Adam’s Not Here

Had a great time in Hangzhou over the weekend. John and I got on great and it was nice to get away from Shanghai for a couple days. John was an excellent host, we visited the West Lake and had some meals with his family. I also sat in while he was teaching one of his classes. I stayed with him at his grandparents, who were very nice. John kept telling me that his grandparents had never seen a foreigner this close. His grandfather was amazing. He is 85, but looks late 50s. He is very mobile, his skin is not wrinkly, his posture is erect and his hair is still naturally black. His grandmother however is 85 and looks it. So whenever they go out together, people think that his grandma is his grandpa’s mother.

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Date: 09/23/2005Views: 491

Last week I started up with my Mandarin tutor. I had trial lessons with 3 different tutors before settling on Vivi. So far we have just started off with basics. We practice simple conversations around introductions, shopping, meeting and directions. She is also teaching me how to write Chinese characters. So far I seem to be getting the pronounciation okay, but the tones are proving troublesome. I am understanding more, but my speech is still quite limited. But this is just the beginning, so patience and studying (as always, I should be doing a lot more of it) will bring results soon enough. Vivi and I seem to be getting along pretty well. We will sit and chat for a bit before or after lesson, which is really nice. So far so good.

I still haven’t finalized my plans for the national holiday, but I am leaning towards heading up to Tianjin and Beijing. John will be up there visiting his girlfriend, and Tasha will be there for Dragonboat. And with it being the only real chunk of vacation I get until February, I guess this is my chance. After the holiday, Tasha will be coming down and staying for a bit. I think she is going to try and look for work here.

So things are looking up, I am excited for the holidays!

Not too much is going on right now. Classes have been more or less the same. Either the kids are great and it is a ton of fun or they are misbehaving and I am thinking “get me out of here.” I have come to the realization that the kids misbehave for one of two reasons. One, they have no idea what I am saying and therefore are bored and frustrated by what I am doing. Two, they are very smart and find what I am doing boring. The worst classes are the ones where the class isn’t too bright and I am just unable to communicate enough to them to maintain their interest. Those ones are a real struggle. But most of the classes are going pretty well, hopefully the other ones will improve.

Shanghai is supposed to be great for shopping, but after 6 weeks I still haven’t found a clothing store I like. I have a pretty limited rotation right now that lasts about a week. Wearing the same stuff every week really contributes to a feeling of working life monotony. There is tons of nice womens clothing but it seems there isn’t much of a fashion scene for Shanghainese men. Everything is cheapo conservative, boring stuff or Hugo Boss or Gucci. There seems to be a serious lack of stylish, reasonably priced clothes. The quest continues, but my optimism is starting to fade on this front.

Next week I am going to visit Hangzhou, which is a city about 2 hours south of Shanghai. Mahta introduced me to a friend of hers from high school and U of T, so I am going to go and visit him. Hangzhou is supposed to be one of the prettiest cities in the country. The West Lake area is probably one the most famous tourist spots in China. I then have to decide what to do for the National Day holiday, which is about 1 week, starting October 1. I had thought about going up to Beijing, the only problem with travelling then is that I’ll be competing with 1 billion Chinese people for train tickets and hotel rooms. So we shall see, still not sure.

Lastly, I am happy to say that the Photo Gallery is working again. It seems I need to periodically relearn the importance of the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Am I ever tired after my first full week of classes. So far it has gone quite well. Coming into it I was worried that I didn’t have what it takes to be a teacher and that I wouldn’t be able to handle a class of 8 year olds. The students are a bit of a mixed bag. At one school the students are all angels. They don’t give me any problems and we have a lot of fun. Another school is proving to be quite challenging, none of them are that bad but it is a struggle to get them to be quiet and pay attention. I have pretty much settled into a schedule of dragging myself out of bed at 7 am, watching old people do Tai Chi in the courtyard as I shower (the shower is beside the window), metro and cab to the school and then teaching 4-7 classes. I then come home, wash my feet (with sandals, they get pretty grimey here) and then pass out for a couple hours.

Friday was Teachers Day and so I received a couple of roses from one of my classes (they later started to tease me by calling me a girl, so maybe there was an ulterior motive with the flowers : ). I also received a few cards, one of which was addressed to “Mr. Alen.” I think that makes it even cuter. There are 10-15 minute breaks between classes at which point I get swarmed by the kids. They especially like tickling me and punching me in the butt. It can be a little overwhleming sometimes as all the classes are on break at once, so there will be 50 kids swarming around and working themselves into a frenzy. I once made the mistake of holding one of the kids’ arms, counting to three and swinging them about 10 feet as they jumped on 3. As the other kids saw this I immediately got a line up of 20 kids waiting for their turn. Its a lot of fun playing with them, but is it ever exhausting.

Last weekend was the weekend where everything was breaking, and I was not happy. My bathroom sink was leaking for about the 5th time. I screwed up this blog site and my computer was breaking. I finally called in my landlord to fix the problem after a string of unsuccesful shady Chinese semi-professionals. My landlord showed up at 8 pm on Saturday night, looking all dressed up for a night out. She is a middle aged woman and she had her hair permed and was wearing a red dress that was mostly just the top (read - really short!). She is here to look at the leaky sink but brings me a bottle of wine, a jar of cashews, a cookie, a dish towel and a clothes hanger. She is very sweet, but I do not understand this woman. As the repairman was fixing the sink we were hanging out, but she can’t speak English and I of course speak no Chinese. She spied the cowboy hats that Mike and I had “acquired” the previous week and decided to try one on. I tried on the other one and we stood there for a minute chuckling and making cowboy poses together. I thought it was a very funny situation and one that makes me really love the people here. Despite the fact that most of the time the Chinese and I don’t understand eachother, they still make the effort with me and sometimes we are able to communicate, albeit in an unconventional manner.

Mike left today, after staying here the last week. We had a lot of fun and I was finally able to see the city and do some of the tourist stuff. We also really got to check out the night life which is always fun. Shanghai seems to have a pretty happening scene. There are lots of trendy bars and clubs across the city. The nightlife seems to be generally a foreigner-centric scene. It seems nightlife for Chinese if fairly non-existent, they have KTV (karaoke) but it seems like only a fairly small number of young and/or wealthy Chinese are to be found at the night spots.

Mike and I also took a 3 day trip to the neighbouring cities of Suzhou and Zhouzhuang (check the gallery for pics). I heard Suzhou has really nice canals, so I was expecting this quaint city with sleepy rivers. It is actually a fairly modern city with almost 6 million people. Although it does feel quiet compared to Shanghai. They had a lot of nice old gardens that would have been private gardens for various officials several hundred years ago. From there we took a bus to Zhouzhuang which is a small tourist town that has a wonderfully preserved old town. The old town is full of one and two story wooden buildings with tile roofs. They are built along a network of small canals with nice stone bridges and really narrow lanes. Mike and I first arrived in the evening, so we got to stroll through the old town when it was very dark and almost deserted. All the shops were closed and there was only the odd light or bit of noise from someone who lived there. At about 9pm the only life on the street was the periodic local middle aged man, standing around in his underwear while getting ready for bed. It was really cool walking through it, the ambience was fantastic. Unfortunately, with daylight the town was revealed for what it is: A beautiful old town that has been turned into the typical tourist trap. Most of the streets are lined with shops selling cheap Chinese cultural “artifacts” or serving ridiculously overpriced food. Almost all the tourists were Chinese, but as white people, Mike and I stood out and attracted all the attention from the vendors. So, it was rather tiring during the day, but truly a special place at night.

School started today. I got my schedule and I am teaching grades 1 and 2. I have 13 different classes that I see between 2 and 3 times a week for 35 minute periods. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busiest days, with 3 classes in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. I was pretty nervous getting started, there were about 30 grade 1s staring at me and two staff members sitting at the back of the room. The school had only received the coursebooks yesterday, so we weren’t given much time to prepare. The grade 1 classes in the morning went pretty well, we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the material for the grade 2s wasn’t as interesting and I had to deal with them after lunch. It was much more of challenge and I don’t think it went that well. I think the classes were a bit boring, which made them not pay attention, which meant I had to try and discipline them. So I am seeing how fun and easy it can be when it goes well, and how much of a challenge it can be if the class isn’t interested. Luckily, there are lots of other teachers, both foreign and Chinese, who seem to be good and willing resources. I hope improvement comes quickly.

So now work has started and I am basically settled in. My money situation had gotten pretty rough. I basically cleaned out all my available savings getting set up here and was (not) looking forward to pretty much being limited to eating steam buns until my first paycheck in 4 weeks. Happily, money from heaven came in the form of back pay from the city due to a wage harmonzation (dating back to amalgamation - 1998!) settlement. I really should stop bad mouthing unions. But this means I can now afford to start looking for a Chinese tutor. So I will hopefully be starting lessons in the next week or two.