I’m reaching the point in my time in China where I’m
so busy I don’t have a lot of time to take photos. Sometimes people look at me
funny when I take photos, too, like I’m a crazy tourist or they’re like, “Why
the hell are you taking a picture of us?” and kind of expect the whole
picture-taking thing to be a fad. So I don’t have pictures this week. Sorry.
This past Friday my fellow foreign teachers
welcomed Claire and me with drinks. I still managed to invite people over to my place
the next day for a non-alcohol evening filled with weird chocolate and multiple different
card games. Dominique, Shaun, and Mark came over to play Fluxx (spelling?) and
Euchre (yay Shaun is from the Midwest!). We nearly got into a game of Set, but
I think we might save that for next time. Once Mark left, Dominique and Shaun
and I sat around talking about fun stuff, like crazy college things and doing
lighting tech in high school.
I suppose I should give a brief intro of my fellow
Tianyi expat teachers. In no particular order:
1) Shaun is our 25 year old physics teacher from
Wisconsin. As one of my few fellow nerds here, I’m pretty glad he’s around.
2) Dominique, our math teacher, is a couple years
older than me (24-25, I think), and is a die-hard Oregonian who went to
Willamette. She’s also a big Tamora Pierce fan and lives in my apartment
complex.
3) Mark is another math teacher who focuses more
on statistics and…uhhh…stuff. He’s closer to my parents’ ages and has a couple
of kids who live in the states now. I think one of his kids is older than me. He
and I tease each other about being old/young a lot.
4) Joe and Margaret are our general science
teacher and English teacher respectively. They’re both great and like to hang
out at the bar scene in Wuxi a lot (but really, who doesn’t?). I think they’re
both around Mark’s age, but as staff we’re a little divided into people-who-really-are-adults
and people-who-just-became-adults.
5) Nathan and Abby are a newly engaged couple who
teach economics and English, respectively. I don’t know them quite as well; I
met Shaun, Joe, and Margaret pretty early, and Dominique lives nearby, so I
know those folks the best. Apparently Noah, my predecessor, was really close
with Nathan and Abby.
6) Neal is our AP English teacher. He’s our oldest
teacher and we definitely had a conversation where someone said he was old and
looked up and said, “No, my FATHER is old.” One of the others replied, “No,
your father is ANCIENT.” He doesn’t hang out with us a lot outside of work, but
he’s a really great guy who I work with a decent amount because we’re both doing
English with the G12s.
7) Steve is our Center Principal. He teaches AP
Psych, but honestly he doesn’t really seem like a teacher to me because I knew
him first as an administrator.
So far, I think all of the Tianyi expat teachers
are pretty great. Some of them are people I might not normally hang out with,
but honestly, that’s the beauty of being abroad – you can hang out and learn
from folks who might ignore you or who you might not get along with at home.
Also, since I got to China, I think Microsoft Word’s
grammar check is giving me problems on every computer. I don’t know. Maybe it’s
just that I can no longer speaky ze English.
Shout out to Willamette!! Woo woo!!
ReplyDeleteBut you're an Oxy person from Los Angeles. Um what?
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