What?! Other foreigners?!

Taking the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course out here in Hefei (合肥) has been more informative for finding neighbors than teaching so far. Claire and I met four other Wuxi folks, all our age, all living within half an hour of my neighborhood. One of the guys is British and lives in Binhu, a district a bit further south toward the lake. The only other girl lives right near the bar street on the southern end of downtown Wuxi, not too far from Claire. I live in Xishan (锡山), east of the city center. Two of the other people, also both guys, live in Dongting (东亭), which is a smaller part of the larger district. They’re probably a five minute bus or cab ride away from my school, which means I actually know non-Dipont foreigners in my district. For the longest time I thought the only foreigners were the Dipont folks and I’m very excited to know that other native English speakers exist on my end of town.

So far they don’t know much Chinese and have asked me to investigate whether an appliance in their kitchen is actually an oven, with the caveat that I don’t blow up their apartment. I mean, I’ll try not to, but with everything in Chinese, I feel like I’ve come close to blowing up my washing machine a couple times (it just kept running cycles – I waited for like 2 hours while it washed and re-washed and re-washed my clothes). Just kidding…about blowing things up, anyway. 

 

 The hotel room I share with Claire at the university guesthouse:

On a more serious note, everywhere I go, I’m faced with some of the extreme educational differences between the United States and China. Students start military training quite young – I’ve seen some as young as 10 or 11 – and continue through at least their freshman year of college. All students are required to participate, and of course some hate it and don’t try very hard while others enjoy it like a normal PE class. The government has its own reasons for doing this, but I have to say it’s very disconcerting to walk around my campus as a teacher and see children in military uniforms. I understand the logic behind the training; China and the United States often have surprisingly similar ideas of war, especially at the root of the ideologies of each country. That said, logic doesn’t factor in much when I see a girl with a pink messenger bag and pigtails in fatigues.  

Military training at China's University of Science and Technology in Hefei (Anhui province): 

Also, I'm sorry I don't have very many pictures. We have been extremely busy, often spending 7 hours a day or more in our TEFL class (not including homework), and I just haven't found the time to think about much else. 

Food times!

 The highlights of this past week are definitely all food related. This is what happens when a foodie comes to China and gets immersed in a big food culture:

The first highlight was on Friday night. Thanks to my friend Sharon in Pasadena, we met with her cousin and her cousin’s family for a beautiful and delicious Peking duck dinner. Duyu, Xiaoqing, and their son are really great, friendly people. We definitely had a language barrier and it was quite loud in the restaurant, but my general impression of them was very positive. Their son is about 10 years old and very cute. He practiced his English with us a little bit when he had the chance. They very generously treated me and Claire to an absolutely fantastic northeastern dinner, probably one of the best I have ever had in China. 

The second highlight was Saturday brunch. In the first stage, Phoebe and Sarah came over for brunch around 10:30. Claire was late, so we started cooking breakfast before she got there. I introduced both of them to the delicious birdy-in-a-basket egg and bread combination. It seems I’m conquering China through eggs and bread, because I have two new birdy-in-a-basket converts. Claire came over just before they left and cooking with her went to a whole new level. My breakfast that morning was EPIC. I stir fried onions and garlic with soy sauce, made two birdies in a basket, and turned the whole mess into one delicious sandwich, with the birdies as the bread part and the stir fried onions in the middle. SO GOOD.

On another note, I’m in Hefei, in Anhui province, for the next week. All the Dipont interns are doing a TEFL training course so we can get more flexible work visas. My trip here involved going to the train station and taking the bullet train out here. Apparently Hefei was the end of the line; when I got off the train, so did hundreds of other people, completely mobbing the train station and filling up the cab line really fast. Hefei doesn’t have very many foreigners, so when I exited the station, the heiche (黑车) vultures descended. (A heiche is a cab driver who would rather charge a set amount than do an honest faire, and often charge double or triple the honest rate.) At that point I was entirely sick of crowds (as happens when you are in a pushing, shoving mob for a while) and let one of them feel the sharp edge of my tongue. I suppose that was unfair of me, but when someone won’t stop badgering you in China, the only thing that works is pretty much yelling that you don’t want whatever they are offering. Repeatedly.

Instead of dealing with the whole large-crowd-crazy-heiche-people thing, I left the area of the train station and walked about a third of a mile away from the station. I successfully made my way to a location where I could grab a cab with next to no problem. An impatient driver decided it would be a good idea to nudge me with his car while I was trying to get into the cab. I think I failed to hide my look of complete and utter disgust. He wasn’t moving nearly fast enough to hurt me, I was just completely annoyed at how obnoxious nudging someone with a car is. 

Luckily, I had a very nice cab driver who dropped me off at the right gate and I found my hotel (actually a guesthouse at a university) with no problem. Claire and I are roommates again, and so far the only other person that I’ve seen from Dipont is Danie, the intern who arrived late. Claire and I met her tonight and Danie introduced us to this crazy Beijing soap opera involving four brothers. 

Anyway, I don’t expect that I will have a lot of time for blog posts for the next two weeks. I have this TEFL class until Sunday afternoon (Sept 2) and go back to work on Monday September 3, which will be my first week of students. I fully expect to be exhausted and half-crazy by the time this work spree ends and may need my usual blog-time to sleep. I’ll try to post a few pictures or something as a consolation prize until I can get real posts up again. 

Oh, and we found a lobster wandering around my campus. Phoebe, Sarah, and I couldn't figure out if our lake has freshwater lobsters or if he escaped from a stewpot. Or maybe he's lying and he's not actually a lobster, which is definitely a possibility.

 

Toasties!

 This past weekend was really fun. Claire came over for brunch on Saturday morning, and we spent the day hanging out and watching the Incredibles and a couple episodes of Firefly. Somewhere in between we ran to Columbus Square (哥伦布广场), where I did some grocery shopping and we both got milk tea from this awesome boba joint known as CoCo. On Sunday afternoon I headed over to Claire’s part of town for a little exploration of the main expat hangout, the Blue Bar. It was a really neat (but relatively expensive) place with a very foreign atmosphere. I couldn’t place it for a while – not quite American, not quite European. It seemed like an Australian place. I haven’t been to Sydney in something like 6 years, but it had a similar vibe to what I remember. Anyway, they had this delicious dish called, “bacon garlic cheese toasties,” which is delicious sesame bread with garlic butter, bacon, and melted cheese on top.

One very entertaining thing about being a foreigner in China is seeing people’s reactions to you. Downtown, not very many people stare at you or say anything awkward. There are always exceptions. This particular time, one very excited man waved at us and yelled, “Hello!” which in itself is not unusual. He then proceeded to ask us where we were from and exclaim that

American girls were pretty. He was kind of a funny character and very enthusiastic.

On Monday I started work. I’m on the fourth floor of my building with no elevators (a fact that

I’m sure will make my mother happy), and I share my office with five or six other people, all of whom are college counselors in some capacity. All of them are Chinese, so they don’t speak

English much unless they are talking to me. I have a rather unusual problem for me – few people in my office will speak to me in Chinese. I think it’s that I’m no longer getting my own education in Chinese and some people simply don’t have patience for my Chinese in the real world. I’m doing all right with Chinese practice outside the office, but unlike Beijing, the folks in Wuxi very rarely slow their speech enough for me to understand even when I ask them to speak slowly. This, more than anything else, is the biggest barrier to me learning and improving in Chinese. The two people who do sometimes speak Chinese with me are usually very busy with their own work. I’m going to have to work this out in some way – my Chinese definitely needs to improve if I’m going to live here for a year.

I don’t have a lot of work to do right now. We don’t have any students at the moment; most of my work involves student essays and meeting with students. I’ve asked my boss what I should be doing with no solid response, so I’m using my work time for things like clearing out space on my hard drive (it’s 15 GB, I had 200 MB left when I got here), writing blog posts, and catching up on e-mail. Unfortunately, my work computer can’t access things like Facebook, Blogger, and Dropbox, so any really fun internet stuff has to wait until I get home.

This blog post is getting super long, so I should probably end it. Sorry, I don’t have quite as many pictures this time.  I'd really like to get photos of Phoebe, Sarah, and some of the other staff up soon, of course pending their permission.

Laowai, Work, and Photos

The last few days have been rather uneventful. With most of my apartment finished, I have very little left to do but clean (which I have been procrastinating quite well on).

I met with Claire for drinks and checked out a bar called Havana, which feels like a bar in a Western country. The bar is owned by an American, a Dane, and a German. We think the German guy was there the night we went because there was no one who spoke English except for the waitresses (everyone else spoke German…).

My stomach decided to take the next morning to act up, but I had to go to work at the Wuxi main office near where Claire lives. Finding the place was quite an adventure, as the entrance to the building is at the rear, but since I left an hour and a half ahead of my meeting, I got there with plenty of time to spare. While I was there, I talked to Kenya, our Counseling Quality Manager (CQM) for the province, and Helen, the person in charge of my counseling office at Tianyi high school. Both of them seem like great people and I look forward to working with them in the future.

That evening Phoebe brought me some stomach meds (yes, they do have my acid reflux medication here in Wuxi…go figure) and by the next day I was well enough to go to the bank. I now have a bank account with China Merchants’ Bank, which is a 10-15 minute walk from where I live (or about two minutes by car).

The rest of my time has been spent sitting around watching Netflix. Not necessarily the best pastime, but I do need some down time before office life starts and I should at least pretend to clean my house. As a consolation prize for me not doing much, I’m including pictures of the finished parts of my house. Pictures of the bathroom and my living room will come later, once the sofa has been reupholstered and my shower stall-thing has been put in place. 

I'd also like to point out that I just added TWENTY-ONE photos of my house and the surrounding area, so don't expect buckets of photos on later posts...

The view from my balcony:  

 The red buildings belong to my school, while the darker colored buildings in front are part of my neighborhood.

 The more expensive large-family housing units in front of my relatively tall building:

 My school. This photo includes the library (in the back) and the teacher's apartments (very selective and coveted) with the lake in between:

 The dorms for students and young teachers. The students stay at school during the week and go home for Saturday evenings with their families:

 Our track, field, and new gym (which teachers can't really use):

 My bed + window:

 A view from the other direction. My bedside table has a pile of stuffed animals plus a photo of me and Julian:

 The view out my window:

 My guest room/office/storage room:

 The view out the guest room. My desk is right in front of the window:

 My kitchen:

 Two burners and no oven. I see a toaster oven in my future:

 The view out my only kitchen window:

 The view out my stairwell window. Along the canal bank on the near side are personal gardens. Also, the multicolored water is not naturally that way. There's a lot of oil and I suspect other chemicals dumped in this canal:

[photo update]
A somewhat good photo from my balcony on a decently clear night:

Construction, Construction, Construction

This week has undoubtedly been quite interesting, what with finding an apartment while the edge of a typhoon passed over my city. The wind got so strong that at one point I thought I was going to blow over. Between the three of us who were out apartment hunting, we broke an umbrella. Later, I found out that Phoebe and Sarah, the two Dipont ladies who have been helping me settle in, were the only two guides with enough gumption to take me out in a typhoon. Everyone else found an apartment the day after I did.

The upshot of this story is that I had the choice between two great apartments, one rather far from school but close to some shopping areas, the other only about five minutes’ walk from the building I work in. The first was really beautiful, with two nice bedrooms, a corner desk, and a pretty nice kitchen. The ceiling in the living room had a recessed area with blue accent lights. I think the whole apartment was close to the size of my mom’s house in Pasadena (excluding the master bedroom). While it was quite nice, it was also far from school and way too big for my needs. I chose the second great apartment.

My current apartment is on the 25^th floor of a building and overlooks the school I work at. I have two bedrooms, a nice living area, a kitchen, and a balcony area where I can hang-dry my clothes. The apartment needed a lot of work, but it’s about 2/3 done and I can live here fairly comfortably for the moment. The place needed a thorough cleaning, several lights fixed, a fan, and a water machine. Right now the landlord is in the process of reupholstering my sofa and putting wallpaper in the bedrooms. The last tenant left this place a complete wreck, complete with wall damage, a serious cigarette smell in the bedroom, and gross sofa covers.

The morning I moved in, the typhoon had caused some mild damage to the elevators and they had to be shut down. We ended up leaving my heavy suitcases with the guards at the front of my neighborhood (I basically live in a gated community), but I dragged my small carry-on (about 35-40 lbs) and my backpack up the stairs so I could safely store my valuables. Let me tell you, I was so glad to see the 25^th floor! 25 floors with a suitcase is enough for anyone to get a workout, and all my neighbors got to laugh at the silly laowai taking her stuff up 25 floors just before they turned on the elevators again.

The most recent few days have been spent unpacking and moving in, a process which has been halted by the wallpaper people. We (me and either Phoebe or Sarah) have to be in the apartment during the entire duration that we have workers present. It makes for some rather long, boring days. At least I finally have internet. Sorry the pictures come last...I wasn't sure where to put some of them and I'm too sleepy to deal with formatting. 

The lobby of my (5 star) hotel that I stayed in for two nights while going apartment hunting:  

The view from my apartment at night. The empty black space is my school, which is not in session yet: 

 The bedroom renovations are underway. They just finished putting in wallpaper today but damaged my dresser/closet thing while they moved furniture around, so I can't actually put my stuff back in my closet yet...

My office/guest room. The window looks out on the rest of my community: