It's been a busy 10 days! Last week was my first full week of classes, minus my Friday course which will begin once the freshmen have completed their mandatory military training. Classes are going well! My text book is surprisingly helpful with video and audio examples. It also contains English/Chinese character vocab sections for easier translation of advanced words. My students just laugh and laugh as the beads of frustration roll down my face when it takes me 3 minutes to write one character, but they understand so I can only laugh too!
This past Monday I entered the terrible two's, 22 that is. A group of us foreign teachers went into Chongqing on Saturday night to celebrate. After catching a bus into not quite the right part of town we wandered around a bit until a sign from the heavens struck us all. BIG PIZZA! I've never heard the Hallelujah choir sing so brightly. So after our treat of pizza and other Western food we met up with some peace corp volunteers and other teachers and danced the night away! On Monday I received a cake from the foreign teachers office which was shared by many on our apartment rooftop. And although the cake was non dairy and had a similar texture to styrofoam it was decorated exquisitely - covered with fruit and chocolate and of course tomatoes! But hey, cake is cake!
I have also decided to enjoy the life a student once again and take up an elementary Mandarin course! It's very humbling actually because all of the things we teachers complain about (students putting their heads down when asked to participate, giggling when speaking or when others are speaking, etc) is exactly what's happening to us in class. Touché China.
Hi Brian
ReplyDeleteMy name is... well, Brian also. (Odd coincidence.) I am going to Chongqing this October to meet up with a good Chinese friend. I am really a poor eater even in my own country of USA so I was hoping we might communicate a little and I'd receive some tips on how to find these pizzas that cause hallelujahs.
Secondly I'm really not into Asian food but that is a difficulty I'd rather put behind me because I'm interested in knowing if you think there was a way I could get a job there. My plan is only to stay for a week but I want to extend that to a month if I found some source of income. My friend who I am going to see is very important to me and we would like to spend as much time seeing each other as we can.