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.