olympics when the whole world would be viewed in on the country. Here is a video of a TV commercial from the 1950's that I thought was cute:

So there we are, a few things I may never understand about this very different culture. I recently read a quote that said “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” And although I may get frustrated with is sometimes, it all adds up to the reason I wanted to come here: if it was the same as home it wouldn’t be a new experience.

A typical child's apparel

"It never snows in Wuhan!"

Everyone who’s traveled seems to have their public transportation horror story. I had mine the other night. Well, it’s not exactly deemed worthy of a “horror story” title, but it’s my first of the year, so the most “horrish” thus far. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was hanging out with some of my Chinese friends singing KTV (karaoke). When we came outside afterwards, we saw that it had begun to rain and snow. After we had dinner, I was hoping to get a taxi home. But since we were over the river and through the woods from where I live (literally, over the Yang Zi river) and the weather made a free taxi impossible to find. My friend suggested I take a bus to get in to my district of Wuhan, and then it will be easier to find a taxi from there. I’m very comfortable with the bus system now, so it was no problem. So I hopped aboard a crowded bus and rode for about ½ hour until I reached a familiar location. By then it was raining and snowing pretty profusely, and the streets were a mess with cars, buses, and people (first snow of the season). When I got off the bus, it didn’t take me long to realize that I was not going to find a taxi. Every free taxi that pulled up to the curb was instantly swarmed with people, so much so that people were driving around in their private cars offering rides for a fare. I knew where I was, and I knew the bus that I could grab home, but I couldn’t find the bus stop. I walked around the streets for about 15-20 minutes, and none of the bus stops had the bus I was looking for. I finally found the bus station on a side street. It was a single bus station solely for this bus. I didn’t have an umbrella with me so I ducked under the overhang of a shop to wait for the bus. It was getting close to the time that the buses stop running, and I was a little worried that I’d be waiting forever for nothing. In my 20 minutes or so of waiting, this woman who spoke a little English struck up a conversation with me. She reassured me that the bus would come, and she was going to the same stop I was so I knew I was at the right place. Another barrier I almost hit was money, I wasn’t sure if I had any small bills or coins with me. It’s always imperative to have the right change when you get on a bus (or close to it), because I don’t know how to ask for change in a store. But luckily, I had just enough with all my really small coins to make 2 Yuan, and I didn’t have to worry about getting change somewhere. So the bus finally arrived, and heaps of people made a mad dash. Not having been in China long, I haven’t perfected the “push and shove” method of getting a spot on a crowded bus yet, so I got pushed to the back of the heap. Now in the States when you think of a crowded bus, you probably think of not getting a seat right? Well a crowded bus in China means there isn’t one square inch of you that isn’t touching someone else. For a few minutes I couldn’t even get up on the first step of the bus. But I was not about to be left behind, so I just sort of flattened myself against the crowd and hoped that the door would clear me when it closed. It did, and that woman I had met sort of watched out for me and was able to pull me up a few steps. My next dilemma was getting off at the right stop. I couldn’t see out the windows because of the weather and people, and I can’t understand Chinese well enough to know when they call out the name of my stop. The woman helped me, though, because she was at the same stop. By the time I got home, I was wet, cold and tired. But proud to be able to say that I braved my first mini-dilemma all on my own, and made a new friend (the woman) who I’m getting together with for Chinese-English practice.

Snow on the walkway from our apartments to the school

The school field

Me on the roof of our apartments. I loved the way the snow made Wuhan so beautiful!

Fall !!! ...or lack there of

Last Sunday afternoon I was walking around in my short sleeved t-shirt. Monday morning I woke up to frigid frigid cold! I had heard that Wuhan only had two seasons (Summer and Winter), but I had never in my life felt a weather change that drastic! I found out, though, that there was more than nature at work. Beijing had been going through a drought, and to conquer it the government decided to send 180 rockets with dry ice up into the air (same as they did during the anniversary celebration) to cause it to rain. Only instead of rain, the cold weather made it snow! They got the earliest snow fall in nearly 20 years. So they did that on Sunday, and we got the cold front on Monday. Luckily, by Wednesday it was back to bearably cold, and now its back to t-shirt and light sweater weather, allowing me some more time to stock up on warm clothes. Being in California the last 4 years, I’m seriously lacking in that department. During the two cold days we had, I got a little taste of what it’s going to be like to teach this winter. The Chinese are obsessed with the idea of “fresh air” and refuse to close the windows in the classrooms no matter what the weather. They also don’t run the heater (just like they didn’t run the a/c during the heat), so the kids sit in class bundled up and wearing gloves while trying to write. I bought some gloves without fingers to make it easier for me to write on the chalk board. This is going to be very interesting experience.

Last month, I realized how cheaply you could actually live in Wuhan. When I came back from Beijing, I had 900 yuan of spending money to last me the rest of the month (3 weeks). 900 yuan is about 130 U.S. dollars. I budgeted a bit and was able to make it to payday with 200 yuan left! I say budgeted a ‘bit’ because I simply had to watch how much I spent (ate most meals at the school, etc), but I was still able to do a lot of things.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my co-teachers the other day. We took a field trip to an orange orchard about an hour away, and I sat next to her on the bus. I was asking her about her husband, because I knew she got married last year. She told me that what they have isn’t true love, but she likes him and respects him. He’s even tempered and can take care of her. I was a bit taken back that should would just come out and say that. I asked her if it was her decision to marry him, or her parents’ decision. She told me that she first met him, and introduced him to her parents. They liked him, and told her they wanted her to marry him. He had the decision of saying yes or no, and he said yes. She said that she agreed to it because she trusts her parents’ judgment more than her own. She was afraid that if she were to choose her own husband, she would make the wrong decision. She also mentioned that looking for a mate is so tiring and this was easier. I’ve been trying to get someone to talk to me about Chinese marriage practices since I got here, so I was glad she was so open with me about this. She ended with saying that she thinks she made the right decision in marrying her husband, and she is very content and close to being truly happy. The rest of the field trip was really fun! My first graders had just learned the word "orange" so I got to listen all day to them say "whats this? It's an orangey." Here's a little video of them crowding me (as usual). If you can't understand what they're saying, it's "fanatastic" only they say it like "finetastic".

I had fun celebrating my first Chinese Halloween! Pip and I both work part time at a kindergarten in the area, and they invited us to their Halloween party. We got decked out, and were by far the most dressed up. We hung out with the kids and played games, but most of the time we spent having our pictures taken by parents. Foreigners dressed up in costumes are a real photo opp! Here are some pictures of the Halloween party.

With the holiday season approaching, I thought I should include my mailing address, just in case anyone wants to send a Christmas card (or cookies) this way :) Here it is:

No. 259 Jeifang Rd

Wuchang District

Wuhan

Hubei Province

P.R. China

430060

You can also check out my pictures in my photobucket. I need to update the pictures and hope to do that soon. Check 'em out! www.photobucket.com/ahnainwuhan

Fun Fact: China is the oldest civilization still in existence today. I don't know why I never knew this before, but that is so cool to think that I am living in the oldest surviving civilization in the world!

Things I Miss the Most

It’s been a hard week for ol’ Gypsy Feet. I’ve had a lot of those “2 months down, 8 more to go…” moments. I think part of the reason is because the cold I couldn’t seem to shake became worse and I was stuck in my room having a pitty party for myself and wanting to be home with my mom. I’ve been low on energy and enthusiasm, and that mixed with a classroom full of 50 screaming 6 year olds….you get the picture. But I’m stickin in there and hoping the best is yet to come. One of the times I was moping around I started making a mental list of all the things I miss the most from home. Oddly enough, it actually made me feel more blessed than depressed. Being here and without so many of the little comforts of home has made me appreciate them so much more! Anyways, here’s the list I came up with. I also made a list of things I like about China, because I thought it was a good little reminder for me when I’m feeling down. Oh and I have to mention that these are all the “things” I miss the most, not people. Obviously I miss my family, my boyfriend, and my friends more than anything!

Things I miss the most:
• A dryer
• Mexican food
• My car
• Morning radio shows
• Yoga classes at Lifetime Fitness
• Seeing houses
• Blue skies
• Church
• Real coffee
• A soft bed
• Baked goods
• Good wine
• Public restrooms with TP and soap

Things I like about China
• Public transportation
• Cheap massages
• Food/street snacks
• My work schedule
• Adorable Chinese kids
• Learning Chinese
• Traveling/Planning vacations
• Tea
• Meeting and defeating new challenges
• Market shopping
• Learning something new everyday
• Learning how to teach

As many of you know, this is not my first time living abroad. I was an exchange student in the Philippines my junior year of high school. That experience definitely gave leeway to this one, and helped prepare me for this A LOT. I sort of knew what to expect as far as some of the challenges I’d face when I came here because of that year. However, this experience is different than that one in a lot of ways. For one, I’m quite a bit older, more independent and more confident in myself. When I was in the Philippines, I would try so hard to fit in and be as “Filipino” as I could. And I was constantly disappointing myself because I could never BE Filipino, I’m American. But here, I understand that a lot better. I know that I look different, act different, and speak different than the Chinese do. And as much as I do want to learn their culture and their ways, I know that I am different and I’m not trying as hard to fit in. Another thing that’s different about this experience is that I’m not as engulfed in the culture as I was in the Philippines. In the Philippines I was living with a family, going to school, and surrounded constantly with the culture. Here, I’m a bit sheltered from it. I live and spend most of my time with foreign teachers. We sort of create our own little “home” culture within China. And as natural as this is, I am hoping to find new ways of experiencing Chinese culture and making Chinese friends. But I think the biggest reason that this year is different than my year in the Philippines is that I left my heart back in the U.S. this time. My boyfriend, Zach, is finishing up film school this year and was amazing enough to encourage me to follow my dream and do this. It hasn’t been easy in the least bit being away from him…in fact it’s been harder than I ever expected. I miss like crazy, and its tough having to experience all these new things alone when I want to share them with him so badly. Love is powerful and I think I’m just coming to realize that. But we are making it work and I just feel so blessed to have him...even an ocean away! I also miss my good friends from California terribly! I am lucky enough to have 3 of them working/studying in China this year, and we will all be meeting up in Hong Kong for Christmas. I feel like I’ll never have as close of friends as I did the last 4 years at Biola, and it’s hard to transition from that environment to this one. But again, I’m doing my best to make it work!

All the Tea in China

I’ve already gotten a few colds since I’ve been here, which isn’t surprising seeing the environment. My apartment is old, and because of the humidity everything molds. My room isn’t as bad as some of the others, but it’s still not helping my health. Also the pollution is bound to take a toll on anyone. I told one of my co-teachers about being sick, and she brought me to the pharmacy to get some Chinese tea. It was really cool going with her because she was able to tell me what each type of tea (all loose tea) was for and which ones I should get. I got a chrysanthemum flower tea, one that looks like a red seed and is good for your immune system, another one that looks like small pieces of straw and is good for your throat, and some dried lemon slices. And I swear it really did help my throat and my cold instantly! Most people drink the loose tea just in a normal mug, and somehow manage to strain it through their teeth. But I was getting so annoyed by pieces going into my mouth that I went out and bought a really cool glass mug with a strainer a the top. It also has a lid so I can bring it around with me just like the Chinese do!

I’ve picked up a couple of extra teaching jobs on the side to fill my time and make some extra cash. I find it so ironic that this summer in the states it was an absolute nightmare just trying to find a temp job even with a bachelors degree, and here I am literally being offered teachings jobs left and right just for being an English speaker. I’ve found that its easy to get a little greedy here, because we (foreigners) are such a rare commodity and we know that people are willing to pay just about anything to hire us. I took a job 1 day a week (40 mins of teaching a day) at a kindergarten, and it makes me almost $100 extra a month! I teach the youngest kindergarteners, and they are…get this…2 and 3 years old! The first day I walked in I couldn’t believe it, they were babies staring up at me and I was supposed to teach them how to speak English. They can barely speak Chinese! But boy are they adorable! The classes are 20 minutes each, and they can sit still for about 5 of those. They sort of just look up at me blankly and mimic the sounds I’m making. But sure enough, they are learning and remembering the words I’m teaching them! The learning center they go to is very nice and they each have their own crib or race-car bed that they take naps in, with a made that changes the sheets, etc. I enjoy the class a lot because its small, less than 10 kids, as opposed to my usual classes of 45 or more. I have another private job in the lurks for a friend of a friend’s child and her friends children, all around 3 as well. They start ‘em early here!


I began Chinese lessons last week. The Wuhan government is offering them free to foreign teachers for the first time this year. Score! They’re held at a learning center, and our teacher is really good. The first 2 classes we spent the time just practicing making sounds used in Mandarin words. It was actually really helpful and makes it easier to know how to pronounce a word I see written in pinyin (Chinese spelled out in letters instead of characters). The frustrating thing, though, is that no matter how efficient I become in spoken Mandarin, I’ll still never be able to read a menu, a sign, or anything else written in characters. But I just have to take it one step at a time, and it’s my goal to be able to learn as much spoken Mandarin as possible in the next 8 ½ months!

Fun Fact: Not only are most children in China only children, but only grandchildren as well, on BOTH sides! This was my co-teachers explanation of why my 1st graders get a little rambunctious in class...and who can blame them :)

Beijing

I just returned from a week trip to Beijing. We had a holiday break because it was the People’s Republic of China’s 60^th anniversary. I went with 7 other foreign teachers. All in all it was a great trip! Beijing is a beautiful city and a breath of fresh western air from Wuhan. Here’s my trip day by day:

Train Ride:

Pip (one of the other girls) and I went a day before everyone else because our schedules permitted it. We left at 3pm on Wednesday afternoon and took an overnight train to Beijing। The train had somehow mysteriously sold out before tickets even went on sale, so we were only able to buy standing tickets. When we got on the train, we headed strait for the dining car so we could sit down. After about 2 hours of sitting and not ordering any food, they tried kicking us out, but we played the confused foreigner card and it bought us some time. Then one of the staff who happened to speak English came up and asked to see our tickets. He asked us if we wanted to buy a bed, which we immediately agreed to. It didn’t cost us any extra money than it would have originally, and we slept like babies the rest of the way knowing that we could have very well been sitting for 17 hours on the cold hard floor.

Day 1:

Pip and I arrived in Beijing on Thursday morning, and went to our hostel. It was the day of the official anniversary, so we were hoping to drop our stuff off and head strait downtown to see the big parade. We found out when we got there, though, that people weren’t actually allowed to watch the parade, unless you were an invited dignitary or member of the government. They had blocked off most of downtown too. Since our hostel was right downtown, they had e-mailed us a few days before saying they had to move our reservation to a sister hostel more on the outskirts of town for the first night. So we had to watch the parade “for the people” on a TV, since no “people” were allowed to watch. It was still pretty amazing though! Pip and I spent the rest of the day exploring Beijing. I instantly fell in love with the blue skies, clean air and cleanliness of the city (very different from Wuhan)! I found it odd that the sky was so blue, because I had heard that Beijing is actually quite polluted. But then I found out that they had sent rockets up into the sky with dry ice a few days before the anniversary celebration, which made it rain and then cleared up the air for a week. And sure enough, a week later it was grey again!

Waiving the Chinese flag!

Day 2:

We moved from our first hostel to our second hostel, as the downtown area had opened up. Our second hostel was great! Right downtown Beijing, just a walk to Tiananmen Square, great rooms, staff, restaurant full of western food options! I found out how fun hostel stays really are. You meet young travelers from all over the world! We met a girl from Wisconsin, boys from Texas and England, and a girl from Denmark who had the most insane stories from her travels all over the world! She was currently at the beginning of a 4 month trip through SE Asia and S America! After we checked in, we went to Behai Park. It’s a park with a temple, a big lake and paddle boats that you can rent. We then went out for Peaking duck which is a Beijing specialty। I liked the duck alright, but don’t think I prefer it over other dishes.

Behai Park

Day 3:

The Great Wall day! We arranged a tour with our hostel to hike 12 kilometers of the Great Wall. We were driven 3 hours out of the city to the Jinshanling part, and then hiked to Simatai. I chose this one because it’s the oldest part of the wall you can see, and I wanted a challenging hike in a non-touristy area. And boy did I get it! There were some parts that were so steep and uneven I didn’t think I could make it. An unfortunate part of the hike was that there were still crowds. Not a lot, but enough to have a hard time getting pictures without people in them. But there was one point about the middle of our hike when we had broken away from the crowd, and there was a cool breeze and I just though “wow, this is amazing!” I loved it. I felt like I was a part of ancient history being on the wall. By the end of the hike, I was exhausted!

Day 4:

I took a solo day to go see the Olympic stadium. It felt good to cut away from the group for a day, and show myself that I could do it on my own. The Beijing subway made getting around amazingly easy! I loved the Olympic Stadium. I’ve probably never seen so many Chinese people in one place before in my life, but it was still great. I think I was more of a novelty as a white person in Beijing than I am in Wuhan. Everywhere we went we had people coming up to us wanting their picture with us. There were a few time I was admiring a cute baby, and the next thing I knew the baby was in my arms and parents and grandparents were snapping pictures left and right. After the Olympic stadium I went to a temple. It wasn’t really anything special, but not crowded which was nice.

Olympic Stadium

Day 5:

We went to a Tibetan Buddhist temple called the Llama Temple. It was beautiful and so colorful! Visiting temples in China is sort of like visiting Cathedrals in Europe, they’re amazing but sort of all blur together after a while. This one was great though because we got to see the monks walking around, and there was a 3 story tall Buddha! Most evenings we spent back at our hostel restaurant/bar. It had so many western food options I felt like I was in heaven! Real coffee, eggs and hash browns, pizza, sandwiches! I had been having such strong food cravings back in Wuhan that they were keeping me up at night sometimes! Most of the group went back to Wuhan the night of day 5, but Allison and I stayed for a couple extra days. We went out to night snacks that night at this famous night market just down the street form our hostel. Normally in Wuhan, night snacks (street food) are dirt cheap, but here it was obviously very touristy and much more expensive. It was still really delicious though, and I tried little octopus on a stick! We also went and walked around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, which was beautiful at night.

Llama Temple

Day 6:

Allison and I meant to wake up early to try and beat the crowds at the Forbidden City, but the week of sightseeing had caught up with us and we slept through our alarm. We decided to go to the Summer PalaceSummer Palace is a lake with beautiful bridges and few buildings. It was a 60^th birthday present from one of the late emperors to his mother, and a definite status symbol to say the least. It is a nice place to go if you want a romantic, long walk around a lake, but not a good place to go at the end of a long week. It took us 3 hours to just walk halfway around the lake (the bridges cut it in half, thank goodness!) and we didn’t opt to pay to be able to get into the main building, what I believe is the “palace”. It wasn’t the highlight of my trip, but what I did enjoy about being there was imagining living there in the ancient time and just how beautiful and spectacular it must have been. instead, in hopes of the crowds not being as bad. But we were wrong. There were people EVERYWHERE and a million snack shops and souvenir stores. The

The Summer Palace

Day 7:

Once again, we slept through our alarm. But this time we really didn’t care, because we were exhausted. Neither of us really cared much to see the Forbidden City, the last sight on our agenda, but we knew we “should” so we did. We both ended up really liking it! The Forbidden City is so huge that the crowds really didn’t seem that bad. It’s just a huge, walled in city that the Emperor used to live and rule from. It’s just incredible how big it was for one person! And there were a lot of little museums showcasing Chinese art and calligraphy that I enjoyed a lot. After the Forbidden City, we rushed over to a famous shopping market to shop before we had to catch our train. It was incredible! I was in heaven. 5 floors

of clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, anything you could possibly want at dirt cheap prices! I only had a little bit I could spend, so I haggled like crazy. This one lady screamed at me “nooo” when I told her the price I wanted to pay for a sweatshirt. I started to walk away and she grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I went up a bit higher, and she screamed again, so once again I walked away and she pulled me back again. This went on for a while, until she finally agreed bitterly. I loved it, it was so fun! Then we caught our train and slept soundly the whole way back to Wuhan.

Tianamen Square

Little Tidbits about Wuhan

Very little English is spoken in Wuhan. And from what I’ve heard, it’s like that most every where else in China as well. Every once in a while I’ll run upon a shopkeeper or a salesman who know some very basic English, but it’s pretty rare. My co-teachers speak English pretty well, but you can tell it’s a struggle for them. The best English I’ve heard since I’ve been here is actually from some of my 4^th graders. I have a few that absolutely blow me away with how easily they speak and understand it, and others that can barely say hello.

For those of you that are wondering, I do feel very safe here. The area I live in is a nice gated community, and school is gated within that as well. The salespeople and taxi drivers have all be surprisingly upstanding. There were so many times when I first got here that they could have easily ripped me off or taken the "long route" but did not. IN fact, the only time that I’ve felt unsafe since I’ve been here is when I’m in a car or crossing the street. The driving is INSANE and I fear for my life and the lives of everyone else on the road. One thing that did surprise me when I got here was the fact that the one child policy is still very much in effect. Families that fall under the policies stipulations but have more than one child are fined heavily. Sometimes wealthy couples will just pay the fine to the government prior to having a second child. However, they’ve recently lightened up on it, and now if you’re a Chinese minority or if you and your husband and your parents are all only children, then you can have two children.

Most things here are much cheaper than in the states. Groceries, transportation, and eating out are all much cheaper. But things like electronics, clothes and imported items are about the same if not more expensive.

Fun fact: I’m leaving for Beijing today for the holiday break. It’s China’s 60^th anniversary, and the trains were absolutely sold out. The only thing I could purchase was a "standing ticket" (aka sit on the ground if there’s room)….the train ride is 15 hours….wish me luck!

Happy One Month Anniversary To Me!

I’m celebrating my month anniversary in China! It feels like it’s been about 5 months, but I think the hardest part is behind me. The weather has cooled down from the 90’s with 80% humidity to the 70’s with about the same humidity. It’s lovely and makes teaching all morning in a non-air conditioned classroom much more bearable. I notice that a lot of my clothes have lost their elasticity and feel very stretched out. I think it’s partly from the hot weather, and partly from the air drying. I have a little wash machine in my apartment that works great, and then I hang dry as there are few dryer in China. It takes a bit more time, and clothes end up more wrinkly and stretched out, but all in all it’s not too bad. I feel more and more at home in my apartment every day. I’ve rearranged the furniture to make it seem more spacious, and bleached it top to bottom. I now feel more comfortable and less lonely spending time by myself here. I have a little gas stove in my place, but have yet to use it. I eat something small for breakfast, lunch at the school, and they make dinner for all the foreign teachers. It is such a huge money saver, and the food is pretty good! I’ve begun to have my first American food cravings though, and those are hard to suppress! There’s a restaurant in Wuhan that’s owned by an American couple that’s famous amongst foreign teachers for having amazing western food, so I’m planning to go there at some point after pay day to get my fix of something other than rice, meat and cabbage. I’m getting better at being able to go places solo. There are a lot of places near the school that I can just walk to, and for places that are far away I take a cab. I keep a little notebook full of addresses written in Chinese (translated by one of my co-teachers usually) and business cards. If I’m having a hard time pronouncing the name of the place I need to go, I just show them the address they usually have no problem getting there. It’s funny how whenever I go somewhere new my priority is to get a business card if I ever wish to go there again…something I never even thought about in my former life. My next task is to learn the bus system, as it is much cheaper, but that will come with time.

There are still days when I don’t really want to be in China. I want to be back in the comfort of my own home with every convenience that that life offers. But I really believe that this is making me a stronger person. After being here and facing these challenges for a year, I can’t imagine anything else seeming quite as difficult. Not to say that life here is "hard" or that living here is a daily struggle, but there are just so many added layers of difficulty and frustration and loneliness when you’re living somewhere foreign where you don’t know the language, understand the culture, or are familiar with your surroundings.

Fun Fact: Chinese people don’t take many pain-killers for everyday aches and pains like we do in the west. They use tea as their medicine, and boy is there an abundance of it here!

Trial and Error

The other day my co-teacher didn’t show up to my rowdiest 1^st grade class, leaving me alone with 45 1^st graders who can’t understand a word I’m saying, or I them. It was complete mayhem. Kids were running around, fighting, screaming, cutting their hair, spitting water everywhere….I wanted to cry. I did my best to control them, but it was not working. Finally I had to ask their homeroom teacher to come in, and then of course they sat there like little angels. Normally, the co-teachers are in charge of discipline in the classrooms. At first, I felt like my co-teachers were very overly strict….making the kids sit up perfectly strait, hands folded on the desk and looking strait ahead. But now, I see a direct correlation between the strictness of the teacher and how much those classes are learning. It’s that rowdy 1^st grade class with the non-strict co-teacher that I don’t feel is learning anything. I’ve really had to step up and be the disciplinarian, which is very unnatural for me, but I’m getting better at it. It’s pretty well known by all the foreign teachers that this is a job you learn by trial and error. You don’t get told much of how or what to do, unless you ask. I was told on Thursday of last week that I was supposed to have a test written for Friday. One day I was given a stack of 90 work books to correct, the next day I was told I did it all wrong. I’m usually told that my lessons are too difficult, too easy, too fast, too slow, etc. I just try to take everything with a grain of salt, and I really feel like I’m beginning to catch on and do things the way they want them done. I’ve learned to ask A LOT of questions. And I’ve noticed that my co-teachers appreciate this, because they can see that I’m trying very hard to do a good job. All in all, the school treats us very well though. They cook us dinner every evening, give us traveling allowance, give us fruit, milk, and other items on occasion, and give us a ton of paid holidays!

As far as my Chinese goes, I’m learning slowly. The pronunciation is by far the hardest of any language I’ve ever learned. I’m supposed to begin Chinese lessons at a local learning center here shortly, but until then I’ve just been studying solo and my co-teachers are great when I have questions. I don’t think I’ll ever get over how intense the Chinese language is though, especially the written language. Even my 4^th graders don’t know all the characters. The whole thing just amazes me, and I’m excited to learn more of the conversational language.

Fun fact: Many babies in China don’t wear diapers; they wear bear-bottomed pants. It’s a form of potty training where the babies learn to go to the bathroom on cue from a whistle from their mothers. It sounds bazaar, but apparently it works!

First Week of School

I arrived at my first class on Tuesday morning with no training, no experience and no lesson plan. Suffice it to say, I was very nervous! The first day was spent introducing myself to my students, telling them about myself, and attempting to learn their names…all 180 or so of them. I’m teaching first and fourth grade! I love them, especially because they are so different and at such different levels with their English. I have the best schedule I could ever ask for. I teach 4 classes a day, each 40 minutes. Most days I’m done by 12:30. I have a co-teacher in each class who is Chinese and speaks English. I feel very blessed by the co-teachers who were assigned to me- not only are they great to teach with but are so helpful if I have a question about the Chinese language and things like that. My first week of teaching was somewhat stressful- I’m such a type A personality that to make up fun and creative lesson plans from a somewhat vaguely structured workbook is overwhelming to me. But by the end of the week I really felt like I was getting the hang of it and the students were catching on. On Thursday some of my first graders came up to me in the hall and said "hello I’m Candy, what’s your name?" I was so proud because I taught them that!

First grade is fun because they are so darn cute and go ballistic when they see me. Definitely a confidence booster J My first day of teaching I had to give English names to the ones who didn’t already have them, about half in each class. I named them after my close friends and family members- so it’s safe to say that some of you have a child named after you in China! The lessons are very slow and repetitive- they have been taught to repeat everything as a way of remembering. The challenge for me with this grade has been to get them to stop repeating everything I say (and I do mean EVERYTHING) and make sure they actually understand what they’re saying. Right now we’re learning the ABC’s, and they’re doing so well! Fourth grade is great because their English is a lot more advanced and I can get a lot more across without having to use my co-teacher to translate. Right now we are practicing past tense, and learning about countries around the world! I love seeing their faces light up when the new words and ideas start to click with them.

Fun fact: Siestas are not just a Latino thing; it’s a Chinese thing too! All the teachers at the school set up cots in their office at lunchtime and take a snooze.

First week in China: Culture shock!

When I hit the one week mark, I knew I could do it. There were times though, in this past week that I have felt like hopping on a plane and getting the heck out of here. It’s hard to explain the loneliness and helplessness you feel when you first arrive in a foreign place. It’s like your world is flipped upside down and you don’t feel comfortable anywhere. But when I reached my one-week mark, I really felt like I had crossed a huge hurdle. But let’s start from the beginning:

I arrived in Wuhan on Monday night after a 22 hour trip. I was picked up from the airport by a Chinese English teacher and the school’s driver. The drive to the school was over ½ hour, and they made a point to drive through all the dingy parts of the city to give me a clear picture of my new home. Every time we drove by an old sketchy apartment complex, I cringed and prayed it wasn’t mine. They drove me to my apartment, which is inside the school and in a gated community, and dropped me off without saying much. My apartment is about the size of my Biola dorm room…tiny. It’s got a little kitchen and bathroom, and there was some food and toiletries here for me. At first I didn’t quite know what to do in a place this small, but once I got unpacked and moved in it began feeling like home. It’s in a 4 story complex full of foreign English teachers. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I’ve been here, it’s that they give you minimal information, you pretty much have to figure everything out on your own. I started knocking around on doors the next morning to meet the foreign teachers. Some of them are new like me and some of them are returnees. They are very nice and have been so helpful in giving me the low-down of how this whole thing works. They’re all around my age, and are from Australia, England, Canada and the U.S. Most of my first week was spent learning the essentials: where to eat, how to get places, and fixing things that are broken in my apartment (it’s quaint but old). One of the most frustrating things about being here has been having my independence stripped: going anywhere by cab requires being able to pronounce where I want to go and how to get back- not an easy task just yet. As for the food- it’s amazing! Wuhan food is spicy (something my week Oregon tongue is still getting used to) but full of flavor! I think the best food I’ve had since I’ve been here is the "street food" or "alley food". I’m learning how to say my favorite foods, so even when I can’t read the menu (95% of the time) I can still order. Wuhan is a city of 9 million people- aka about the size of New York City. It’s the largest city in central China, and everything in it is large!

Fun fact: Chinese people LOVE Obama! I’ve had people who can barely speak English ask me where I’m from, and when I say America they instantly say "Obama!"

Last night in the United States

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

This is my first official post- and it is the night before I depart on the long 22 hour trek to Wuhan, China. It has been a somewhat tense last few days, as I realized 2 days ago that my visa was not complete and needed to be brought to the Chinese embassy in San Francisco! After a brief panic attack, my dad saved the day by finding a service that would take care of going to the embassy for me and getting my visa completed in 2 days (for a small fee, of course). So after holding my breathe for the last 2 days, I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief today when we got a call that it had arrived! Technology is amazing, Fed Ex is amazing, my dad is AMAZING! Now I'm all set to go, and am assured that after that little catastrophe nothing else could seem quite as critical!