Feeling a little overwhelmed....

Today was the day we presented our demo lessons to the bosses of the company. We had to prepare any lesson that we wanted to and present for 15 min to the rest of the teachers and bosses. It was very nerve wracking because everyone was watching and I had never taught before. It was interesting seeing how everyone taught. Gave me some good ideas for when I teach. My presentation went well and I think people enjoyed it. After our presentations we got our tentative schedules for the next week. I am teaching 3 classes this coming weekend and I have no idea what to prepare for. It quickly became stressful because everyone had so much to prepare for all at once. We were supposed to be going to Qingdao this Thursday and Friday, our days off, but we decided that we better stay back here and prepare and have some down time before the busy weekend of teaching. We do have Monday and Tuesday off so we will try and go to Qingdao and the coast then. I am really hoping that works out because I really want to see this city. Today was the first day I really felt overwhelmed and completely lost and scared. I am really hoping that tomorrow and Friday provide me with time to prepare for the weekend of teaching. I will be teaching Elementary aged students. But right now, I am going to drink a beer, relax and hopefully get an early nights rest.

September 2, 2013

In the morning we attended our first day of shadowing an ESL teacher, Haley who is from Oklahoma. It was actually her first day teaching as well and she did a great job. Teaching is all about engaging and I feel like you will have to make personal connections so your students feel like they can connect with you and relate to you. I am sure I will have a lot more to say about things like this once I start teaching. We spent most of the rest of the morning at the CIBT Office hanging out and using the internet since its really fast internet there compared to our apartments haha. Today was also the day we were going to sort out our banking issues.Season took us to the Bank of China and tried again to convince the Chinese that we were not money launderers. Our first attempt resulted in Cyrus and I getting our accounts but the others were still blacklisted. So we decided to try a different branch, and sure enough, they were able to get their accounts. It was such a random crap shoot to get an account, it made no sense at all with no rhyme or reason as to why we were being denied so many times. And then suddenly being able to have an account made no sense either, but whatever, it’s all good. We have our accounts and will be able to be paid! Haha.

September 1, 2013

In the morning we met up with George who showed us around the campus and told us more about what we would be teaching and when we will be teaching. Luckily we still had a few days before we were on our own teaching! I still want some time to adjust and shadow ESL teachers to get an idea of how to teach! Haha.After our orientation, Mike took us to a marketplace with lots of food vendors that was near our office. OMG the food was SO amazing! I had this flat bread that was fried right there in front of us, and then it was covered in this spicy pizza tomato sauce stuff, then chives were on top of that. It was SO good. I really love the food here. I actually have not really had any rice since being in China surprisingly. I guess the region that I am in does not specialize in that! I am also really impressed at how much space there is here in Weifang. For a city of 8 million people there is never traffic or too many people around. There is just so much space. And to my surprise there is a lot of greenery as well.In the afternoon I went for a walk around the south gate of our neighborhood complex. I wanted to see more of the area where we are living. I am very impressed at all of the urban gardens that there are below all of these apartment buildings. It makes it so much more enjoyable to live somewhere there is green space, especially coming from Vancouver. The urban planning of this city is pretty darn good when you take into account the amount of space and greenery that there is in a city this large.

For dinner we went to a place nearby and I had grasshoppers! It was for sure the most strange thing I have ever eaten and it took me a little to get used to the idea of trying them! But when they arrived on the table I took one and put it in! It chewed it so fast and was freaking out so much just thinking of the fact that there was a huge fat grasshopper in there! Hahaha. Everyone was laughing at me, but I did it, and I even had a second one! Such a fun experience. I told some of my Chinese coworkers that I did this, and one of them said she had never even tried them! Haha. In the evening, we all went to Kite Square downtown to hang out and check out the night life. There was so much going on! There were tons of people in the square doing this large circular dance so we joined in! It was set to traditional Chinese music so it felt very cultural haha. It was mostly older people, and they smiled at us because we were participating. It was quite fun! There were lots of water fountains and lights as well as music in other places throughout the square. We then walked down to an area lower than the square near the river. There was a large open area where people were doing this flash mob type dance to lots of fun music! I joined in when I heard Gangam style, I could not resist. They also played Shakira which made me really happy! There was also outdoor Karaoke and Julia and I did "Toxic: by Britney Spears! IT WAS AN ASIAN DREAM COMPLETED! haha. This was the most fun night ever because I had no expectations whatsoever and the night was just amazing and full of surprises!

August 31, 2013

Today I had to go get a new cell phone since I lost mine the night before. Super frustrating, but I got the same, blue, cute Nokia phone that I had originally so life is good ☺. Phones are not expensive here anyhow. One of the Co-op students, Mike came with me to negotiate since he is fluent in Mandarin. We stopped for some food along the way three min away from where we live. There is a row of “restaurants” right in our neighbourhood along the way to the University that have these amazing pork bun dumpling things. We call it dumpling alley. Haha. The pork buns are seriously only 30 cents each and they are amazing. They remind me of English Pasties that my parents and I would get in Grass Valley, California.Later in the day the guys and I went to Wal-Mart to get some supplies for the apartment. It was our first time leaving and going out on our own. We took the bus to Wal-Mart and it felt like a success since we arrived haha. We spent about 3 hours in the Wal-Mart trying to find everything, and it was also just very interesting seeing all of the strange things they had there. Everything from live turtles, to pigs feet. Did not feel like a Wal-Mart at all! One of the highlights was finding Snickers bars for about 50 cents. Uh oh….. The cab ride home was pretty comical too. We all tried to pronounce the name of our residence and the driver had no idea what we were talking about, so we just pointed in the direction we needed to go and signed for him to stop when we got there. Luckily we just needed to go in a straight line so it was not too bad. And the cab driver had a sense of humor, or he was just laughing at us. Either way we got home ☺. In the evening we went to a BBQ place near our apartments with Mike. It was really yummy, so many different types of skewers and meats. Mmmm. Lots of good beer and fun times hanging out with everyone.

Friday, August 30th, 2013.

I get up early and walk across Campus to the office so I can go use Internet. I get to talk with my parents finally! Season, one of our employers, helped get us Internet at our apartment. Even though its pretty spotty and kicks us off half the time. I have sometimes been able to access Facebook on my phone using my VPN, but that often does not work. The office internet is the most reliable, so I have a feeling like I will be using it most of the time for regular communication with people back home. Chinese Internet if a very funny thing. Later in the afternoon some of the current Co-op students took us out for lunch. They took us to a place near campus, and it sort of reminded me of Mongolian BBQ, except all of the meat and noodles you chose went in a soup instead of the BBQ. I had quail eggs in mine, they were interesting, but the veggies and noodles were really yummy. It took me a long time to eat it though since I was using Chop sticks to eat a soup hahaha. But it all worked out in the end.Season took all 5 of us new co-op students to get our Bank of China account so we can start getting paid. We spent over 2 hours there trying to get everything sorted out only to find that all of us were blacklisted by the Bank as money launders. We were all in so much shock by this it was hilarious. Even Season was in shock haha. So apparently we are going to go back on Monday and try again. Season is determined. Later in the evening,the group of us decided to go out on the town and explore downtown for the first time since arriving. We took a taxi into the center of downtown and walked around for a bit. There were so many bright lights everywhere and music playing. It was a very lively scene and so interesting to see the differences in culture. We ate at a fast food place and then walked around more. We were originally going to try and go to a dance club called Kiss, but it was closed because its summer holiday here right now and lots of people are out of town. So we ended up going to a sports bar where lots of expats hang out. That was interesting as well. But the highlight of the night was for sure seeing all of the brightly lit buildings all over. It reminded me of Las Vegas.

First Impressions (August 28th, 2013)

We arrive to our apartments at around 11pm. We are all so exhausted from the long journey. Season takes us to our rooms (on the 6th floor, no elevators) and tells us to pick roommates hahaha. It was so disorderly and shocking. But that is China for you! Paul and I decided to room together, probably because we are both fairly organized and not messy when it comes to living spaces. We get inside the rooms and its hot as hell, the air-conditioning had not been turned on and its like 90 percent humidity outside and about 90 degrees. In the morning, Paul and I discovered that our electricity was turned off for some reason. So we went down to the landlady and tried to explain what had happened. But she did not speak any English, and our miming was not good enough. So she called someone who spoke English and gave the phone to us. She eventually understood what we wanted and all she had to do was replace the electricity card in the slot for us, and we had electricity again just like that! -There was no toilet paper when we arrived. It was not a very nice feeling knowing that if we needed it, it was not there. Luckily none of us needed it that first night or first thing in the morning. So we immediately in the morning went out to get some. We ended up getting a lot of Beer and toilet paper. The locals must have thought we were very strange carrying both of those items down the street at the same time. We were laughing at ourselves. Julia, Erik, Paul, Cyrus and I also went to lunch. It was our first time eating out in China! We went into a restaurant that looked decent, and we also chose it because there were pictures of what you could order on the wall. I had a rice and meat dish that was very yummy! We realized that it was a Muslim-Chinese restaurant. Apparently there is a large population of Muslims in this area. The women at the restaurant were wearing headscarves. It was very interesting; I had no idea about this cultural dynamic in China! On this day we also had our welcome Lunch with the company. It was at the Univeristy in this large room with the largest round table and largest lazy susan I had ever seen in my life! Haha. It was a delicious lunch and there was so much beer there. It is customary that everytime there is a toast that you finish everything in your glasss! Bottoms up!! Haha. Needless to say it was a fun lunch! ☺ Another interesting thing about China is crossing the roads. You just have to go for it. Its like Frogger, nothing yields for you at any time. Its all up to your judgment and how fast you think traffic is moving. I have not messed up yet! Hahaha. We also had to go register at the local Police station in order to get our identity cards, those should arrive in a few weeks.

Journey from Vancouver to China! (August 27th/28th, 2013)

-Met up with Cyrus, Julia and Erik at YVR and we board our flight to Shanghai! Our flight was perfectly on time and as soon as I got on the plane, I got very excited! That was it, after the whole summer of waiting and anticipating; I was actually on my flight to China! We took off at 1:20pm and were due to arrive in Shanghai at 4:35pm the next day. It was about an 11 and a half hour flight across the Pacific Ocean, and it was daylight the entire time! I sat next to a very nice Chinese lady who told me that the people in the Province where I would be living were very nice and that I would enjoy my time there. It was a very reassuring thing to hear, especially since I have never been to China or anywhere in Asia before. During the flight I saw the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and I could see Japan! It was very cool to see both of those from the airplane window! We also flew very close to a portion of Russia, but I could not see it, as I was on the wrong side of the plane. We arrived in Shanghai only about a half hour late, and the flight in was very smoggy and I couldn’t see any of the city, I only saw the countryside, the river, port, and industrial areas where there were some windmills. It was interesting nonetheless. The airport was very large and modern. Chinese Customs took no time at all, and they didn’t even ask me a single question, even though I would be employed in China for 4 months. They just checked off my Visa and gave me a stamp in my passport. After customs we had to check in for our domestic flight to Qingdao, which was just a quick flight. Upon arriving in that city, I saw tons of fireworks in every direction when we were landing. Apparently it was the God of Fortune’s birthday and people were celebrating, so they weren’t just celebrating my arrival…..hahahaha. Season was there waiting for us, along with Paul, another Co-op student who had arrived earlier in the day. We took a 2.5 hour bus ride to Weifang, during which we slept most of the time because we had been up for 24 hours and counting.