Day 8

8/31/12

Now we have had a whole week to adjust, and it’s going pretty well.  I haven’t gotten sick and I’ve completely adjusted to the time difference.  The food has been pretty good… it’s nothing like American Chinese food but it’s been good for the most part.  Most meals I have had either rice or noodles, vegetables, and some kind of meat.  My favorite dish so far was rice with beef, carrots, and mushrooms in a dark sauce.  Sounds pretty American now that I think about it.  I’ve already tried several new things including fried squid (tentacles and all), pig feet, and something called fish balls.  I did not care for the pig foot, but the squid was delicious.  The first night we were taken to a nice restaurant for a welcome dinner with one professor and several students from the university, which was a lot of fun.  We dove right in to traditional Chinese food and everything was great, including my shrimp that still had legs, tail, and head attached.  Throughout our four-day stay in the international dorms at South China Normal University we made several friends and spent each day exploring the city and navigating the subway system.  I was immediately shocked at the amount of people constantly in the streets and on public transportation.  We went down several busy shopping streets that all looked like Times Square on New Years Eve.  It seemed like every five meters there was a new shop or store, mostly selling clothes, all with a higher than average number of employees doing everything possible to get the attention of the shoppers passing by.  We ate dinner at a crowded restaurant that night with a menu written totally in Chinese.  Our Chinese tour guides ordered for us and we had noodles and fish balls famous in Guangzhou along with hot green tea that is only good when steaming hot.  Four of us sat at a small table with a very old Chinese couple who didn’t talk.  One of the things I’ve noticed in this busy city is that the number of people and lack of personal space really changes the whole culture.  You have to be okay with constantly being pushed past, bumped, and honked at.  In order to get where you want to go or get what you want, you have to be assertive and confident.  You have to have no shame and you also can’t be embarrassed to literally hang your dirty laundry where everyone can see it.  That’s another thing I have come to really like; there are no dryers here so everyone hangs their clothes to dry outside on their porches.  The countless skyscraper apartment buildings are characterized by their porches strung with colorful clothes.  The porches look almost like a birdcages because of the bars that enclose them that are always overflowing with plants.  It makes the countless gray buildings beautiful.  

In just my first few days I felt like I learned so much, partly from the sensory overload of walking the streets of the city, and partly from talking with the Chinese students from the university where we stayed.  Vivian, one of the students who already spent a semester in America at Shawnee State University and has since returned to South China Normal University, taught me a lot about China, Chinese schools, and the differences between China and America.  She told me the thing she misses most about America is the space, the quiet, and the peace she felt there.  The university campus here in Guangzhou had a large park in the middle that offered beautiful scenery and peace, but the city as a whole here is always loud and offers little personal space or privacy.  Vivian also told me she had to readjust more returning to China than she had to adjust when she arrived in the states.  For one thing, the beds here do not have mattresses.  At our new apartment we were lucky enough to have real mattresses, but our first four nights were spent on beds that are more common in China.  The “mattress” is really just a board with a blanket.  If I had more time, I’m sure I would have gotten used to sleeping on such a hard surface, and my back might have even benefited from it.  According to Vivian it was much easier to adjust to American mattresses than it was to go the other way around.  This seemed pretty obvious to me.  She  also said that it was harder for her stomach to readjust to Chinese food and she was sick for her first two weeks after returning home.  Luckily I have not had many problems with the food, although I can’t bring myself to eat noodles and meat or porridge for breakfast.  Luckily we found a very cheap bakery right outside our new apartment at our new school.  And by cheap I mean I bought a whole loaf of fresh bread and three buttery rolls all for one US dollar.  Not everything is so cheap, and we have definitely been gypped a few times when purchasing unmarked items in the smaller markets, simply for looking American and being too ignorant to know the difference.  For instance yesterday Livia and I broke down and bought two snickers bars at a small convenience store outside our school and they cost nine yuan.  That’s about 75 cents each, which is about the same as buying a snickers bar from Kroger at home, but we also felt like the sales woman was laughing at us when we walked out.  The prices at the bigger supermarkets are very good.  We bought a 2-liter of coke for less than a dollar and a set of hangars for 50 cents.  The food at our school cafeteria is pretty good, though it’s hard to know what you’re ordering. 

Our apartment is great, a little dirty to begin with, but we are grateful to have an American mattress and an American toilet.  Though I did use one of the dreaded hole-in-the-ground toilets at a store yesterday and it wasn’t too bad… as long as you carry your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer.  The other best part of our apartment is the air conditioner unit in the bedroom.  I haven’t mentioned it yet but it is HOT and HUMID every day here.  We’ve only had one day of rain so far, but every other day has been hot enough that you start sweating after walking outside for 10 minutes.  Our first full day at our new apartment we got a tour of the campus, which is beautiful.  Several of the buildings are very old, but there is a gigantic new teachers building where all of the classrooms are located.  The classrooms look like typical college classrooms.  Some are theater style and others have individual desks facing the front of the room where there are blackboards and projectors.  All of the classrooms have room for at least 60 students.  We haven’t started teaching yet but I now know that I will be teaching some 8^th grade biology, 7^th grade oral English, and every other week we will be taken to an elementary school to teach English!  I was not expecting to get to teach younger kids and I am very excited for that opportunity.  It might be more challenging because they have not had as much practice speaking English, but all the kids I’ve seen so far are adorable.  

The two teachers who brought us to our new school took us out for Karaoke on our second day.  I was unaware of this but Karaoke is very popular in China.  I wasn’t sure what to expect because they took us at 10:30 in the morning.  It was a really nice place and it turned out to be a lot of fun.  There were five of us and we got a private room with couches and a big screen TV, two microphones, and thousands of songs to choose from.  There were plenty of American songs we knew, and our friends chose several American songs to sing as well.  One of the Chinese guys with us sang a Lady Gaga song, which was rather hilarious.  There wasn’t much time to be embarrassed because Livia and I sang first.  Our first song was by the Black Eyed Peas, and we sang some Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson as well.  We ate lunch and ended up spending most of the day there.  It was an interesting experience, but a lot of fun.  On my birthday Livia and I took the bus from our apartment by ourselves and found a Starbucks with free wifi and coffee that’s just as good and just as expensive as it is at home, but it was a nice birthday treat.   We should have wifi access in our apartment within the next few days, which will be useful and means I will be able to post more often. 

I haven’t really been homesick yet, partly because we have been so busy and partly because everyone we have met so far has been so friendly and hospitable.  Everyone wants to get to know us and help us in any way possible.  I was sad to leave our friends at South China Normal University but I’m sure we will be back to visit soon on the weekends.  We start teaching on Monday, so I think time will start to go by even faster then. 

Until next time, zaijian.