Here's a goody from my second day in China. I was just cleaning up my email and found it lodged in there. It asked me to be posted so here you go old post, you may breathe again!
My Chinese assistant and teaching assistant at Metro had found me a place several days before I was to arrive, and only minutes on foot from the office. It turned out I lived on the 7th floor of a 14 floor apartment building, with what seems to be hundreds of tennants as the building is a three sided square with a small garden and fountain in the centre. The apartment turned out to be quite nice, but the floors and ceiling were in awful need of a scrubbing. I have a small living room, kitchen bathroom and decent size room. The place came furnished with a double bed (with a rock hard mattress), a dresser, nice tv (with cable) and stand, a balcony with washing machine (a barred balcony for security purposes I assume... although I'd be interested to see the theif who will climb seven stories to rob my poor Canadian self), a kitchen table w 4 chairs, fridge/freezer, water heater for the shower and a western toilet. The showers here much like anywhere outside of North America do not have shower curtains, so everything in the bathroom gets it's share of a drenching.
I had some unpleasent situations with unwanted guests in my apartment. The first night I stayed there we had to work out all the paperwork, and among all my other responsibilities with my new job I was up late and to bed late so I had no time to remedy this situation. So I watched as many beetle like insects, including roaches watched me from their hiding places. For any Southerner who reads this you'll get a good laugh, but for any Northerner I'm sure it'll frighten and disgust you just as much as it did myself. So I slept in the corner of the bed, away from the headboard where I saw them chillin out, I awoke several times in the night with terrible nightmares of roaches crawling all over myself, smacking desperately, only to find I was alone.
The next day, was my one day off before work commenced. It was D day for all guests of apt. 717. I went to my trusty (Ohhhh so trusty) Walmart and with some help of my Lonely Planet phrase book managed to get my hands on 3 cans of raid and 15 traps. I spent the remainder of the day turning the place upside down and fummigating any creepy crawler who dared try and hide. I'm glad my neighbors didn't come aknocking for if they were to see me I would look like some kind of mask wearing, wide eyed, Raid toting maniac, which on this day I most certainly was. By the end of the day, all of my unwanted guests had been vacated and I slept with but only one nightmare, but this time using my full bed.
However, the next day in speaking to a British dude whose lived and taught here for a year he told me that there is some things you can do about them, but only to an extent, after some time you just have to learn to live with it. Indeed. The next few days I have seen a minimal amount of them reinstating themselves into my apartment, and subsequently onto the bottom of my shoe.
Moving on, once cleaned my apt. is looking pretty dope, complete with my oh so manly green strawberry bedspread. My day Saturday was the first at the office, so I woke up at 7AM, having to work at 9. I was bustling around getting ready and I was very thirsty so I decided to run downstairs and grab some water from a local vendor. I grabbed one of the two keys I had been given and made my way out, finding the door locking behind me. Which was fine because I had my key right? I went to affirm this by testing the key and it did not work, great, I was locked out at 8:15AM and thought it would be hopeless to get back in before nightfall, judging by what I had heard about the Chinese taking their time to get things done. I went to the office early but found it locked, and then I thought it was a worth a shot to act out the scene of me being locked out to the security guard. So I made my way back and brought forth my very best acting skills, and was rewarded by him calling someone and him beckoning for me to sit and wait. 20 minutes later a man with a metal box arrived, a maintenance man who followed me up to 717. Swiftly he pulled out but a piece of plastic and jimmied my door open in a matter or moments and grunts. He tried to say something in Chinese, and we both realized that was useless. Then he pulled out his cellphone and inputted the number 80, and I said "no, no, no, the number is 717" pointing at my number plate by the door. He grew impatient and scanned his brain for the most important word in his vocabulary and mustered out "MONEY." Uh oh... silly me thought services would be free with my rental fee, and my pockets were empty albeit 20 Yuan, which he violently shook his head NO at. I tried fervently to explain to him I would have the money for him at lunchtime, but there was no understanding to be had. I called my last resort on his mobile, Brandon a teacher's assistant at Metro and he straightened things out for me to drop the money with the security guard during my lunch break. With that said we both went out seperate ways and I arrived luckily a few minutes early and scanned ol' thumby in.
I just finished (1 hr previous) my first class today, which was what is called a Social talking class. This class size can be no more then 12 students, and it's a class giving the opportunity to talk about whatever the students and I want to improve upon, their listening, speaking and vocabulary. This class since the school is new was small in size, with 5 students, ranging in age from a 15 year old to a man in his 40's. The class went just swimmingly, they were rather shy at first, but I played them out of their shells by being animate and acting out the scene of a frigid snowy Canadian winter day. By the end of it I had students offering me Chinese, table tennis and guitar lessons!
Dayve, the British fellow I mentioned earlier said it is quite common for students to take you out for dinner, and to go out with groups of them for drinks. Normally, after all the recruiting is done here at Metro we will be fielding normally between 150-200 English Students who will stay with us for many years, so the opportunity is there to build close relationships with all of them.
All this said, there are many different classes and class styles I will be teaching, which I shall expand on in another post. Metro is a very professional organization, and I'm expected to be a very professional, dynamic teacher, which shall certainly not be an issue, but I will have to work hard each day at bringing to the office my best image.
I will work 5 days weekly, each day either 9-5 or 9-1, with my hours in the office right now consisting of creating topics for conversation, meeting and greeting incoming students, and teaching classes as needed. Once the school is fully operational much more time will be spent teaching, weekly reaching near 30 hours, with the possibility of overtime.
Well that is all for now as we are breaking for supper, so I'll try and write more tommorow if opportunity gives.
As an update to things, I have become more used to cockroaches and have stopped squishing them. They do however still trigger a biological "fear" reaction of shivers and the like. I don't see Metro as the same professional organization that I used to,but still enjoy my teaching there - although I have lost much of my former zest and have become rather numb to the monotony of the curriculum.
If I spoke with the door opener again I wouldn't have to flail my arms, I would just tell him "You'll get the money at lunch my friend" and that'd be that. But, I do, part of me miss the acting out of scenarios. There was something fun about not speaking the language, about being clueless.
All in all, a nice walk down memory lane. When was the last time you walked down memory lane?
