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!