Digging a hole to the United States

My school is building an art building. Every class got to paint a section of the wall surrounding the construction. The building in the back of the picture is our gymnasium.


We all got our passports back about a week ago - thank goodness. We had to give them up to get our work Visas. The funny thing is, someone in the Visa department screwed up our order and instead of having our Visas valid through the end of June they end on June 2nd. So...we're going to have to give up our passports again and get new ones sometime during the year.


I know I keep saying it, but Xili is truly amazing. Today I took a different path to the main hub of the town. As I expected I found a lot of new restaurants, street food, and even a small department store. Then I got into the section of town that I've already explored and know decently well. I was looking to buy some clothes and wandered around aimlessly through the different rows of street vendors. As I strolled around I saw a path that seemed to open up on the other side, followed it and all of sudden came upon this. A large staging area with a section of platformed seats behind. All around on the first floor vendors had been set up in the hollows of the sidings. On the above floors there were small living areas with the usual clothes and odds and ends hanging along the balconies. I doubt I can find this place again, but I was just awed at how much China can seem to hide from you unless you know the right way to go.


My kitchen...
So far I've cooked noodles (success), toast (semi-success, some burning), and french toast (least success - half was burned the other half possibly raw but still yummy)


We went back to the Yantian beach. A typhoon had come in a few days before so the water was cluttered with debris. We didn't swim much because every time you got attacked by tiny pieces of wood or floating garbage. Instead we explored and found this wooden walkway that curved all around the mountain.


We went to the Shenzhen Museum today. There were three exhibits - Modern Shenzhen, Ancient Shenzhen, and Folk Shenzhen. Folk Shenzhen talked about the original people that inhabited this area. Through the three sections, my favorite part was learning about the Dan people. These were the fisherman that lived out on the sea around Shenzhen. Many, many years ago, no one, not Hong Kong or Shenzhen, wanted to claim them or let them become citizens so the people mainly spent their lives out on the water. They were a superstitious bunch - they couldn't use words such as 'turn over' or 'upside down' and when they ate fish you couldn't flip the fish over, you had to eat it as it was served to you. The Dan people did have a couple on land ceremonies - one was flying their fish lanterns, pictured above.


One of the doctors of the school and her Senior 2 daughter took us out with their family for Mid Autumn Festival. We went to a very fancy restaurant and had a nice lunch. Then the family asked if Fuat and I would like to join them when they went to the golfing range. We accepted and found ourselves golfing for the afternoon. When we got there Fuat and I were surprised to find that there was a heard of goats just chillin out of the green! I was worried about hitting them (not that I could shoot that far) but the family assured me that the goats would move.


The next couple days is celebrating Mid Autumn Festival. It is one of China's biggest holidays. You are supposed to eat a good meal with your family, drink lots of tea and eat moon cakes while looking at the moon. It is to celebrate the harvest. Fuat and I each got two boxes of moon cakes, one from the school and one from one of the Senior 2 students. Moon cakes are alright...a lot of them have a ball of egg yoke in the center which is really salty and not very tasty. The rest of it is a sweet paste that is thick but good. There is a range of different flavors - green tea, bean paste, even a chocolate one that you leave in the refrigerator!


Our school hosted a banquet for all the teachers who were not married and under 30 years old (I felt bad for those that were over 30 and still not married - they had a quiet evening at home by themselves, sad day). Towards the end of the banquet, everyone participated in a Chinese tradition. The host creates a list of riddles and reads them out loud. Whichever table gets the answer first wins a prize. After this goes on for a little while then tables can challenge other tables to see who can solve the riddle first. Whichever tables loses has to drink. Brian, my contact teacher, was trying his best change the riddles to English so that Fuat and I could participate, but a lot was lost in translation. He would say things like "There were seven angels and they flew down to earth. One angel married a human man. They had two children." and then look at us expectantly. When Fuat and I showed that we had no idea what he was talking about he'd say "the answer is that six angels didn't get married". Yea...I still don't get it. But they all had fun and it was in a beautiful restaurant.

The Art of Mystery Meat

In my previous post I said I was going to upload a video of the dinner show we saw - unfortunately my internet won't accept that so no video :(

Some Updates:

New food that I have had the stupidity of trying (none of them were very good this time):

-Cold Potato Jello – it is completely see through and is made from vegetables and potato starch. It wasn’t necessarily bad, it just had no taste at all but a very weird consistency.
-Chicken Feat
-Pig Feat – I’ve had pig hooves here before but this was much different and very chewy

China Trust:

China is an extremely trusting and honor based society. The bus is the perfect example. There are two types of buses in the city – ones with a lady on board who goes around and collects the fare for the ride and ones with card reading machines and drop boxes at the front of the bus for you to either swipe your bus card or pay in cash. For the latter type, payment for your ride is based on the honor code. There has been numerous times where I and other Chinese people have gotten on buses that we could have simply not paid for. But no one does that. Everyone either forces themselves to the front of the bus to pay or participates in what I call China Trust. If you get on the bus through the middle doors and it’s really crowded, instead of pushing your way through, you hand your bus card or money to the person next to you and it gets sent up to the front of the bus. Then the hope is that if you sent your card that it makes its way back to you. Everyone does this and as far as I can tell it has never failed. No one tries to skip their payment for their ride, no one steals other people’s bus fares or cards, the society works on trust and hopefully no one takes advantage.

When the weekends turn into work days:

A common phrase that we use is “it’s China” which typically means that everything is changing from minute to minute and nothing has a set schedule. It is very common for your fellow Chinese teachers to come up to you at 4pm and say there is a dinner they want you to attend at 6pm. So planning things with your friends has to always be a little flexible for China time changes. Well since they don’t plan things too far in advance, when a holiday comes where the students have school off the school has to make up those days somehow. In America we just tack days on at the end, but in China they push through and have school on Saturdays and Sundays to make up for the vacation days. So my school has a four day vacation starting today so we ended up working from last Monday till yesterday, eight days in a row. The work wasn’t too bad but I felt bad for the students. They are in school from 7:25 am – 10:00 pm, and had to do that for eight days. Luckily they are used to this system, and despite being a little stir crazy were able to make it through the long week in anticipation for the four day vacation.

I am stuck in China limbo

This is what we have deemed "The Bat Cave". It is an underground bus station that houses the wonderfully Chinese 392 bus. No matter what day or what time, this bus will be packed. As you enter the station there is already a long line in wait for the next bus to arrive. Once it does it is complete chaos as to who gets on and who does not. On the 19th I was almost pushed into a section of the railing that I would have been stuck in until the bus pulled away. Luckily, being small does have its benefits and I wiggled myself back into the mass movement towards the door and found a tiny spot left for me to fit into on the bus. Getting off was just as difficult. I had to follow the path pushed open by a stranger who was also exiting at my stop and squeeze through any gaps that had already closed up in his wake. Without him I might still be stuck on the crazy 392.


Look at that thing! It doesn't seem as impressive in the picture but it was bigger than my hand. Andrew and I were climbing up a mountain and as we started up a path Andrew told me to stop. Right above our heads was an humongous spider web with the spider sitting in it. He was completely sprawled out when we first arrived, but then a leaf fell on his web and he dashed over and started attacking it. After I took the picture we decided it would be a fine time to turn around and go back down. On our way down we found another spider web that we had missed before with another spider almost as big.


Tracy, one of the English teachers at my school, invited Fuat and me on a dinner outing with all of the Senior 2 teachers. This was the restaurant. It was beautiful inside, set up like a tree house with vines hanging down everywhere from the ceiling. There were so many of us in the dinner party that the staff treated us to a live show during our meal. It included singing, story telling, and dancing. Towards the end, the main host of the festivities turned to Fuat and grabbed his hand to stand up. The man grabbed a few other teacher's hands as well. Then he commanded that they start dancing for us. I had moved around the tables so that I could get pictures of Fuat's performance, but I was quickly grabbed by the host as well and told to dance. We were asked to follow a woman dancer and then were provided with fans to wave around. The spectacle ended with us linked hand to hand together running in circles around all the dinner tables. Above is a video of one of the sections of the performance. It was a great time and I'm glad we decided to go.



Xili/Shenzhen is such a wondrous place. You believe that you have found all there is to find and then you make a slightly different turn and you are in a whole new world. This picture was taken one block from the Xili Rainbow Mall. Behind me was another row of tiny shops and cheap restaurants. I followed the road for a half hour and wound through apartment buildings, little tables with men playing cards, a strip of road that had every street food imaginable, and who knows what else.


This is my lovely bathroom. It does have a Western toilet (thank god) but also has my shower that ends up getting everything soaked each time I use it.

I fought the bus and the bus won

There is a river that runs right through Xili. We were taking a walk and came across our new friend the snail.


This is the building I teach in. The building is separated into Senior 1s and 2s. So the classrooms you can see across the way are all Senior 2s and then there are identical ones behind me that are Senior 1s. Also, the campus is very beautiful and has small gardens in between all of the buildings.


This is a tiny row of Dongmen - the shopping district. A couple key buildings and a lot of street vendors create Dongmen where you can find literally anything you want and find nothing at all at the same time. It is PACKED with people at all times. Our favorite ares to go at the moment are the DVD section - it sells illegal DVDs for 6 kuai (less than a dollar) - and any section that sells t-shirts. In China there is a lot of Chinglish shirts - shirts that have English on them but the translation went wrong somewhere creating hilarious sayings for the Americans to laugh at. If you don't know what I'm talking about go to www.engrish.com. So we've been trying to find quality shirts to stock pile before we head back to the states.

So Saturday night we all got together for pizza in one of the Western parts of town. A whole lot more people showed up than we thought were going to and we quickly needed a game plan of where to head after pizza. One guy suggested that we go to this beer garden type area near his school. By day it is a basketball court and by night all these tents get set up with food and beer. Well he was already decently drunk and said he couldn't explain how to get there he just had to go, wander around for awhile, and eventually he would find it. Despite the large uncertainty that this place was possible to find we chose to follow him into the unknown. We arrived in the vicinity and started wandering. The area was side street upon side street of as many shops as possible selling anything you wanted under the sun. Unfortunately by this time it started down pouring and we all got soaked at least up to our knees (for those with umbrellas) from walking around back alley China. As we passed a bar, someone suggested we give up, stop here and find this mystical beer garden another time. So we stopped. Our fearless, drunk, leader would not admit defeat and decided to go wander by himself till he found it so then he could confidently show us the way. I don't know why, but no one tried to stop him and he left. Luckily, fifteen minutes later he returned and said he had success! So we all got up again, went back out into the rain and tromped through the neighborhood on our mission. The trip took a few exciting turns that included a number of dark scary alleys right out of the movies – with the clothes hanging out of all the windows, the cat running in front of us calling into the night, the strange smells and sounds coming from the intersections of each adjacent walkway. And then we came out of the last dark alley and we were there! It was a magical place just as he had described. We spent the rest of the evening under these tents where the owners just absolutely loved us. They brought us a number of free dishes for just showing up. Also everything was extremely cheap – it was 5 kuai (less than a dollar) for a decent sized plate of noodles that fed half the table. So in the end it was a great success – now the question is if we’ll ever be able to find it again.

I smell blood, we're getting close!

Updates...Oh China...

You know you're in China when...
-You see umbrellas everywhere at all times - the Chinese think the whiter you are the more beautiful you are so they carry umbrellas around when it is sunny to protect their skin from getting tan
-Bus drivers drive on any side of the road to save time - I was on a bus that got stuck behind some traffic. Instead of waiting, the driver decided to pull out of our lane into the lane of oncoming cars. Luckily, the Chinese expect for crazy stuff to happen while driving so at no time were we in too much danger.

Food to add to the list that I've eaten in China:
Pig feet
100 year old eggs (they aren't actually 100 years old, it's just what they are called)
Pig skin
Baby pigeon
Pig spine (well the meat around the spine)

Fun stuff that has been going on during my adventure:

Below you can see some pictures from Teachers Day. It was a true holiday, I even received those mass text messages from people saying “Hope you’re having a great Teachers Day”. Every school has a banquet and ships their teachers off to a nicer location (one of my friends got taken to an entirely different city to go on an overnight stay at a hot springs resort). Well Fuat and I went to the buses that were supposed to take us to the hotel and there weren’t any seats left. We were asked to stand in the aisle along with some of the other teachers. Then a man came over and pointed at Fuat and me and motioned for us to follow him. He showed us to a car and motioned for us to get in. As I was sliding into the car I noticed a briefcase and bag on the seat, someone ran over to move them and I looked up and it was the Principal of the school! It turned out that we were being asked to ride in the backseat of the state provided Principal’s car. So he sat up front while we were driven to the hotel. He doesn’t speak any English so Fuat and I mainly just looked out the window. It was a very nice car and an honor that we were asked to ride with him.

Due to the fact that most of the teachers at this school do not speak English, I eat most of my meals at my own table, unless Fuat is there at the same time I am. I bring my book and it’s really not bad eating alone, especially when you realize even if you did sit with other people you wouldn’t be able to communicate with them anyway. Well, this older gentleman has taken to joining me if he sees me sitting by myself. He doesn’t speak a bit of English but we do our best at communicating. The first day was great, he saw how I was using chop sticks and motioned that I was doing it wrong. He showed me how the correct way was and insisted that I practice. He would take his own chop sticks and pick up green beans really quickly and eat them, then he’d look at me like “now your turn”. I had a lot of fun practicing and have been trying to use them correctly ever since. Sometimes when we are sitting together he’ll find an English teacher to come over and translate for us. I think they get annoyed, but they play along for a little bit at least. I really didn’t understand his role at first in the school, because he seemed to command a lot of respect with the other teachers. They would bring him food and automatically do anything that he asked. I found out yesterday that he is the Director of all of the logistical portions of the school. So he oversees the housing, the cafeteria, etc. I’m still not sure if it’s his age, his position, or if he’s just really well liked that makes him so respected.

This past Wednesday, I got a group of us together to go play cards in central Shenzhen. We tried to plan for it early because unfortunately the buses all stop by 10 or 1030pm around here. The whole goal of every night is to at least make it part way home by bus or metro so that the taxi ride will be shorter and cheaper. Well Wednesday we made it to Xili, but I was still a half hour walk from home and it was late and dark. I’ve gotten used to the walk home at night, and walk along the street so that the path is lit. Plus, Shenzhen is a really safe area. But I didn’t really feel like walking all the way home that night so I got a motorcycle taxi! There are a ton of guys that just ride around on their little motorcycles and offer people rides for a fee. I hadn’t tried one yet and wanted to before I left China, so I figured why not take advantage of the situation and cross something off of my to do list. The ride was not at all as scary as I thought it would be. It was more expensive than a regular taxi, but it was worth the experience.

September 3 -10

Teachers Day! On this day, the school provides a large meal for all of its teachers. We traveled to a five star hotel where all of the Chinese high governmental officials (including the President) stay when they are in Shenzhen. There was an award ceremony for teachers who did outstanding last year. Then the Principal gave a speech and toasted the day, starting off a 17 course meal. This is Fuat, Brian, who is our contact teacher, and me on the grounds of the hotel.


In China they celebrate Teachers Day once a year, this year it was on September 10th. The day before, all of the students and teachers gathered for an assembly. Different people gave speeches and students performed songs. Each teacher received a bouquet of flowers and a hand made present from a student.


Xili has so many different parts. Literally two blocks from this place is the four story mall. We've started exploring the back alleys of Xili and have found some great street food and interesting markets that will sell you just about any type of animal.


The returner (it is her third year in the program) to Xili took her "Xili babies" out to dinner. She took us to one of her favorite places in Xili, the Communist restaurant. The waiters and waitresses were dressed in Communist Party outfits and every hour they used to get up on stage and read from the little red Communist book and sing Communist songs (sadly they have stopped doing this). It was still a lot of fun, and good food.


On the way to the elevator on my floor, you can get onto the roof. This is the view from there. The building in the bottom right corner is our gymnasium. The tall lit building in the middle is central Nanshan.


This is the statue of Nuwa in Shekou, part of Nanshan.
Nuwa is an ancient Chinese mythical creature who is half serpent half woman. This statue is to honor her for the legend of when she mended the sky. After a fight between Gods, a pillar that held up part of the sky was knocked over, so it became unbalanced. Due to this there were many fires and floods. Nuwa created new pillars from the legs of a large tortoise and mended the rest of the sky with different colored stones that she combined.


It was my friend Andrew's birthday so we all went out to celebrate. Some people got him this cake from a local bakery. So...in China you have to be very careful with baked goods because they are usually not what they look like or at least you'll receive a little surprise during eating. This cake, had green slime all over it. And the cake actually tasted green! Andrew had a bite and then passed it around the table, and the only way we could explain the entire cake flavor was...green.


This was taken at a bar/club called Plush in the Western part of Shenzhen. We had started the evening with attending a Salsa lesson followed by a Salsa party. That was a blast. There were three guys from the program who knew how to Salsa and I was the only girl so they just took turns spinning me around the dance floor. We all went out to an Irish pub after and then headed to Plush. The group didn't really go to drink, we just wanted to dance!

A semi-citizen that can't speak the language = not a tourist

Shenzhen

My new home is located in the southern part of China, directly North of Hong Kong. It consists of six districts: Bao'An, Nanshan, Futian, Luohu, Yantian, and Longgang. Shenzhen was the first area to be deemed a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by President Deng Xiaoping thirty years ago. Basically this was a fishing village and the President said the area was able to start using a special economic management system which boosted economic growth creating a huge metropolitan area within three decades. There is a picture in a previous post of Shenzhen before and now. It's amazing what these people did in such a short time.

Districts:
Bao'An and Longgang are technically outside the SEZ but have still developed a lot with the rest of the city. Shenzhen is now trying to make them more part of the SEZ by lowering the restrictions of the boarders. Nanshan is where I live. It ranges from a downtown area that is modern to areas that have much more family run hole-in-the-wall stores and restaurants. Xili, the specific area of Nanshan that I live, is part of the less modern section but still has a very nice mall, a number of large Chinese grocery stores, a few streets of nice shops, and a couple Western restaurants. It has outdoor food and clothing markets and a number of streets with very cheap restaurants that are more like the less developed parts of Shenzhen. Then there is Futian and Luohu, these are where the city center is located with tons of sky scrapers, huge beautiful malls, and expensive Western and Chinese restaurants. Yantian is mainly known as the beach district for it's beautiful sandy ocean beaches. The only district I have not been to yet is Longgang.

My school:
I was assigned to the 2nd Senior High School in Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen. It has about 3000 students. In China high school is three years and includes Senior 1s, 2s, and 3s. I am teaching ten Senior 1 classes and I think about five Senior 2s (we haven't been assigned those yet). Another teacher was assigned to this school, Fuat Yurekli. It has been great having him here and we've been able to figure out a lot about the school together. There are 10 or 30 Chinese teachers here that teach English (different people give us different numbers (getting information that is contradictory to other information you found out previously is very common in China)). Each class I teach has about fifty students in the room. All of the other teachers have been very nice and helpful since we have arrived. One even took me and a friend down to central Nanshan to go shopping. The Chinese are very hospitable and want to assist you in any way they can.

Teaching:
Yesterday was my first day of class. I had four classes yesterday and one today, each were forty minutes long (not much time at all). It was my first lesson so we did introductions and set down some rules and then the Chinese teachers had asked us to teach about American High Schools. I had created a powerpoint with pictures of my high school and examples of different parts of high school culture in America, like mascots. Unfortunately, in two of my five classes the computer wasn't working so I had to improvise parts of the lesson. Overall the classes went well. The students ranged from regular high school students who weren't too excited about being in class to those who you could tell were very excited to see an American. Most of those were girls and they'd come up to me after class and ask questions about me and life in America. The other great thing about teaching in China is that most of the students have picked English names. They choose an American word/name/object that they think is pretty sounding and adopt it as their name. My favorite name so far - Penguin King.

MAYBE you'll get up and sing for us

You know when you're in China when...

-You bring tissues with you everywhere - the bathrooms in China do not provide you toilet paper
-Your leg muscles get a work out when using the restroom - so they have what we call "squatters" in China. Instead of a toilet in the stalls of the bathroom there are holes in the floor with a porcelain surrounding that you have to squat over to use the bathroom.
-You see lots of naked children
-You see lots of little children going to the bathroom in the streets - until a certain age toddlers all have pants that have large slits in the buttocks area so when they need to go to the bathroom they simply bend over in the street and go. Sometimes their parents put them over a street drain...sometimes not.
-The word maybe starts most sentences - when Chinese speak English and they ask you to do something they always add maybe to the sentence and make it a statement rather than question. "Maybe you go to dinner with us" "Maybe you teach five more classes" "Maybe you give speech now" etc.
-Men's bellies are displayed for everyone to see - due to the hot weather in China, men often hike up their shirts above their bellies as a way to cool down. It is completely acceptable etiquette and we are just counting the days till the guys in our program start doing it too.
-You get stared at by 80% of the people who pass you - white people are not very common, especially in Shenzhen. It is not rude to stare in China so people freely will watch you till you pass by - they will even turn around on their bikes and motorcycles to continue to watch until the last moment
-You start staring at white people - Again there aren't many, so when you see another white person it is very exciting and you find yourself staring along with the Chinese