Things I miss...

Don't get me wrong - I love life in China. But there are certain things I really miss from home. This is for all those people out there thinking about moving to China - I wish I had this list before I came!
Tortilla shells (O frabjous day! I found them at Metro today)
Taco Chips (yay, also at Metro!)
Chocolate Chips
Gum
Yeast
Bread that isn't sweet
Normal milk
EXPO whiteboard markers (ours run out sooo quickly)
Hockey Night in Canada, reality TV (yeah, I know, I'm addicted), Gray's Anatomy, the Big Bang Theory, Lost...
Rock Band
Dutch candies
Quaker Chocolate-Chip Granola Bars (I don't know what I'm going to do when they run out)
Rustic Touch, Clear Power and other Melaluca cleaning supplies (they're amazing, really)
An in-tune piano

I am sooo glad I brought:
Medication (I've become the resident dealer)
My whole spice collection
Herbal tea
Deoderant
Earplugs (the noise from construction, honking cars, and barking dogs is enough to keep anyone up at night)
My music!

I am grateful for the little luxuries China has to offer:
Cheap taxi rides (even though it feels like I'm risking my life every time I step into a taxi!)
Massages
My ayi (she is truly amazing)
Great food
DVD's at a steal
So many places to explore...

Lost in translation

I had an interesting episode in one of my classes the other day. I was just reading out the daily attendance when all of a sudden everyone bursts out in uproarious laughter. The kid whose name I read quickly excuses himself and rushes off to the bathroom. The next day he comes up to me and asks me to call him Tony M instead of his full name. I was so confused! So last night I asked Anita and Li Lei what it could possibly mean. Poor kid - apparantly when you put his English first name and Chinese last name together, you get a swear word. Tony Ma means "go *bleep* your mother". I guess he didn't realize what would happen when you put the two together (in Chinese, the last name comes first).

So overwhelmed

It's another gorgeous day in Jinshitan. The weather turned crisp, cool and windy overnight and it finally feels like fall. The cold winds from the North are a godsend because they blow away the pollution and leave the sky clear and blue. Winds from the South or the East just bring in more grayness from the big cities. I don't mind the cooler weather, but I'm just really hoping my boxes will arrive soon since they have all my winter clothes in them. That was a huge fiasco! We were told that the school would ship two boxes for us, which is wonderful, but they didn't tell us that they wouldn't arrive for a good two months. We were told to pack our teaching supplies, bedding, shoes, and winter clothes in the boxes (but not food, electronics, or medication because that stuff causes the packages to get held up in customs). Now I've been trying to survive these past few weeks without any teaching supplies and not many pants at all. We've been told that the boxes have arrived in China, but might take a month to clear customs! The good thing is that it will feel like Christmas when we do get them.
I did not sleep nearly enough last night, so I'm not as planned as I'd like to be today. I'm kind of panicking and trying to hide it, while scrounging for time to plan and mark. There's just way too many opportunities to socialize around here! After school today we have a club fair, where Anita and I will promote our bike and community outreach clubs. I would love to go on a bike ride along the coast today, but I think that I'd better finish all my plans before I take a break.

A tale of three cities: Jinshitan, Kaifaqu, and Dalian

This weekend I definitely treated myself again. On Friday night, we played ultimate frisbee afterschool with a bunch of teachers and then headed out to Kaifaqu. Anita and I met up with Anjali for dinner and we tried to convince the other teachers to come out for Korean food with us, but they really wanted to go to Pizza Hut. Seriously?? Pizza Hut in China?? It's incredibly overpriced and not nearly as good as the asian food options. Needless to say, our Korean meal was incredible and the company was great :) We shopped at Trustmart and a bunch of little stores along the way back through Kaifaqu. At the end of our long night we enjoyed some McDonald's ice-cream. It's a little creamier than the Canadian variety and it hit the spot. We were sooo exhausted! We planned a little bit for our Beijing trip - I can't believe we'll be there in less than a week! Even though we got back from Kaifaqu pretty late, I stayed up to watch a movie for the last time in my apartment.
On Saturday morning, I switched apartments with Rody, so now I'm rooming with Anita - yay! I'll have to post some pictures of my new place soon. My new room is huge and has a nice view of plants outside my window. I was surprised how quickly the move was with all the help we got, but I still needed to clear my head before I started unpacking. I headed into the ESL building and played piano for a good two hours. The pianos are okay, but unfortunately the building is never open when I need it to be! I wish I had a key or could climb in through the windows. Maybe I should try that... Some students poked their heads in while I was playing and convinced me to teach them how to play Apologize, so I acquiesed. Eventually I dragged myself away from the pianos and started a little lesson planning (not before first grabbing some icecream at the school cafeteria store. It's still almost 30 degrees outside and I can work up a sweat planning :) After dinner I got a massage at the Blue Phoenix, which was incredible. I didn't realize how much tension I had built up over the week. It was a foot massage (later I wondered why I had chosen the foot massage of all things, because I'm sooo ticklish), but they massaged my whole body and left me feeling so relaxed. Best of all, it was less than ten dollars and there's a chance that the school will compinsate some of the costs. I'm going to make this a weekly tradition! I came home and watched the Bourne Ultimatum before bed (my DVD player is definitely getting good use).
This morning, I went to church with Anita, Rody, and Yimming. The worship time was very uplifting and helped me refocus for this week. We went out for the best jiao ze (my favourite is mutton and cilantro) and a nice restaurant downtown and then met up with Tyler and Peter to get another dry hair wash and massage. We did a little shopping at a 2 quai store (a dollar store where everything costs 33 cents) and picked up a bunch of plates and utensils since we do a lot of entertaining. All in all, it was a great weekend, but I'm feeling behind on planning and marking so I'd better get to it!

Best weekend ever :)

Okay, I just had the most amazing weekend and it's not even half over yet! Yesterday, right after school, I packed up my bags and took the qing gui (aka skytrain) from Jinshitan to Dalian with Anita and Anjali. We went to an Indian restaurant on the fifth floor of the Zhongshan Hotel and met up with some other teachers from the Foreign Nationals School downtown. The food was amazing and we were entertained by Indian dancing and music throughout the night. The hotel had a glass elevator which took us up for an amazing view from the 38th floor, which was almost as fun as the hellevator ride at the amusement park last week. Then we wandered around the night markets and enjoyed the nightlife. Dalian is always thronging with people, no matter what time of day or night. We decided to indulge in one of our favourite luxuries here: the dry hair wash. We went into a random salon close to the teacher apartments and introduced the Foreign Nationals teachers to the joys of the hair wash. The guys in the salon pour shampoo on our heads and rub it in, using a spray bottle to get it all sudsy. The best part of it all is that they massage your head, back and arms while they do your hair. These guys were way stronger than the girls we usually go to in Manjitan, plus they were entertaining and kept teasing us. We went to bed so relaxed that night, and for only two bucks. We stayed in the apartments with the Foreign Nationals teachers. They are staying quite a distance away from their campus, in small one-room apartments. After seeing their places I feel so blessed to have so much space. They don't even have kitchens or stoves, so they eat out most of the time. I'll take my smelly bathroom anyday, if I can have a place to cook. Actually, I might move out of my place next weekend and start rooming with Anita. I can't wait to have a roomie again!
Anyways, today we woke up to the most beautiful day we've had so far in Dalian. And it was perfect, because we planned a hike for today. We picked up some coffee at McDonald's and some breakfast from some bustling street markets early in the morning before jumping on the qing gui to Kaifaqu. There we met up with some other teachers and took a bus out to DaHeiShi (literally big black mountain). The bus only costs 16 cents a ride and the light rail is just $1.33 (quite a steal compared to Vancouver). We hiked up to the top of the mountain past horses, yurts, and Buddist temples. The hike was absolutely amazing and by the time we reached the top, we could see for miles towards Dalian, Kaifaqu, and Jinshitan and out over the ocean. I can't wait to post pictures! We were also celebrities up at the top. All the Chinese hikers took out their cell phones and started snapping pictures of us. A bunch of girls wanted a picture with me. I'm getting accostomed to the stares I get as I walk down the street. Tomorrow we have a great day planned too: we'll be going to church, having lunch there, shopping for bikes (since we just got paid today, yay :) and celebrating the moon festival with a potluck and fireworks on the beach. So right now I'm hoping to get all my work for the week done so I can enjoy tomorrow and not panic on Sunday night as usual.

Jiao Shi Jie Kuai Le

Jiao Shi Jie Kuai Le is Happy Teacher's Day. We celebrated yesterday and I even got a card from one of my students. So sweet :) I've been taking Mandarin lessons on Tuesday afternoons, but the students always laugh when I practice my phrases on them :)
I had my ayi come on Tuesday and she did such a great job cleaning my place. It was amazing! She does everything: she cleaned my floors way better than I could, dusted every crack, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen top to bottom, got rid of mold, did my dishes, cleaned and hung my laundry, and emptied my garbage all for $6. I will free up so much time on my weekends to get other stuff done and it's so nice to come home to a clean place at the end of a long day.
On Tuesday, we threw a surprise birthday party for Anjali, and I somehow managed to get her out of the house and stall her while we crammed 30 people into Anita's place. We even found cake and icecream! I have been eating at Anita and Rody's so much and getting lunch at the cafeteria (it's so cheap: $1 for a huge plate of food), so I have an overflowing fridge of food that needs to get cooked. Luckily we have plenty of potlucks coming up :) Life here is good.

Where did the weekend go?

So yesterday I had grandiose plans of finishing a lot of my prepping for the term, but I ended up cleaning my place, doing laundry, and checking my email instead. So that evening I went down to Dragon, our apartment manager, and hired someone to clean for me. Hopefully that will free up some time in my schedule. Saturday night, I also went over to Anita and Rody's place for a potluck to thank Brian (Dragon's assistant) and Lei Li for helping them move in. We thought we were doing these two guys a favour by cooking home-cooked food since we see them eating out all the time. But little did we know that Lei Li used to be a cook himself. He took over all his supplies and made the most amazing dishes, including fish soup and a turnip carved into a rose.
Today I went to the Dalian International Christian Fellowship again with the girls from my Thursday Bible study: Rody, Anita, and Sui Ki. They changed their location to a university out by Tiger Beach to accommodate a growing congregation. I love how multi-cultural the church is and the pastor's messages always speak to my heart. We even have the opportunity to get involved in the community and volunteer at an orphanage. I can't wait to make more connections with people from Dalian!

Survived another first week

So, the first week of teaching is now behind me. I really wish I had started blogging earlier because so many things have happened that I'd love to remember years done the road. I'll try to do some backtracking as I go along. The first week of teaching actually went pretty well, even though I felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants. We actually started class last Friday, August 29. The kids take nine different classes during a week, of which we teach six. On Friday, we were supposed to run through all the blocks, but for a half-hour each, to give the kids a sense of what their classes were like and who their teachers were. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the computer system, so when I got to school on Friday morning at 6:30 AM, they still didn't have a schedule of which classes we would be teaching where. The admin team (who had been working all night except for a two-hour break from 2-4) told me to come back in a half hour. I was starting to panic because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find my classrooms in this gigantic school. I was hoping to scope it out before the school day began. Soon afterwards, the admin team realized that the student schedules couldn't possibly come together on time, so they decided to scrap the half-hour blocks and create a day of activities in the homerooms. So instead of doing a bunch of short math activities, I had to lead a grade 11 class through a bunch of get-to-know-you activities. We also took a walk down to the beach and played some PE games in the field (which you can imagine would be pretty difficult to coordinate with 500 kids on a field). All the teachers had to dress up semi-formally for the morning flag ceremony, so we were pretty sweaty and our feet were all sore from our nice shoes after the unexpected activities. Thankfully the kids were very well organized and knew where to go, so we could just follow them. The day was a success in spite of all the last minute changes.
On Monday, we had the first real day of school. We found out that our blocks and classrooms were rearranged and I ended up with one of the best situations imaginable. I'm teaching in a large, bright, new classroom equipped with all the latest projectors and sound systems (but not an overhead projector! What am I going to do? I just have a whiteboard and no whiteboard markers that work). My three prep blocks are all in a row, so I can get a lot of work done during the day if I choose to be productive. The school days are long here, especially Monday. The kids have class from 7:40 AM to 4:40 PM on Mondays and 7:40 AM to 3:40 PM Tuesday to Friday. Thankfully, the way my preps worked out, I teach 8:40 - 3:40 Monday, 9:55 - 3:40 Tuesday, 7:40 - 8:30 and 12:50 - 3:40 on Wednesday, 7:40 - 10:50 and 2:40 - 3:40 on Thursday, and 7:40 - 1:40 on Friday. Many of the other new teachers have to switch classrooms a couple times during a day or go to separate buildings for their offices, but my classroom is all mine and it's just two doors down from my office. I love the students already. This year, the school decided to segregate the genders in grade 10, so I have two blocks of Math 10 girls, two blocks of Math 10 boys, and two blocks of Math 11. So far I really love only having to prepare two subjects and having so many other math teachers to bounce ideas off of. Our classes are still changing a lot because the admin team is still trying to iron out problems with the students' schedules. Next week I'll make a strong effort to learn everyone's names. Each kid picks an English name and they definitely get creative picking names. I have girls named Cinderella, Memory, Funny, Cissy, and Tree, and boys named East, Wish, Rabbit, and Lucifer.
Last night, two of my close friends, Angali and Anita, and I caught the school bus to Kaifaqu to do some shopping. (It's crazy how quickly we all met and became friends here. It seems like this shared China experience drew us all together. I guess it also helps that we all work and live next door to one another. Relationships are developing all over the place). Anyways, we managed to pick up plane tickets for our end-of-September trip to Beijing. We have a week off for the national holiday, so we're going to explore China :) I can't wait to do some traveling! We also discovered an incredible store called the Haute bakery, which has amazing black forest cake. We went out for dinner at a pretty good Indian restaurant and then had a get-to-know-the-staff party at the Silk Road Bar. All in all, it was a great Friday night.
This morning I cleaned my place (which got incredibly dusty after one week - I'm definitely hiring a maid soon) and did my laundry (which is quite the task, involving dragging my heavy washing machine into my bathroom so I can hook it up to the sink, plug it in, and put the drain tube in the drainage hole in my bathroom floor). Right now I'm supposed to be planning lessons for next week, so I'd better get back to work!

First few days

Here's some stuff I wrote on August 22
It's hard to believe that I've only been here for two days because so much has already happened. It was so nice staying overnight in Japan - the hotel was wonderful and we had fun going out for dinner downtown. I'm not too terribly jet-lagged, although I've been waking up with the sun at 5:30 every morning. It's nice not having to drag myself out of bed in the morning :) Yesterday, we went for a medical checkup, which was a little crazy. First of all, we weren't allowed to eat anything for breakfast (probably for the ultrasound), and then we had a 2-hour bus trip downtown. We got there at 9:30 and waited in long line-ups for an around-the-world room-to-room checkup. The first one I went to made me lift my shirt and everything else and stuck wires all over my body and pulsed some sort of current through to check my system. It was especially awkward since you could see apartments through the window and there was only a thin sheet separating our room from the line-up waiting outside. Then I had to get two vials of blood removed to check for HIV. Something between the combination of no breakfast, a hot muggy room, and losing blood made me feel really faint afterwards. I'm still bruised from the needles. We also got an ultrasound, vision check, xrays, and had to give a urine sample (in a really dirty room with just a squatty potty). So afterwards when we went shopping, I made up for it and treated myself to everything I need for my apartment (including a toaster oven, DVD and CD player, rice cooker, and pots and pans). Even though restaurant food is incredibly cheap here, I can't wait to be able to cook for myself (my digestive system hasn't quite adjusted to the food here, but then my digestive system has always been a little crazy). I haven't gotten propane for my stove yet and my fridge doesn't work, but I have hope that soon I'll be all set up.
Today, we did a tour of the school and a lot of pro-d. The school is enormous! Right now I'm on the fifth floor of one of the buildings. It's like being on a university campus. The people that I'm working with are great. It really makes it feel like home when you always have someone to speak English with and almost everyone is from Vancouver. I haven't picked up much Chinese yet, but I know thank you, hi, how are you, 1, 2, 3, and cheers! I have no idea whether people can actually understand what I'm saying though :) Tomorrow I'm going to church with two other girls who just graduated from UBC and we'll do some shopping afterwards. I've also been hanging out with some of the other math teachers and since we all live so close together, we see eachother all the time. Now we're going to walk down to the beach, which is just a couple minutes from the school and see what it's like.