is it december already???

There you go. It's Dec. 1 today already. I can't believe it. Each day here seems to drag by as I count down the number of blocks left until 3:40, but boy, the weeks just FLY by. There are only 4 and a half weeks left until 1st semester is over. In other words, if I take out the holidays, my contract is already 1/4 finished and I feel like my seat isn't even warm yet. It's probably because life is so busy here... Thinking back to what it was like in Vancouver, each day felt like 3 days, because there was nothing ever to do. Sure, I went to school, hung out with friends, , or whatever.... call it "fanjian," but I feel so much more accomplished when I am able to battle through the frustrations of dealing with lazy students every day, instead of lying around on the couch watching TV like I used to do back home.

That having said, I think everybody in the world should go to Asia to work. It's probably one of the most annoying but fulfilling things in the world. However, I know I'm definitely not getting a good representative of what work in Asia should be like... this is a Canadian school I work for and too many benefits come with it despite long work hours. I think we all need to suffer a little if not a lot, myself included, before we can say we've lived life.

the cold is coming

It's amazing how fast the temperature can drop. Last week, I was still wearing a t-shirt. Today, I have to wear my fuzzy jacket to go teach. Yup, winter is coming and there is no going back. I have heard too often about how miserablet the winters are here in Wuhan. It's going to be a long, bleak winter. I think many people on staff will flee from this place come June.

On another note, it's now the end of October already! Crazy how fast time flies here. Students are busy prepping for midterms that are rolling around next week. I'm trying to cram in the last bunch of marking before report card time. Busy busy busy. I seem to have no life anymore.

when in rome...

As it appears that I have not been very diligent in updating my blog, I've decided to take some time sitting here today writing up a new post.

It's been exactly two months that I've been in China now; it seems like forever. My parents are here visiting at the moment. Ever since they've arrived, I've been noticing how much I have changed from being here for merely eight weeks. I used to be quite finicky about cleanliness; after being in China for a couple months, that stuff really doesn't matter anymore. Finding a huge fly in my plate of food no longer surprises me. Throwing garbage around on the streets to me now means creating more jobs for street cleaners. Public toilets in China are now useable. These couple days have been a whir of "fancy" dinners with Mom and Dad, because that's what they eat. To be honest, I actually prefer sitting on plastic stools on the garbage-chicken-bone-spit-barf ridden streets eating street food. People reading this now might be thinking, "Oh my gosh! China has totally de-civilized Hedy." What does this really mean though? It's just the way people live here. When in Rome...

Of course, if this keeps up for say, five or six years, I will probably feel like I'm suffering. Never before though, since I have come here, have I ever felt guilty of being in a middle-class family in North America. Interacting with Chinese staff every day at school makes me realize how excessively privileged we all are in Canada.

I'll be back in Vancouver for a couple weeks early February. I am anticipating a reverse culture shock of some sort.

a break for myself

This week is a 6-day work week. Students have to attend class and teachers have to work Monday to Saturday. Why? Because next week is National Holiday Week, and all of us get an entire week off. I will be heading to Hong Kong during this time... can't wait to see family and friends!

To drive my classes slowly and steadily into this week-long holiday, I've launched three of my four blocks into research assignments. This way, they don't have to listen to me talk, and I don't have to plan as much. This is a little treat for myself before coming back from holidays and having to run into a long, long haul of work from October to mid-January with no breaks. This I am dreading.

A thing that has been annoying me lately is the sudden disappearance of students for days on end. Most of the time, they are suspended for things like smoking or escaping from dorms. I don't have to deal with the suspensions, but it bugs me like crazy that the counsellors never notify the teachers of what's going on. It's pretty much up to me to solve cases of disappearing students. And then there are the sudden pull-outs of students from classes by counsellors. Who knows why the counsellors need certain students to sit in their office all block... why can't they ever let me know beforehand???

Despite this and being drowned by paperwork this week, I can't believe tomorrow's Wednesday already! Time flies in this school.

another last-minute surprise

ML has got to have the most disorganized class scheduling system on the planet. On Friday, the principal told me that a new class has been created for a group of failing students - English 11 - which (surpise surprise) I have been assigned to teach, starting Monday. How is it possible that ALL of my teaching assignments this year were given to me the day before the courses start?? To make matters worse, I just realized the pressure of having this class because these kids, who are actually in gr. 12, are taking English 11 first semester with me, in hopes that they will pass and can go onto English 12 next semester, where hopefully they will also pass so they will graduate on time with their peers. If I can't help them pass, they will not graduate on time. Arrrgh.

11-hour work days + weekends in the office is no fun.

awkward silence

During my teacher ed program, my instructors always joked about awkward silences that occur in classrooms when teachers don't get a response from students. I think that no teacher has experienced truly awkward silence unless he or she has taught a class of Chinese students in China. Kids here refuse to voluntarily answer questions, resulting in me having to call on students randomly (which I absolutely hate doing). Here, every class, I'm begging for responses. Hopefully things get better once the kids are used to it. I also eliminated my rule of hand-raising since they never do anyway. When I ask them to do it, they'd rather not talk. It's surprising that things like this slip in the Chinese education system although it is overall so much stricter than the Western way of things.

Today is my second day of teaching, and I would not use the word "great" or even "good" to describe it. I am so under-preprared because of last-minute teaching assignments, and I am still struggling to get the kids talking when i want them to, and shutting up when I'm talking. Hopefully, next week, things will be running smoother and will flow better.

I want to upload pictures, but the school internet is too ridiculously slow. Sorry!

things sorted out... for now

It is now 6:40pm, and the first day of school is tomorrow. I kid you not - my teaching assignment was not finalized and given to me until 4:00pm. This resulted in me madly rushing to come up with things to fill up my first class tomorrow. I have officially been transferred over to the high school, and will be teaching 2 blocks of some obscure ESL course, and 1 block of IT 10. Ha ha, who thought that I, being completely un-computer-saavy, would end up teaching IT.

My new office is with the rest of the ESL department, and everyone here has left for the day already. However, there is much noise in the hallways as the students are hanging out in classrooms (goodness knows why; school starts tomorrow). I walked down the hall just now to the washrooms and boy, my heart is pounding now because I am actually a little terrified of these teenagers. The boys tower over me and the girls look older than me. Tonight will be another sleepless night.

Not only this, but the office is also in chaos. The principals and secretaries are experiencing super high stress now printing off final class lists (a lot of which are actually wrong), and the office is bombarded with students. It is insane over here. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.

disaster

Since I am using a friend's computer to type this up, I can't post any pictures, sorry! Anyway, things are looking quite disastrous right now regarding my teaching assignment. There has been an unofficial decision to dissolve 2 of the 4 teacher posts at my tiny school right now, and according to seniority, one of them will likely be me. If that is the case, I will be kicked over to the high school to teach ESL... which I guess I can live with, at the moment, if there are ACTUALLY two available ESL positions. It is likely the school will need to CREATE extra positions for the 2 teachers who will be butted out. Not only is this whole teaching assignment an issue, but boy, poor kids over there at the tiny school - who would want to be in a school where there are only 2 teachers to teach across 10 grades?? If the boss decides on this, he is basically signing a death certificate for the tiny school. As for me... I pray I can stay in this city, since my lease has been signed and everything. I really am not in the mood to type much; really need God to clean up this mess for me.

apartment found

First, let me apologize for the lack of pictures in this blog. The last few days since I arrived have been a craze of shopping trips, house-hunting trips, and staff meetings. I have not had the time to slow down, stop, and take pictures of the actual city and campus. I will spend some time tomorrow morning taking pictures of the school and hopefully upload them in my next post.

We found a place! My CITE-buddy and I have decided to share an apartment. Unfortunately, the prices of all the apartments have been jacked up this year, but we found a nice 3-bedroom place for a somewhat reasonable price. We signed on a 1-year lease, and the landlord was kind enough to let us pay only a portion of the usual deposit amount until payday hits (as we pretty much whipped out all our cash on hand and will have to be super frugal for the next 3 weeks). We should be moving in within next week and saying bye-bye to the school apartments for a while. (Speaking of the school apartments, it really was not fun when the school started blasting the Chinese and Canadian national anthems repeatedly all across campus this morning at 7am.)

I am very thankful we found a place we like, and hopefully we won't find too many bugs in the apartment during our stay (we already discovered a small cockroach that lives behind the TV). Ants are unavoidable here in Wuhan even on the 5th floor, but at least they're small ants, unlike the flying ones I have outside my house back in Vancouver. Now that I'm on the topic of bugs, I can say that there must be about a trillion crickets that live on campus. They are SO LOUD at night it is unbelievable. Flies and mosquitoes are a given; so are beetles and frogs. This must be because of the huge swampy ponds on campus. I can't believe I forgot to bring insect repellent with me from Vancouver, I will be having to buy myself a bug zapper very soon.

house hunt

Shopping for apartments is probably one of the most time-consuming and frustrating things to do. It is unfortunate that the first realtor we dealt with was so inexperienced. Sure, she was a nice girl, but she showed us some of the crummiest apartments we have ever seen for a normal market price. After a few apartments, we knew something was wrong, so we tried another agency. The apartments the lady there offered were a little better; hopefully we will be getting a look at some good stuff this weekend with her.

Ever since arriving in Wuhan, my colleagues and I have been randomly running into other ML teachers. Essentially, whenever we saw a white person, we assumed that he/she teaches at ML. We spent a lot of time in Vanke (a huge apartment complex where most of the teachers live) these couple days due to house hunting, and randomly said hello to white strangers walking by. This resulted in spontaneous invites to check out their apartments and to have dinner with them along with the other staff. It surprises me how friendly and supportive the staff at ML is. It is definitely something I would not be able to find in a school back in Vancouver.

arrival

After an 11-hour flight to Shanghai, a 4-hour layover followed by a 3-hour flight delay to Wuhan, I have finally arrived... to be greeted by a blanket of hot humidity at 3am. A shuttle bus brought us to our apartments on campus, which is about an hour's car ride from the airport.

The next morning, we went on a big shopping trip to what is equivalent to a Wal-Mart. Everything was dirt-cheap; it made me wonder how everything in Canada could be so over-priced despite expensive labour. After doing some people-observing, I can say that Wuhan is a very young city. The majority of people walking around are in their early twenties, and are probably university/college students. Also, probably because the area we are in is Wuchang, and not downtown Hankou, people are relatively friendly compared to what I recall to be the attitudes of people in China. For instance, I have yet to be yelled at for not being able to speak proper Mandarin although I am Chinese, and I have been shoved by anyone yet (save for that one guy who pushed me out of his way at the Shanghai airport). Honestly, I had really low expectations before coming here, and what I have seen so far in terms of people, environment, and what is sold in stores and supermarkets, have impressed me.

The next big step now is trying to find a good place off campus to move to. The apartments on campus are decent, but my particular one has a showerhead that basically dribbles out water due to lack of pressure, and the fact that the campus is so isolated makes it almos feel prison-like. I really do want to settle down soon because I feel like I can't focus on work until this housing issue is sorted out.

taking flight

Tomorrow, I will be flying off to Wuhan, China. I know it seems like an obscure place, so let me provide you with some facts about Wuhan (taken from Wiki):

• Wuhan ranks 8th in China in terms of population, with 9.7 million people as of 2007.
• Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, and is actually a conglomeration of three smaller cities - Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang.
• Wuhan is commonly known as one of the Three Furnaces of China, due to its extreme heat in the summer.
• There are 35 higher educational institutions in Wuhan, making it ranked 3rd in China in terms of comprehensive scientific and educational strength.

If you have ever heard me tell the story of how I came across this job, you would probably know that I did not see this trip coming until a few months ago. This opportunity to "spread my wings" (as someone put it) was definitely unexpected. I don't know what's in store for me in the next year or two, but I will keep you all updated!

Time to return to packing.