Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Dorm Life

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our building is meant for students, but is being used by the teachers until the official teachers' dormitories are built. I have two dorm rooms with a connecting door. One side is a living/dining area and kitchen and the other side is where my bed, desk, and wardrobe are, as well as the washroom. Since these rooms are meant to accommodate SIX students each, the setup is a little strange. On each side I have three sinks and two "W/C"s. I now understand why washrooms are often referred to as W/C or water closets. Each of my four washrooms has a toilet and shower head. I've designated one as my permanent shower. Thanks to the powers that be, my dorm has also been outfitted with a western toilet - a rare commodity in China. Here are some photos of my now well lived in dorm:

Double bed! I was not expecting a double bed, so this was a nice surprise. My mosquito net is a recent purchase and will come in handy for the upcoming summer months. I wish I took photos of Emily and I  trying to assemble it, because it was hilarious. 

My "living room" which is never used. I think I've sat on that sofa once since I've been here. 

Desk and wardrobe. The smattering of photos that you see to the left of the desk are random cutouts from a magazine. The walls were too stark so I needed to throw something up there. These clippings do the job just fine. 


My MacGyvered clothes line made out of belts. Shortly after this first load of laundry, I discovered that there were poles installed specifically for hanging wet clothes. 


I use a long stick with prongs at the end to get the hangers up and down. I've yet to discover if dryers exist in China.


My shower W/C. Showering over a squater can be a little awkward, but I've gotten used to it. 


My first attempt at laundry. 


My "kitchen". The washing machine has since been moved to the other room. I thought it was weird washing clothes right next to where I cook.  


Cooking dinner. I've mastered one dish since I've been in China: noodles with egg, snow peas, celery, soy sauce and random spices. Look out Iron Chef. 

Of course there are a few things that I wish I could change about my new pad, but overall, I've definitely lucked out in terms of accommodations. I have privacy, more than enough space, and it's safe. The best part of all? It's rent-free. 






Sunday, March 25, 2012

To Market, To Market

What a beautiful day for a stroll through Guangzhou's Qingping Market! The sun was shining and we had no plans for the day and didn't feel like working on our lessons for the week yet so we decided to go into town and do a little exploring.



This market is not for the squeamish, but it does offer a good look into 'real China'. Guangzhou is famous for its food - it's too bad I'm such a wimp, but I'm sure I will come around eventually. One Cantonese saying goes 'anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible'. Another saying is that the only four-legged things that Cantonese people won't eat are tables and chairs.  The vague line drawn between food market and pet store was more than a little disconcerting.  Now let's play a little game... dinner or domestic animal?


 Sea horses by the kilogram... dinner. Or light snack?


 Mmmm, dried snake!


DOMESTIC ANIMAL and nothing else. I think I'm in love. 

 Husky with the iciest blue eyes I've ever seen. Too beautiful to be dinner. 


 Birds, rabbits, turtles. This section was a little ambiguous. 


 Winner, winner, chicken dinner!


 This is where things got extra creepy. And crawly. Live baby scorpions just squirming around and live turtles just chilling, totally unaware of their fate: soup. 


Dinner, I'm assuming.



  Little Chinese kidlet and little puppies. Both too cute for dinner. 


 LEEEEEZARDS. I know you're smacking your lips! These guys look pretty tempting.

Not going to lie, I jumped a little when I saw this. Dinner. Never say never? How about never ever ever in a million years ever. 

Shortly after this sight, Emily and I realized we were hungry. We hopped on the subway back to our neighbourhood and dined (for the third time this week) at our beloved McDonald's. You can take a girl out of the Western world, but you can't feed her snake. Or scorpion. Or turtles. 

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Huang Gang Middle School

My School!

The Guangzhou branch of the school where we are working was built just last year. The final project is still not completed: the teachers’ dormitories still need to be built and the sports facilities need to be completed. I can only imagine what this place will look like once everything is done. Here are some photos of the campus as it looks now.

Basketball courts and race track. 

Cafeteria 


Front entrance - complete with 24 hour security


Emily on the soccer field


The school at night


School model - along with the teachers' dorms, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and an indoor athletic facility will be built. 


The amount of time students spend in class here boggles my mind. It is an extremely regimented boarding school. There is music played over loud speakers at 6:20am to wake everyone up. Morning exercises and breakfast are done by 7:40, and then the first class begins at 8:00am. There is a 2 hour break at lunch time when students and teachers nap. Class resumes at 2:15 until dinner at 5:25. After dinner, there is a short period of free time and then students return to class at 6:30-9:30 pm. 13.5 hours (minus breaks) from start to finish! 

I’m still not sure how many students attend the school. Together, Emily and I see more than 800 students per week but we have both seen students around campus that we know are not in any of our classes. We teach 21 lessons a week (each is 40 minutes long) and in each class there are between 20 and 22 students. We are very lucky with our class sizes. Normally, classes in China can have up to 70 students!

Because the official teacher dormitories aren’t built yet, all of the teachers live in a building that will eventually be used for students. Emily and I both have two rooms to ourselves. Each room is meant to house 6 students! Our rooms are very comfortable, despite looking and feeling very institutional upon arrival.

Matt, the other foreign teacher, lives just down the hall from us with his wife and their 3-year-old son, Jay. Jay speaks English with his father and Chinese with his mother and is absolutely adorable.  A few times a week, we hang out with him after we’re done teaching for the day. He brings his scooter or tricycle out on the track and we’ll race him or watch him hang upside down on the play equipment. He’s a funny little guy, but is clearly experiencing only-child syndrome. I think it’s even worse because he is showered with attention everywhere he goes on campus. Groups of girls fawn over him (we call them his fans).  Emily referred to him as a jealous boyfriend the other day. She was watching him hit tennis balls with his ‘papa’ and started chatting to one of her students who was passing by. Jay was trying to get her attention, but once he realized that she was talking to another boy he hit her with his tennis racquet! Despite behavior like this, he is still so endearing.



Friday, March 23, 2012

Accidental Acupuncture

So I had intended to share my experiences in chronological order from the beginning, which would have been much easier if I was on the ball instead of trying to back track after the fact. But I’m leaving that idea behind because this is newsworthy, so I feel compelled to post NOW. I will fill in the blanks later.

Emily and I purchased a package of ten massages about three weeks ago. Tonight we scheduled our third massage, as has become our weekend ritual. My masseuse (I wish I knew her name because she is awesome) tells Emily what’s wrong with me and then Emily attempts to translate the paragraphs of Cantonese into about two or three sentences of English to me: “Apparently there is something wrong with your right side…. Or maybe it’s your left? I can’t really understand.” Now, convinced that there is something terribly wrong with my right side (or possibly left) I’m concerned with getting it fixed. Tonight we were offered a supplement to our prepaid massage. At first it was explained to Emily, but all that was understood was “equipment” (maybe). Visuals were then brought in to aid in our understanding. Em got the first look and mumbled a quick “eeek, too scary”. I, on the other hand agreed after a small glance. To what? I wasn’t quite sure. I did know that it might help cure my right (or left) side, and that it would cost a mere 48 RMB (about $9 CDN).

Tonight I learned the word for pain in Cantonese. The initial burning/ ripping of skin sensation caused by the suction cups eventually gives way to a feeling that I can’t really describe. It’s not painful, but it doesn’t feel nice either. I think I started coaxing my body into believing that it didn’t hurt, and that this discomfort was a means to an end: the healing of my right (or left) side. At one point, curiosity took over, and I carefully turned my head to see what Emily’s suction cups looked like. What I saw made my stomach turn a little, but I was careful to hide my reaction knowing that if she knew what her back looked like she would freak out. Thinking about it now, I don’t know how I didn’t freak out. The cups vary in size with the smallest being about 2 inches in diameter and about 3 inches high. Strategically placed around the entire back, each glass cup was filled with a balloon of reddened skin. It was then I knew that this moment needed to be captured in a photo.


WARNING: This photo is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.

















One hour later, the red welts already begin to turn into bruises.


After a little googling, we now know that we innocently stumbled our way into an acupuncture cupping session. I like finding these little experiences unexpectedly. It reminds me that I am actually living in China. I walked in for a massage and I left with a giant, detoxifying, and (hopefully) temporary tattoo. 

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

More Yangshuo

February 9th: After being in China for only a few days, we piled into a van with our fellow Bucklanders to head into Guilin for our mandatory medical check. I can say with confidence that nothing could have prepared me for what this medical check would entail. After being poked, prodded, and pricked, the last thing I had to do was provide a urine sample. The washroom facilities were less on the daunting side than I had hoped and were much closer to traumatizing. The ladies' facilities had a single squater. I will spare the details of what said squater had recently been used for, but my gag reflexes were becoming overly active and I decided to pursue another option. I checked out the men's side. Gagging ensued. That's when Emily and I had the bright idea to use a stairwell to obtain our samples. We took turns guarding the door as we each dropped trou to fill our cups. Proud moment.

The rest of our time in Yangshuo was spent exploring, relaxing, drinking, and finally, teaching. After a week of orientation classes, we worked on our first lesson plans and had the chance to do our demo lesson at a nearby middle school. I was overly nervous, but it was good to be in front of real, live, Chinese students and to get some feedback afterwards. Valentine's night we had our 'graduation' dinner with our fellow teachers and the CEO and staff from Buckland. 

The next day, some of our new friends started to depart for their teaching destinations. My Visa status was still up in the air, so that meant more time for exploring, relaxing, and maybe a little bit more drinking. 

Here are some tidbits: 


Mojo bar's beer pong table. 

Eating street noodles inside a night club. 

Valentine's Day feast!

Climbing Moon Hill with some lovely ladies. 



Karsts errywhere

Cruising the Li River. 

Big beers and McDonald's

Making deals!

Climbing TV Tower Hill

Made it to the top!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Getting to Yangshuo

We arrived in Yangshuo around noon the following day and were greeted with a very warm welcome the second we stepped out of the car. Ashlee and Amy from Buckland showed us to our room at the hostel. We were pleasantly surprised. Emily and I had a room to ourselves with an extra bed (read here: extra comforter). I was not fully prepared for the cold weather in Yangshuo. I had done my research and knew that it would be a few degrees warmer than Toronto. Not too shabby, right? Nothing I can’t handle. WRONG. One of my first lessons on Chinese culture was that indoor heating is very rare. Our room did have an air conditioner that doubled as a “heater”. The amount of heat emitted from said heater was probably enough to properly heat a small wardrobe. Our pajamas turned into layers of leggings, sweatpants, doubled up socks, and so on. It wasn’t until our demo lessons at the near by open-air school that we (actually Emily deserves the credit here) discovered mini heaters. Emily watched a few female students plug a little multi-coloured bag into an outlet. Soon after we purchased our very own mini heaters. I haven’t let Cute Panda out of my sight since she came into my life.

                                          L-R: Cute Panda, Steve The Bay bear, Love Bear

                             
                                                       Our lovely hostel at Buckland.

Back to Yangshuo… Our second official meal in China was extremely fancy. It didn’t take us very long to find the local McDonald’s. Our jet lag, combined with our lack of luggage depression, combined with our empty bellies lead us directly down West Street in search for something familiar.



Full and happy, we nosed around our new temporary ‘hood. 



 We decided that we should treat ourselves and forked out a whopping 30 yuan ($5 Canadian) for a shampoo and blowdry. Salons back home could learn a thing or two. Our wash included a blanket, a bed, and an amazing head massage. 



First things first

WEEEEWOOOO! So I’m a little late in the game as I’ve been in China for nearly a month now. For anybody who knows me well, this should not come as a surprise. I majored in English and minored in procrastination. Good thing I have my trusty notebook to refer back to so that I can share the details of my arrival and first impressions of China. Here we go….

Another thing that should not come as a surprise is that I over-packed. So the first lag of the journey took me all the way to the “Excess Baggage Fees” counter at Pearson. Soon after it was time for our final goodbyes and we headed through security into the Maple Leaf Lounge (thank you Jennie!) where we clearly did not belong. While business men made phone calls and checked emails in their suits, Emily and I stuffed in as many breadsticks and crackers and free magazines as our carry-ons would allow. We were very thankful for our shameless gluttony later on in the trip (story to come). Our 13-hour flight was not bad at all – plenty of movies to choose from on our personal TV screens and the food was better than decent. We then had a five-hour layover in Beijing, which was spent sleeping. We arrived in Guilin airport just after midnight. Emily and I were the last ones waiting at the baggage carousel when we were approached and told that there was nothing left on the plane. No luggage for us. The guy who approached us took us to an office and eventually tracked down our luggage (still in Beijing) and assured us we would get it in a few days. This is how I felt about that: 




Our flight was the last to arrive for the day and the airport workers were clearly eager to close up shop. All of the lights in the airport were off so we scooted to the front doors to find our ride. Except nobody was there to fetch us. We returned to the office and called Buckland (our employer). Apparently the driver was having car troubles so there would be nobody to pick us up. We also learned that there are no taxis at this time of night so we would have to stay at the airport hotel and wait until the morning. No luggage, no ride, but we did have snacks. Our first official meal in China consisted of candy and breadsticks.