Being a grown up
Trip Start
Feb 19, 2010
1
28
58
Trip End
Feb 21, 2011
Daqing, Heilongjiang, China
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Living in China is a lot of firsts for me. I may have moved to New Orleans and Orlando without knowing anybody and trusting that I could get along okay and make friends, but this is not only my first time living in another country, but my first time actually living alone. I had three apartment-mates in NOLA and seven at Disney, which meant that there was some cooking but it was usually for a group and we always shared the job. Cooking for one and living on my own is definitely new, but it's one of those things I know I have to learn how to do so I can be an actual grown up. Maybe another step is to stop calling them "grown ups" and act like an "adult" or something. But that is a step for another day, haha.
So I woke up around 9 yesterday and talked to Kirsty, and she volunteered to help me grocery shop and show me what the best stuff to get is. So I hung around the apartment until 1230. I really wanted to go jogging in the park yesterday because it was supposed to be in the 50s for the first time since I've been here, but it wound up being gray and rainy and foggy and just super gross out, so I stayed home instead. The desire to run is only partly motivated by the "fat legs" comment, but it's mostly from not wanting to gain weight because of all the delicious food I eat. I can barely fit in pants here as it is, I'd like to stay that way (or lose weight, though I'm skeptical about my chances of that).
I left the apartment and met up with Anneliese and Renier and Kirsty, and we went to the food court by Shang Mao for lunch. I was dyin for some bao ze and they were just as tasty as always. And it was amazing walking over there, the big square nearby is no longer completely covered in an inch-thick layer of ice, and they took the huge curtains out from behind the doors (they block the brutal winter wind better than just a door). Food was fab and we had a lovely time at lunch, then we headed over to Shang Mao to grocery shop.
We split up because we all had different things to get, and I was SO glad I had Kirsty with me to help me figure the stuff out. It's tough because most things I want to buy don't have English on the label, and there are so many strange foods here that I just don't recognize, and it's more difficult to tell what stuff is than you'd think. Can you tell the difference between dark vinegar and soy sauce when you don't recognize any characters or brands and the colors look exactly the same? Neither can I. Thankfully Kirsty knows some characters and was able to help me out. I wound up getting some frozen dumplings, oil, rice, noodles, peanuts, beef, pork, and some snacks. I really got a TON of food and spent around Y130 ($20).
I was going to buy veggies and eggs, but Kirsty told me that it's better to get it fresh from Chaos, the little store right across the street from me in the apartment complex. It's like a little convenience store with snacks and drinks and household items, only they also sell tomatoes, apples, bean sprouts, bananas, fresh eggs, garlic, ginger... tons of stuff like that. It's a mini grocery store, really, and super cheap too.
We went through Shang Mao's upper levels for a bit, which is department-store ish, because Kirsty was looking for a king-size fitted sheet, which apparently are like impossible to find. She found a big mattress pad for pretty cheap though. She's frustrated with her blankets not staying on her bed right. I would be too, I don't have a fitted sheet either, just a big blanket and a sheet that I lay on that are just piled on top of the bed, then another sheet and a comforter too. But I'm just one person in a king size bed and I don't move around much, so I don't have any issues usually, unless I'm sleeping bad and tossing and turning.
So we lugged all our stuff back to the apartments, and I hung out for a while and unpacked all my stuff before Eric texted about CoD around 5. I had to observe Anneliese's Small Stars class at 6, but I went over for half an hour and played a couple games, it was funsies. Went to school to observe the class, it was fine, she's had her kids a lot longer than I've had mine though, so they have a much bigger vocabulary. The class is just an hour long, but it's twice a week like all Small Stars classes.
Kirsty had texted about dinner while I was in the class, so I headed back to her building to meet up with her, Eric, and Dave, and we went to this place called Cool Noodle and Rob joined us a bit later. We got lots of food and it was delish, I hadn't been to that restaurant before, and we had a ton of leftovers and only paid Y30 each ($5). The waitress came and told us our total (ie bai er shi wu), and Eric teased me and was like "I'll pay for your share if you can tell me how much that is." Silly Eric didn't realize I'd been practicing numbers, so I knew that ie bai is one hundred, er shi is two+ten so twenty, and wu is five, so our total was 125. He was not expecting me to get it, so I felt a bit smug, haha. I still paid of course, but the important thing is that I knew numbers, hurrah!
After dinner, I headed to the bar with Rob and Dave. Got a couple beers, watched them play pool, and Kev showed up a bit later too. They were teasing me by playing the goddamn "Wheels on the Bus" song, which is the warning bell at Yi Zhong, cause their Yi Zhong days are Tues/Thurs and mine are Wed/Fri, so I was the only one with class this morning. We had fun hanging out, and Mike and Curtis showed up randomly too, it was awesome. I left around 1030ish because I did have to teach this morning.
Went to bed around 1130, woke up at 630 thinking it was WAY too early to get out of bed, but it was just gray and foggy and rainy AGAIN today, very unfortunate! Also extremely windy, so after I crawled out of bed and got ready for work, I was getting blown around all over the damn place. We got to Yi Zhong and I played a categories game with my classes today. I gave them eight categories (fish, flowers, birds, fruits, vegetables, animals, countries, and famous people), which stayed the same. Then I gave them a letter and they had to come up with one thing per category that starts with that letter. But if two groups come up with the same answer for a category, neither gets a point - they only get points for unique answers.
Some classes were better at it than others. My bad class, which wasn't AS bad today, is just kind of stupid. They aren't that good at English and they just don't give a shit, so it's hard to get them to do ANYTHING, especially since I have 0 power over them - I don't give grades, can't really throw them out, anything. I can threaten with homework, but really I just have to cajole them into behaving. Most of the classes today were decent.
I just feel bad because the Chinese school system is SO hard on the kids. They go to school like 12+ hours a day during high school, because they have a really really difficult exam at the end, which basically decides the rest of their life. They get one shot at it. If they do well, they go to a good college and coast into an easy job. If not, they're screwed and become a worker or something. So they have hours of homework a night, huge stress and lots of pressure because they HAVE to do well on this test, and they don't ever do any real-world application stuff, it's all just pages and pages of worksheets. Even chemistry, they just learn the formulas, never actually do any experiments. So I play lots of games in the classes so they can practice speaking English, hearing me speak English correctly, and just to have some goddamn fun for once, without pressure to be perfect at something.
After Yi Zhong, I headed home for two hours or so, then came back to school, ordered lunch, and did my lesson planning. I'm pretty much ready for the whole week now, and I talked with my TAs Nadia, Susan, and Amy about our classes together so they're ready for them too. The TAs have 20 minutes before or after the class with the kids, to go over grammar and vocabulary in Chinese to make sure they understand it. It helps a lot, so we have to prepare ahead of time so they know what I'm teaching and can do something along the same lines.
Came home, uploaded a TON of pictures to facebook, and goddamn it takes a while. Then I went back to school at 515 to teach my Small Stars. It was... an interesting lesson. The kids in that class are Sun, David, Charlie, Frank, Kate, Ivy, Penny, James, and Ned. Then we got a new student tonight who didn't have an English name and was BAWLING when I walked in the room. She was scared to leave her mom and hadn't been in a school before, and she's 3-4 years old. Then Penny came in crying too. Apparently she really wanted to go see her grandma today? Or something? And she couldn't, so she was crying. And the new girl (who I named Rose) crying just added to Penny's crying, and we were just a sobbing mess for like 10 minutes, until Penny went home and Rose's mom came and sat with her.
So class FINALLY got underway. Thank god it wasn't a lesson of new material or we wouldn't have gotten ANYTHING done. We reviewed "my name is" and "how are you?" "I am happy/sad/fine." They're finally getting the hang of emotions, and even David, the slowest kid, was getting stuff WITHOUT PROMPTING. It was a goddamn miracle. He said "I'm fine" without me having to tell him exactly what to say, and I said "DAVID! I am happy! I am happy you are fine!!!!" Which of course he didn't really get but YAY. It was progress. And exciting.
Afterwards I went home with Kirsty, killed the boys a bit on CoD, then came home around 930. The boys have Yi Zhong tomorrow, plus it's SUPER windy out, I can hear it blowing against my balcony and it's goddamn loud, the weather thing says 16 miles an hour! So we didn't go out to the bar tonight. Possibly tomorrow, though I do have Yi Zhong again on Friday, UGH.
Tomorrow, I have my VIP at 9am, lesson planning in the afternoon, and my Small Star 5s at 6pm. I might try to cook dinner for myself tomorrow, though I'm sure plans will come up for dinner at the last minute, like they usually do, haha. No planning ahead here, just does not work out! Now I am off to bed, because I am le tired. Goodnight!
