Lady Gaga in Tiananmen Square

Starting at the beginning...

6638 miles and about 24 hours after I left Detroit, I arrived in Beijing, China on August 2nd, 2010. Through the voyage I was able to start meeting other members of the Center for Teaching and Learning in China (CTLC) program. There are a little over a hundred of us in total, and we were soon to be spread all across the city of Shenzhen, China.

The first two and a half weeks of my expedition were spent in Beijing, living in a nice hotel that was used for the Olympics (there are pictures in previous postings). We spent most of our time on the campus of Peking University, which is the Harvard of China. My average day consisted of:
-wake up, take a cold shower (I can count the number of hot showers I've had here on my hands), get ready
-go on a walk with my friend Jessica so we could better explore the area
-grab street food for breakfast
-go to Chinese lessons for two hours
-have a TEFL (Teaching English in a Foreign Language) lesson
-get street food for lunch
-go teach a Senior level class - students from Beijing signed up for summer school specifically to be taught by the teachers in our program (even though we had no idea what we were doing)
-then our TEFL activity
-and last TEFL lesson planning
-we usually had a meeting as an entire group after this as well

By having all of the TEFL training and teaching hours, at the end of the two weeks we all had a TEFL test and got certified so that we could teach in China.

After lessons:
Our nighttime activities had a large range. Most evenings a bunch of my friends would get together and go out for a long dinner. There was a place that was deemed "Narnia" right by our hotel. It acquired this name because you literally had to enter this building that housed a private pool, walk through the lobby, walk into a convenient store that was attached, and then walk out a "magical" door and you found yourself on this street with tons of street vendors and cheap restaurants, it seemed like a whole other world. After dinner, around 8pm, we usually parted ways so that we could go lesson plan for the next day. We were teaching every day so every night was spent figuring out how to entertain the kids the next day.

Beyond nights with amazing dinners, my friends and I made a point of taking advantage of being in Beijing. We went to the summer palace, the silk market, saw the national flag raising at dawn, went and had Peking Duck, ate some crazy food, went to the Beijing Student District - an area where most of the university students hang out and has nice markets/bars/restaurants, went and saw the CCTV building (look it up on google!), and went to Tiananmen Square. You can see pictures of most of those places in other posts. We had a great time, and on our down time we played lots of card games which made me even happier!

Food in China-

Crazy things I've eaten:
-Ox tongue - not bad but I didn't like how it was cooked
-Duck Intestines - sort of like crunchy noodles
-Scorpions - very good, I'd eat them like popcorn
-Cicadas - ok, sort of tasted like mashed potatoes with a hard outside
-Silk worms - not good - very mushy
-Baby quail - I only had a bite but it was very good, got to watch out for bones though

Really the food here is great. They don't eat rice as much as everyone thinks, it was probably two weeks before I even saw rice in Beijing. Mystery meat is very common. I'm sure the Chinese people know what they are eating, but we don't. You just have to eat your meal and realize it's more important that it tastes good than that you don't know what exactly you are eating. So I could have eaten other strange things but I have no idea. Also, you need to be very careful about eating bones here. A lot of meals don't have the bones taken out and we've all swallowed a number of small ones over the course of the last month.

The end of Beijing:
Well our time in the town quickly came to an end. I really enjoyed the city. Except, it is extremely smoggy there. We had about two days with blue sky and the rest had a haze that was low enough to cover some of the tops of the sky scrapers. It was probably really bad for our health to breath the air there, but we still had fun.

September has actually begun

China money! There are two names for Chinese currency - Yuan and Kuai. It seems Yuan is used more often in writing and Kuai is used in speaking. When using either one there are specific terms for 10 cents and 1 cent that correspond. On most Chinese bills the face of Chairman Mao appears. On the backs are different sites around China. They also have bills for 50 cents and 10 cents. The one in the bottom middle is a 10 cent bill.


Kite flying is a very popular activity in China. This was a stand at our local park. The kite to the right of the Cars one (the one with the cartoon wolves) is of Xie Yang Yang, the most popular cartoon in China. I'm slightly obsessed with it even though I can't understand a word of the TV show.


This is the view of my school out of my bedroom window. The school is completely outdoor hallways. It is so hot here it's not a problem.


This is the Shenzhen Concert Hall directly across from the Shenzhen Library which is a duplicate building.


This is the Chinese version of the dollar store!! We were laughing a couple weeks ago about what if China had a dollar store and how much it would be - we got our answer, 2 Yuan! It's about 6.5 Yuan per dollar so a 2 Yuan store is pretty awesome. Also, a week ago I was on a desperate search for nail polish remover. I asked one of the returners where I could find it and she said the only place was Sophora in the mall. I went and it was really expensive but I decided I needed it and if it was the only place I could find it then I wasn't going to get out of spending the money. Well yea...the 2 Yuan store definitely has little containers of it. I bought some and it seems to work. So much for paying 70 Yuan for a bottle.


The Shenzhen Public Library has an exhibit open to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of Shenzhen. There are rows upon rows of pictures that show the before and after of the Shenzhen construction. The bottom picture here was taken in 1985 and the top picture was 2009. Literally an entire high rise society was built in 30 years here. One building was built so fast that each floor was completed in three days.


This was on beach day #2. We went to the private beach this time which included a large rock outcrop where we had to climb over a scary foot bridge to get to the top. The Chinese were climbing over it with ease and laughing at Jessica and me as we took ten minutes to cross and got in everyone's way.

August 22-26

This really isn't a picture of much. It was a slow camera day and I really liked the wall of that building. This was taken at the Bao'An (another district of Shenzhen) beer garden, a place we have deemed as one of our hang outs. All the Chinese play this dice game (some know it as Pirate's Dice) while they drink. So we have all learned how to play and go to the beer garden to join in and have some fun.


This is probably my favorite part of Shenzhen so far. It is the beach in Yantian (a district of the city). There are two main beaches - a private and public one. This is the public and it is scattered with these crazy angel statues. Our coordinator said we're meeting at the red angel and we had no idea what she was talking about until we got there and saw for ourselves. The beach is beautiful and the water is basically bath temperature + salt. I've already been twice in the last week, even though it takes two and a half hours to get there. The mountains also surround the water, it is a place of paradise.


This is my room. It's very similar to one of our residence hall rooms. My kitchen consists of a microwave and a hot plate that is on the floor between those pieces of furniture. Out that glass door you can see my washing machine and the door to my bathroom. The bathrooms in China consist of a toilet and a shower head that sprays water all over your toilet every time you use it. To the left, out of the picture, is my closet and my desk. It is plenty of space for me and I have made it home :) Plus I'm on the seventh floor and right downstairs on the first is the cafeteria where I get free meals three times a day - it's great.


This is downtown Nanshan, the district I am in.


This was the first day that we moved into our new schools. I got assigned to a Senior High School in Xili, Nanshan, Shenzhen. I am at a school where there is another person from my program which has been really nice. There was a large banquet where we all got to meet our contact teachers. Everyone received large bouquets of flowers. Ours was one of the most impressive.

August 17-21

In the picture: Me, Jessica, Becca, Andrew, Leah
These are some of my closest friends here. In Beijing Becca and Jessica were roommates, so Andrew and I would join up with them and we went on a bunch of adventures. Once we got our placements, unfortunately those two got placed in Long Gang which is almost as far away from my placement as you can get. But we're still making it work and finding ways to see each other. Andrew, Leah and I got placed in Xili together and have been spending pretty much every day together exploring the city. I was really happy to find such great people.


The hotel was up in the mountains of Luohu, one of the districts of Shenzhen. In Beijing, and then in Shenzhen, Jessica, a friend of mine, and I would take morning walks before our day started. We wanted to explore as much of the areas we were in as possible so as to take advantage of being in China. This was on one of our morning strolls to the lake beside the hotel.


The Chinese architecture and interior design is often very creative or futuristic. They are a lot more risky with their buildings and decorations. This was the roof of the dining area in the hotel.


On the 17th, we all boarded a train in Beijing and a little over 24 hours later arrived in Shenzhen, our new home. The train ride was actually a lot of fun. We had three cars that members from our group had been placed in. A couple of my friends and I ended up in one of the cars without many other Americans in it, it was one of the Chinese family cars. How Chinese trains work is that there are little sections and in each section there are two sets of three bunks that are one right on top of the other. The highest bunk is the cheapest so all of the us that got put in the family car were on the top bunks. We made friends with the Chinese people below us and ended up having a great time teaching them some English words and having them teach us some Mandarin words. We also had this little Chinese girl latch on to us, so we taught her how to play Go Fish and we played it for awhile using Mandarin words. Then we arrived in Shenzhen and got transported to a new hotel that included three free meals a day and what we would consider five star hotel rooms. There were a number of people that were given villas or large suites, one even had two stories and an elevator in it.


This is the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was previously an imperial palace but is now a Palace Museum with a range of exhibits about different parts of the lives of ancient dynasties. It sits in the heart of Beijing across from Tiananmen Square. We were able to see one exhibit about the celebration of one Emperor's birthday. Every year people from all over would send him exquisite gifts. His sons would provide him with new bowls and vases. Then there would be a meal that included forty courses. In the museum there was a display of the emperor's table setting. He had very specific items, like certain vases and center pieces, that had to accompany the forty dishes. At another part of the museum our teacher informed us of some of the specifications on architecture that ancient China had. All around the city, as well as in other historic sites we had visited, the frames of the door rose above the ground by almost a foot so that to pass through a door you had to step over the frame. This was to designate importance of the household. The higher your door frame was the more important in society you were. Also, only the imperial family could use dragons or phoenixes in their architecture. If anyone built a higher door step or added these creatures to their own homes when they were not supposed to they would have been killed.

August 13-16

On the last day of school all of the classes put together a talent show. Our class (how it worked was that six different teachers all taught the same class during different parts of the day) decided to rewrite the song "You Raise Me Up". As a class they created all new lyrics to let everyone know what their weeks in our class had been like.
Lyrics:
When I came here
And all my soul so worried
Will the teachers be nice or will they be mean
But time goes by, and there's no more pressure
We've learned a lot, this is what we want to say

From Josh and Ali, we learned about "Big Brother"
From Stephanie, we studied paparazzi
With shy Michael, we fall in love with doin' chores
We have to say, what a great husband he'd be

We played the Mafia with Carrie
And who knows that Mr. Palm likes dancing
We think Fuat and Elie are handsome
And we learned U.S. history from them

Everyone was very impressed that they put together their own song, and it turned out great!


This is the Beijing Silk Street (when I first heard of it I pictured an outdoor market with stalls, not quite what I had in mind). It is really famous for selling inexpensive silk and pearls. You walk in and there are six floors of just row upon row of different vendors. Each floor has a couple different themes and you could spend days just looking at all it has to offer. Bartering is also a must. The rule of thumb is to walk in knowing how much you want to pay. They'll give you a number (hopefully), you look a little interested then shake your head and start to walk away. They'll grab your arm or call after you with a number that is usually a couple hundred yuan less than they had started. You can walk away again or suggest about a third of that price, maybe a fourth. Then going back and forth you simply test each others wills until one of you caves and agrees on a price. I bought one item for 175 yuan, the first number they had said was 850.


This was most of my class in Beijing. I had Seniors (which is equivalent to our sophomore/junior and seniors in high school). Most of the students we taught came from affluent families and were extremely good at English. Almost all of those girls you could drop in the US and they would fit right in. During my teaching I found out that in China they play Mafia too (though they call it the Killing Game)! I was excited to find that out and included the game in a couple of my lessons.


This was the first day that some of my friends and I caved and went in search for Western food. We chose that pizza was what we were craving and found ourselves at the local Pizza Hut. In China, Pizza Hut is a fancy establishment that makes you feel under dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. The pizza isn't exactly what it is like in the States, for instance many of the options have seafood and the sorts as toppings, but it definitely hit the spot.

Some more August

We were the luckiest people this night. In Beijing there is a famous dish - Peking Duck. A group of six of us decided to travel out to one of the few restaurants that serves the true Peking Duck and see what all the fuss was about. We had to split the group and take two cabs, and this was before we had cell phones so we ended up getting lost from each other in the huge square where the restaurant district was. My group split up to try and see if we could locate the other three. I finally found the other group and asked them to go get us a table while I went and grabbed the rest of my group. When we returned to the restaurant we couldn't find the other three anywhere. We walked through the place a few times with now luck, and as you can see this was a nice place and it was a bit awkward just roaming between tables. Finally a manager of the restaurant saw us and asked if we needed help. We described our friends and he got on a walkie talkie asking if any of the staff had seen them - no one had. So we started walking back out and ran into a member of the other group, Cliff. They had come to get a table, saw that there was at least an hour wait and decided to go back outside and look for another place to eat. The four of us there were now in the restaurant started trying to decided if we really wanted to wait for the meal of a lifetime. Well, my new friend, the manager, came up to me and excitedly asked if Cliff was who we had been looking for. I said yes and thanked him for his help. He motioned for our group to come into the eating area so I followed him. He then smiled and showed us an eight person table, asked us to sit and let us cut in front of the line and get the glorious Peking Duck. We found the others in our group and they joined. The meal was DEFINITELY worth it - probably one of the best things I have ever eaten. Also, right as we were sitting down the evening entertainment show started with balancing and magician acts. It was perfect.


The Great Wall. This was the hardest I worked to see a national monument. You have to climb a mountain of steps to then walk up more steps to get on the wall. And then there are more steps to walk along the wall. But again, it was completely worth it. And you get to take a luge down the mountain!


This was the room I and my roommate Catherine stayed in for the two and a half weeks


This is the Tower of Buddhist Fragrance within the Summer Palace in Beijing. The Summer Palace is an imperial garden that spans almost 3 square kilometers. It is amazingly beautiful, all of the buildings have unique paintings and figurines that create almost a magical world. There were five of us that went on the trip and I was really glad to have adventurous friends with me. We had gotten there too late to go into any of the buildings so we just picked random directions as we went and started walking. Parts of the palace throughout the ages have been destroyed and rebuilt but the Chinese rulers have always made sure to keep as much of the place intact as possible.

August Cont

This was the Olympic building that was our hotel for two and a half weeks

During our stay in Beijing we were teaching and taking Chinese courses at Peking University. It is the Harvard of China. The campus is extremely beautiful and has a couple of gardens. There is also a lot of classic Chinese architecture.

This is one of the other parks at Peking University. You can see a cat by the bench - they were all over the campus