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.
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