This blog being blocked has made it difficult to post in China. Also, having the hard drive of my computer physical die has also added some difficulty. In the mean time, you can see pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/updowndown/China
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Shenzhen
Since my last blog post, I have been enjoying my summer vacation in Shenzhen with my brother Darryn, a place which is certainly different from my home back in Huangdao. For one thing, it is a lot busier here, and it’s more common to run into foreigners (though it’s still pretty rare). I’m happy that my introduction to China didn’t take place here as the small city friendliness that I’ve grown to love in Huangdao is pretty much non-existent here. What Shenzhen does have is cheap shopping in almost every department, though I’ve learned that my dislike for shopping has nothing to do with cost, as I still dislike shopping when everything is ridiculously cheap. Take my camera for instance. I don’t have a case for it so right now I carry it around in a sock to protect it. I’ve tried buying a camera case that, like everything, is cheap, but I can’t rationalize why I should buy a case when the sock is doing the job just fine.
Of course, there are some things that I love to buy, and if you think just a little about me, you’ll figure it out. I have a weakness for physics books, a weakness that hasn’t really shown itself in China because it’s hard to find books written in English, but in Shenzhen the challenge is far less. A book that costs $100 CAN in Canada (E&M by Griffiths) costs about $5.50 CAN here. Of course I bought it, mostly to have some puzzles to work through on my spare time (Sudoku’s just don’t do it for me anymore – they just feel like work).
Anyway, enough random talk, I’ll walk you through my Shenzhen trip to date.
It started with a plane ride, which was mostly pleasant except for the fact that it landed in a different airport than it was suppose to (due to poor weather). Okay, that’s not so bad, but when they sent us off the plane, well that’s when things got difficult. Nobody could speak English, and I was understanding different stories from different people. Realizing that I could very well screw this up and end up stuck at the airport (I didn’t even have a cell phone, and many of my belongings were in the plane), I took out my most valuable possession (my dictionary), and began working out what I needed to ask about. Unfortunately, the airport people I was talking to didn’t know how to write pinyin (the phonetic writing of Chinese characters), so understanding answers was very difficult, but through some effort, I made it by plane to Shenzhen airport. Oddly enough, a number of the foreigners that I ran into didn’t make the flight back and I assume they took some difficult trip to Shenzhen – without their luggage.
Having survived my first challenge, my brother picked me up and I headed to his house. The next day, and throughout the first week, I helped my brother translate some documents from French to English. It was at times fun (as it was a solvable challenge), but overall it drove us crazy trying to understand the meaning on certain technical terms without significant context. The conclusion: I’ll only translate stuff in the future if it’s of a non-technical nature.
My vacation really started when the weekend came. We headed to Zhuhai for the weekend to see some apartments (as my brother is planning to buy one there), and of course, to have some fun. After looking at apartments, we headed to some mini-amusement park, where we found this “gentle clue”:
along with Poseidon
and some good views
Later that night we went on a boat-cruse. I got to see Macao, but what I liked most were the bridges. I’ll just show you one
After the cruse, we found a dance club where we could fully express our moves. This was the first time Darryn and I had gone to a dance club together, which was another check off of my list of things to do in China. The music was great, and it was another moment reminding me why I came to China. Unfortunately Huangdao doesn’t have such clubs, so my home isn’t perfect.
Rather than getting a hotel room for the night we went to some imperial bath house (I can’t remember the exact name) to soak in some hot springs and then pass out on some beach chairs. The place was very beautiful and you almost felt like royalty there. The only thing is that being on vacation, I don’t have any real stress in my life, so I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate the hot springs.
The next morning we spent some more time in the springs, and then headed off to a Shaolin temple.
This was the first temple that I’ve been to in China, and I always wondered what the experience would be like; I wasn’t disappointed. The place was very beautiful, and watching the monks perform their ceremonies was very interesting. Of course, it would be useless, and most likely disrespectful to take pictures of the monks in action, as it was the experience that was important. None the less I found some things that I needed to take pictures of. One thing was this live turtle on a stone one.
The other thing was the numerous dragons that I found around the temple. I’ll just show you one today, but on some future blog post I’ll likely show you more.
After getting back to Shenzhen, I spent the following week with Guang Li’s sister’s (Guang Xia) family. Guang Xia’s husband is one of (if not the) richest people in Shenzhen, so you can imagine what their place looks like. This brings up the obvious question, what am I doing staying there? It took me a few days to realize it, but it’s because of my mom (who’s never been to China). When Guang Li and TingTing where in Canada, my mom helped them out in a significant way. The end result is a family across the world who endlessly encourages Darryn to bring his parents to China.
Anyway, Guang Xia has two kids, LinLin and JaMing, so I had some people to play with. One of the things I did included going to a place called Happy Valley with LinLin and one of her friends.
The above picture was really hard to take for a few reasons. One, you’re not allowed to bring cameras on the ride, but saying “wo(3) ti(1)ng bu(4) do(3)ng” (I don’t understand what I’m hearing) to the people that give instructions helps a lot. The other difficulty was that the ride was violently throwing everyone around. I took many pictures, but not all of them even had people in them.
Another day I went out with LinLin and a group of friends for a birthday party. They were all heading to America to practice their English, so I was able to communicate to rather high degree with them. Though I must saying, at my age, it’s a little weird hanging out with a group of 16 year girls – most of our conversations revolved around if this or that actress was beautiful, accompanied with numerous questions to determine what western guys found attractive. A lot of girls that I’ve met in China have carried out this same sort of questioning, but it was particularly acute in these 16 year old girls. On an extremely bright note, we went to see transformers (I think partially to be nice to me), which was great fun to watch. It had appearances of some of my favourite aircraft (A-10, AC-130), not to mention a lot of English. I felt like I was in a theater back in Canada, which was a pleasant enough feeling.
When the weekend (14,15) arrived I met back up with Darryn and we went hiking. It was with a bus load of people, so I was hoping to meet some new people, especially since everyone I had met so far in Shenzhen was through friends. The first guy I met I knew instantly was from HK because he talked negatively about the government, something you should hear all the time, but never do.
Anyway, on the bus, we all introduced each other, which was fun, because my Chinese is still so poor, but I got to say the important things like:
-my Chinese is bad
-my name is Gaven
-I’m Canadian
-I’ve been in China for 2 months
-I’m a physics teacher in Qingdao
Unfortunately, the hike took place on the current hottest day of the year, and our path was along an un-shaded river. Not wanting to sweat out all the water and salt in my body, I decided to swim in every sizeable pool that I found to keep by body temperature at a reasonable level. This was possible because the pace of the group was slow enough that I could always catch up.
More unfortunate then the weather was that our leaders didn’t quite know where they were taking us, which diminished my faith in them. Thus, I abandoned the climb to the peak and found my way to a lake (for more swimming) with a small band of mutineers. Of course leaving the group meant that we had to wait for the group to return, which had all the food. After begging the locals for food (which worked marvelously), we set about entertaining ourselves in various ways during the long wait. Eventually someone joined us who had a giant bag of carrots, which a few of us jumped at.
That’s Linda and me proudly displaying what little is left from our massive carrots. On a side note, eating a lot of carrot makes you feel a little sick.
Well that brings you to where I’m at now. In future, I’ll try to be more active with my camera so that you don’t have to read as much. In the mean time, here’s a picture of my brother and I with JaMing (note that we are all wearing polo shirts):
Of course, there are some things that I love to buy, and if you think just a little about me, you’ll figure it out. I have a weakness for physics books, a weakness that hasn’t really shown itself in China because it’s hard to find books written in English, but in Shenzhen the challenge is far less. A book that costs $100 CAN in Canada (E&M by Griffiths) costs about $5.50 CAN here. Of course I bought it, mostly to have some puzzles to work through on my spare time (Sudoku’s just don’t do it for me anymore – they just feel like work).
Anyway, enough random talk, I’ll walk you through my Shenzhen trip to date.
It started with a plane ride, which was mostly pleasant except for the fact that it landed in a different airport than it was suppose to (due to poor weather). Okay, that’s not so bad, but when they sent us off the plane, well that’s when things got difficult. Nobody could speak English, and I was understanding different stories from different people. Realizing that I could very well screw this up and end up stuck at the airport (I didn’t even have a cell phone, and many of my belongings were in the plane), I took out my most valuable possession (my dictionary), and began working out what I needed to ask about. Unfortunately, the airport people I was talking to didn’t know how to write pinyin (the phonetic writing of Chinese characters), so understanding answers was very difficult, but through some effort, I made it by plane to Shenzhen airport. Oddly enough, a number of the foreigners that I ran into didn’t make the flight back and I assume they took some difficult trip to Shenzhen – without their luggage.
Having survived my first challenge, my brother picked me up and I headed to his house. The next day, and throughout the first week, I helped my brother translate some documents from French to English. It was at times fun (as it was a solvable challenge), but overall it drove us crazy trying to understand the meaning on certain technical terms without significant context. The conclusion: I’ll only translate stuff in the future if it’s of a non-technical nature.
My vacation really started when the weekend came. We headed to Zhuhai for the weekend to see some apartments (as my brother is planning to buy one there), and of course, to have some fun. After looking at apartments, we headed to some mini-amusement park, where we found this “gentle clue”:
along with Poseidon
and some good views
Later that night we went on a boat-cruse. I got to see Macao, but what I liked most were the bridges. I’ll just show you one
After the cruse, we found a dance club where we could fully express our moves. This was the first time Darryn and I had gone to a dance club together, which was another check off of my list of things to do in China. The music was great, and it was another moment reminding me why I came to China. Unfortunately Huangdao doesn’t have such clubs, so my home isn’t perfect.
Rather than getting a hotel room for the night we went to some imperial bath house (I can’t remember the exact name) to soak in some hot springs and then pass out on some beach chairs. The place was very beautiful and you almost felt like royalty there. The only thing is that being on vacation, I don’t have any real stress in my life, so I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate the hot springs.
The next morning we spent some more time in the springs, and then headed off to a Shaolin temple.
This was the first temple that I’ve been to in China, and I always wondered what the experience would be like; I wasn’t disappointed. The place was very beautiful, and watching the monks perform their ceremonies was very interesting. Of course, it would be useless, and most likely disrespectful to take pictures of the monks in action, as it was the experience that was important. None the less I found some things that I needed to take pictures of. One thing was this live turtle on a stone one.
The other thing was the numerous dragons that I found around the temple. I’ll just show you one today, but on some future blog post I’ll likely show you more.
After getting back to Shenzhen, I spent the following week with Guang Li’s sister’s (Guang Xia) family. Guang Xia’s husband is one of (if not the) richest people in Shenzhen, so you can imagine what their place looks like. This brings up the obvious question, what am I doing staying there? It took me a few days to realize it, but it’s because of my mom (who’s never been to China). When Guang Li and TingTing where in Canada, my mom helped them out in a significant way. The end result is a family across the world who endlessly encourages Darryn to bring his parents to China.
Anyway, Guang Xia has two kids, LinLin and JaMing, so I had some people to play with. One of the things I did included going to a place called Happy Valley with LinLin and one of her friends.
The above picture was really hard to take for a few reasons. One, you’re not allowed to bring cameras on the ride, but saying “wo(3) ti(1)ng bu(4) do(3)ng” (I don’t understand what I’m hearing) to the people that give instructions helps a lot. The other difficulty was that the ride was violently throwing everyone around. I took many pictures, but not all of them even had people in them.
Another day I went out with LinLin and a group of friends for a birthday party. They were all heading to America to practice their English, so I was able to communicate to rather high degree with them. Though I must saying, at my age, it’s a little weird hanging out with a group of 16 year girls – most of our conversations revolved around if this or that actress was beautiful, accompanied with numerous questions to determine what western guys found attractive. A lot of girls that I’ve met in China have carried out this same sort of questioning, but it was particularly acute in these 16 year old girls. On an extremely bright note, we went to see transformers (I think partially to be nice to me), which was great fun to watch. It had appearances of some of my favourite aircraft (A-10, AC-130), not to mention a lot of English. I felt like I was in a theater back in Canada, which was a pleasant enough feeling.
When the weekend (14,15) arrived I met back up with Darryn and we went hiking. It was with a bus load of people, so I was hoping to meet some new people, especially since everyone I had met so far in Shenzhen was through friends. The first guy I met I knew instantly was from HK because he talked negatively about the government, something you should hear all the time, but never do.
Anyway, on the bus, we all introduced each other, which was fun, because my Chinese is still so poor, but I got to say the important things like:
-my Chinese is bad
-my name is Gaven
-I’m Canadian
-I’ve been in China for 2 months
-I’m a physics teacher in Qingdao
Unfortunately, the hike took place on the current hottest day of the year, and our path was along an un-shaded river. Not wanting to sweat out all the water and salt in my body, I decided to swim in every sizeable pool that I found to keep by body temperature at a reasonable level. This was possible because the pace of the group was slow enough that I could always catch up.
More unfortunate then the weather was that our leaders didn’t quite know where they were taking us, which diminished my faith in them. Thus, I abandoned the climb to the peak and found my way to a lake (for more swimming) with a small band of mutineers. Of course leaving the group meant that we had to wait for the group to return, which had all the food. After begging the locals for food (which worked marvelously), we set about entertaining ourselves in various ways during the long wait. Eventually someone joined us who had a giant bag of carrots, which a few of us jumped at.
That’s Linda and me proudly displaying what little is left from our massive carrots. On a side note, eating a lot of carrot makes you feel a little sick.
Well that brings you to where I’m at now. In future, I’ll try to be more active with my camera so that you don’t have to read as much. In the mean time, here’s a picture of my brother and I with JaMing (note that we are all wearing polo shirts):
Thursday, June 28, 2007
It's been awhile...
For me, the defining characteristic of my experience in China has been how wonderfully happy I’ve been. That in itself is great, but it has left me with lots of questions. Why was it that I was so unhappy (in comparison to before), and will this happiness one day ware off or become dull? (I honestly believe the answer is no, but we’ll see). Thankful it has answered one question for me; whether going to China was a good choice or not. Not only am I sure that it was, I’m certain I picked the right school to join. I don’t think (though I try) I can express to you what it’s like being with the kids throughout the day. No interaction is bad. Even one day, when I had a little girl crying because another girl had hurt her feelings, the experience of helping her resolve her problem with the other kids was great. I could go on, but I won’t, because I will always fall short of giving you a true impression of my experiences here.
I’ve also wondered if this happiness I feel is felt constantly by some people. If so, I’m pretty pissed (though not really pissed), that I didn’t get to fit into this boat. On the flip side I now believe that no matter how miserable someone is, they can find an environment that will make them happy. That’s a darn good thought; pretty much guarantees happiness so long as you’re clever enough to find it.
Of course with things going so well, I’m beginning to become protective of my happiness. I definitely don’t want to upset the state that I’m in, so I’m keen to keep my life in a rather static mode. Luckily that just means more time with kids, learning Chinese, and making friends -- An excellent combination.
Though don’t get the impression that my life (or that I think my life) is perfect; I’ve simply traded some displeasures for others. The deal was this: I get to enjoy life, and professional grow as a teacher, but in exchange, I take a very removed break from physics. I don’t think you understand what that means, but I’ll put it this way (which you are likely not going to believe). Imagine that you’re Christian and you temporarily trade your relationship with God, and in return you get to be incredibly happy. You’ll be exactly that, incredibly happy, but something very important will be missing. I know you think I’m exaggerated, but ah well, it’s not my job to convince you, after all this is just a blog with a silly name.
Before moving on, I do want to say one final thing, and that is that there is a lot that I would like to include in my life that I can’t. I do very much miss my friends (you should all know who you are!), and it does make me sad to be far from all of my family (though Darryn is only a few hours plane ride away, so that’s not too far).
So that’s that. I’m happy, and it’s ridiculous.
Now I haven’t posted for awhile, so a lot has happened, Unfortunately I’m bound not to remember much of it, so I’ll just write about what I have pictures of. That’s probably what you really read my blog for anyway – the pictures.
Let’s start with some of the cute kids.These are the kindergarten kids at my school. Once a week I take care of them at recess (I’m usually with the older-than-kindergarten kids).
I’m sure you can tell that they’re cute, so I’ll leave it at that.
A few weeks ago one of the teachers and I took the boarding kids (all of whom I teach) to the beach. Every week there is a different activity (another week it was to a gym where a fitness trainer followed me around and made me exercise with him. He was super nice, but only interested in me because of my English, so a little annoying). Anyway, we got pretty wet.
My favourite part was riding the waves with one of the students.
The same night I had a fantastic dinner with some of the teachers (One of the teachers, Luke, use to be a Chef). The only worth while picture to show is this one of Chris’s baby:
I went to Qingdao for the weekend, and had a pretty awesome time. Granted, this might be because pretty simple things make me happy. For one thing, getting this ID (it’s a discount card), with the name Boblar was wonderful, but probably more wonderful was the look on the waitresses face when she heard that I was Boblar for Canada. I think she thought the name was awesome, as I obviously did. The girl kissing me is “Audrey Hepburn.”
The next morning, I got an email from my rock climbing friend Xu that a group of people (that she herself didn’t know) where going to climb a mountain called Laoshan (which is famous here). This was perfect! I loved the idea of having a group of people to practice my Chinese on, and that’s exactly what happened. Of course, my Chinese is bad so I had to use a lot of gestures, and Xu as my dictionary, but it was great. I felt like a diplomat, sharing what I loved about China, and what I love about Canada. Of course, talking about all this love led to a lot of “cheers-ing” and after 2.5L of beer, I was done drinking for the night. It was just an incredible night. Here are the pictures.
After that weekend experience, I didn’t do much that was exciting during the following weekends. This was almost entirely due to the fact that the school year has been in the process of ending (yesterday was the last day of school), so I’ve been very busy with writing exams, and writing reports. Having of course very little guidance about how to go about doing this, it took a lot of my time to complete, but it was a great experience. So the last two weekends I spent almost exclusively at the school, with the occasional meet up with friends to eat/play.
Also, I know that I joke about being the head of the science/math department, but sometimes it’s tough! I’ve woken up from nightmares in which I find that the books I’ve ordered are filled exclusively with words (an ESL nightmare!). I’m not even going to get into the feelings I have about ordering lab equipment. It's cool to have thousands of dollars to be able to spend on new equipment, but it brings its own stresses.
Another big thing that’s been going on at the school is the end of year production. I have some really cute videos of the kids performing in it, but they’re too large to upload to YouTube, so for now they will not be making it to the walls of Cute Qubit. Luckily though, I have pictures of most of the cast.
There were sailors (ECE kids):
Pirates:
Sultanas (+Sultan):
Mer People:
And Neptune's gang (these are my kids):
I should note a few things. First off, the girl giving a peace sign is almost impossible to photograph without her covering her face, so this is a rare picture to have. Secondly, though I have these 8 kids, I will also teach 10 others next year (the ones moving up to Year 7). Secondary is also getting two more teachers and two more classrooms, so a lot of growth for my department.
But for now school is over. I’m moving to Shenzhen for a month to live with my brother and then I have to start getting ready for school in Beijing (I’ll explain that another day – I’ll still teach in Qingdao) at the start of August. As I’ll be less busy, I’ll try to shrink the time between blog posts. But for now, I’ll leave you with this picture from “frosh day,” a day where we introduce the year 6’s to the secondary world (secondary starts in year 7 in the British curriculum). This is at the end of a yogurt boat race:
I’ve also wondered if this happiness I feel is felt constantly by some people. If so, I’m pretty pissed (though not really pissed), that I didn’t get to fit into this boat. On the flip side I now believe that no matter how miserable someone is, they can find an environment that will make them happy. That’s a darn good thought; pretty much guarantees happiness so long as you’re clever enough to find it.
Of course with things going so well, I’m beginning to become protective of my happiness. I definitely don’t want to upset the state that I’m in, so I’m keen to keep my life in a rather static mode. Luckily that just means more time with kids, learning Chinese, and making friends -- An excellent combination.
Though don’t get the impression that my life (or that I think my life) is perfect; I’ve simply traded some displeasures for others. The deal was this: I get to enjoy life, and professional grow as a teacher, but in exchange, I take a very removed break from physics. I don’t think you understand what that means, but I’ll put it this way (which you are likely not going to believe). Imagine that you’re Christian and you temporarily trade your relationship with God, and in return you get to be incredibly happy. You’ll be exactly that, incredibly happy, but something very important will be missing. I know you think I’m exaggerated, but ah well, it’s not my job to convince you, after all this is just a blog with a silly name.
Before moving on, I do want to say one final thing, and that is that there is a lot that I would like to include in my life that I can’t. I do very much miss my friends (you should all know who you are!), and it does make me sad to be far from all of my family (though Darryn is only a few hours plane ride away, so that’s not too far).
So that’s that. I’m happy, and it’s ridiculous.
Now I haven’t posted for awhile, so a lot has happened, Unfortunately I’m bound not to remember much of it, so I’ll just write about what I have pictures of. That’s probably what you really read my blog for anyway – the pictures.
Let’s start with some of the cute kids.These are the kindergarten kids at my school. Once a week I take care of them at recess (I’m usually with the older-than-kindergarten kids).
I’m sure you can tell that they’re cute, so I’ll leave it at that.
A few weeks ago one of the teachers and I took the boarding kids (all of whom I teach) to the beach. Every week there is a different activity (another week it was to a gym where a fitness trainer followed me around and made me exercise with him. He was super nice, but only interested in me because of my English, so a little annoying). Anyway, we got pretty wet.
My favourite part was riding the waves with one of the students.
The same night I had a fantastic dinner with some of the teachers (One of the teachers, Luke, use to be a Chef). The only worth while picture to show is this one of Chris’s baby:
I went to Qingdao for the weekend, and had a pretty awesome time. Granted, this might be because pretty simple things make me happy. For one thing, getting this ID (it’s a discount card), with the name Boblar was wonderful, but probably more wonderful was the look on the waitresses face when she heard that I was Boblar for Canada. I think she thought the name was awesome, as I obviously did. The girl kissing me is “Audrey Hepburn.”
The next morning, I got an email from my rock climbing friend Xu that a group of people (that she herself didn’t know) where going to climb a mountain called Laoshan (which is famous here). This was perfect! I loved the idea of having a group of people to practice my Chinese on, and that’s exactly what happened. Of course, my Chinese is bad so I had to use a lot of gestures, and Xu as my dictionary, but it was great. I felt like a diplomat, sharing what I loved about China, and what I love about Canada. Of course, talking about all this love led to a lot of “cheers-ing” and after 2.5L of beer, I was done drinking for the night. It was just an incredible night. Here are the pictures.
After that weekend experience, I didn’t do much that was exciting during the following weekends. This was almost entirely due to the fact that the school year has been in the process of ending (yesterday was the last day of school), so I’ve been very busy with writing exams, and writing reports. Having of course very little guidance about how to go about doing this, it took a lot of my time to complete, but it was a great experience. So the last two weekends I spent almost exclusively at the school, with the occasional meet up with friends to eat/play.
Also, I know that I joke about being the head of the science/math department, but sometimes it’s tough! I’ve woken up from nightmares in which I find that the books I’ve ordered are filled exclusively with words (an ESL nightmare!). I’m not even going to get into the feelings I have about ordering lab equipment. It's cool to have thousands of dollars to be able to spend on new equipment, but it brings its own stresses.
Another big thing that’s been going on at the school is the end of year production. I have some really cute videos of the kids performing in it, but they’re too large to upload to YouTube, so for now they will not be making it to the walls of Cute Qubit. Luckily though, I have pictures of most of the cast.
There were sailors (ECE kids):
Pirates:
Sultanas (+Sultan):
Mer People:
And Neptune's gang (these are my kids):
I should note a few things. First off, the girl giving a peace sign is almost impossible to photograph without her covering her face, so this is a rare picture to have. Secondly, though I have these 8 kids, I will also teach 10 others next year (the ones moving up to Year 7). Secondary is also getting two more teachers and two more classrooms, so a lot of growth for my department.
But for now school is over. I’m moving to Shenzhen for a month to live with my brother and then I have to start getting ready for school in Beijing (I’ll explain that another day – I’ll still teach in Qingdao) at the start of August. As I’ll be less busy, I’ll try to shrink the time between blog posts. But for now, I’ll leave you with this picture from “frosh day,” a day where we introduce the year 6’s to the secondary world (secondary starts in year 7 in the British curriculum). This is at the end of a yogurt boat race:
Monday, June 04, 2007
Week 4: Chinese Lessons
The above picture shows my main tools in my quest to learn Chinese. I made the yellow cards so that I could practice the pronunciation of vowel combinations (which I largely worked on last week), and the paper on the sides are used to practice words. I have somewhere between 120-150 words memorized, with a goal of learning 100 words per week for the rest of this month. I also have just started to learn some Chinese characters, as I’ve realized how important they are for understanding the language (it’s like learning the Latin and Greek roots for English), not to mention how useful it is for reading signs and labels.
I’m starting to think that learning Chinese isn’t as hard as it looks, especially if you really want to learn. Actually, since the Romanized transcription of Chinese characters happened last century, the language has been put into a very sensible form, with few phonetic irregularities. The tones (each sound can be made with five different inflections) add an unfamiliar element, but it’s manageable. Though I still rely heavily on the context of a conversation to understand what’s being said.
Of course, the people around me have helped a lot too. My brother Darryn set me on the path of learning to read the pronunciations before worrying about specific words, the other western teachers have shared with me the words that are most useful in day-to-day interactions, and some of the kids at lunch have quizzed me on my vocabulary, which they are all better at than me, though I usually can teach them something new (like “physics”). But the greatest help has come from Lily, a Chinese teacher at my school. Everyday this weak in which she has not been busy after school, she has given me lessons, and some have been very original. My favourite type of lesson is when she takes me out so that I can talk to random people on the street. This may sound odd, but in China, talking to strangers isn’t frowned upon (Canada could learn from this). I usually just ask simple questions, and don’t understand much of the answer, but I’m getting better. It’s also nice just to go for a walk (as my school borders the main beach in Huangdao).
Learning Chinese has taken up most of my week, but there are some other note-worthy events. One of which was on Monday when at about 3:30pm, the sky turned black. I took the following picture with my camera at its highest ISO setting.
None of the other teachers had seen anything like it before, and we weren’t sure what the cause was, but my best guess is fog, a ridiculously large amount of fog! In most cities this might be a silly suggestion, but Huangdao can be an extremely foggy place. Here’s another one of the view across an intersection.
In more interesting news, Lily and I went to the Huangdao zoo on Saturday. Of course, we incorporated a Chinese lesson into our travel with me having to ask strangers directions to the zoo. I practiced the words I needed to use the night before, but the strangers still had trouble helping me (the zoo is in a remote part of Huangdao). Luckily, helping foreigners is enjoyable for most, so I had the help of a crowd which could point me [mostly] in the right way.
Here is Lily by the fantastic gate:
The zoo was large, there weren’t that many animals, but they had some of the greats. Here’s a sample:
One of my favourite experiences was feeding some sort of monkey dudes. It cost about 40 Canadian cents, so I was definitely game for it. Here are some photos:
Lily and I also fed a giraffe (this cost like 70 cents), which was also pretty fun.
I tried to get the kids around me to feed the giraffe, but they were too scared, except for this girl:
Without a doubt the weirdest part of the zoo was watching the “animal show.” At the Toronto zoo, one of my favourite parts is the bird show, so I was hoping that China might have something similar. I knew things weren’t right when I saw a cow in the middle of the field. Then, without much surprise, a lion came out.
The lion started off pretty good with some good bites.
The lion was doing so well, they had to bring in the truck, which I think is some sort of referee.
Anyway, after the truck came out, the cow took control and survived the match. The announcer said that they usually have a few lions attack the cow, but since one of the lions just had a baby, this lion was on her own.
There were definitely some other highlights, but I think that’s enough talk about the zoo.
Sunday was pretty relaxed with most of the day taken up with memorizing words. I also have found a place that sells great baozi (~steemed buns~), which is great as I have finally found a place where I can frequently go to.
That about sums up my week. Today (Monday) was another great day, partly because I had so much fun at lunch/recess. It’s like being a kid, but better, because you get to be the biggest kid!
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Week 3
Another week, another set of stories to share. I almost want to say that this week has been my best in China, but each week has been good in such different ways, so I'll avoid making a firm statement.
The week started off fairly busy. Chris was sick the first two days, so that meant I had to teach everything (except for Chinese class). It was a lot of fun, and I think it was good for the students to get to know me better.
On Wednesday, I went with the 7,8,9's for a run for their phys. ed. class (which Chris teaches). I really enjoyed it, so I'm going to try to go to all of the future runs (the students run whenever the weather isn't good enough to play a sport). On Thursday I went out for bike ride along Goldensands Beach with the boarding students, with only one student falling off his bike!
Aside from those specifics, the school week had a lot of other cool bits to it. I gave out my first test (with the first optional remake test being given on this comming Monday), we organized the curriculum for the 7,8,9,10's for next year, I got to meet a lot of the student's parents (and they clapped enthusiastically for me -- I liked that!), and as always, I had fun playing with the kids at lunch.
My kids have been really enjoying science class, which is great since they ranked it as their 3rd least liked course (out of 8), before I arrived. I've mostly been inventing experiments/demonstrations and the such for our unit on particles, density and pressure. Most of them involved plastic bottles, including one where they had to make a vacuum by using water and a balloon to evacuate a water bottle (if you're interested, we can do it together sometime -- it's fun!). Anyway, they got pretty wet doing it, and it was great fun.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was ready for a weekend of adventure. I headed down to Qingdao with my friend and co-worker Jo (a Canadian), who has an apartment there. In Qingdao, we met up with Jo's friend Kendra (an American), who is likely one of the most energetic people I've met. Here's a picture of the three of us:
Jo's on the right, Kendra's on the left, and I'm the guy in the middle. We went to a variety of bars, with my favourite being a dance club with few expatriates in it. Unlike in Canada, they played more than 3 dance songs in a row (well all the songs they played were dance). Already, I'm fitting in better in China than with [my opinionated view of] musically backwards Canada. Here's Kendra singing after being pulled up onto stage by a dude named Glenn (to the right of her):
Some bars were less good. We went to a ridiculously expensive one where expats converge (yuk! blarg!) and it just wasn't that great. Here's one expat showing off his moves:
By the end of the night, I had realized what we had done wrong. We should have exclusively drank in the taxi cabs between the bars, and avoided the high prices inside. We ended the evening with a trip to a favourite street-meat "platform" of Kendra and Jo's. We ate most of it, except one thing that Kendra bagged.
The next morning I went for a hike with Sam (he's an American), the husband of a teacher (she's American too) at the Qingdao campus. This is where we picked to go:
It was steep, but not at all a tough climb. It was so un-tough that we tried to go up some pretty step parts off the trail. Some parts were extremely freaky, but we got through them (or turned back from them) all successfully. Eventually we got to the top, where I took this beautiful photo:
So that's of course Sam. I also found this cryptic message:
While we were up there, we found a group belaying down the side of a cliff. They asked us if we were interested; Sam was, I declined and went to the bottom to take this picture:
Okay, well of course I soon realized that I erred in refusing the offer, so I too went down the cliff.
Afterwards, we did some rock climbing. I'll just give you a barrage of pictures:
Eventually we were on our way, to our next stop, which was this curious opening in the rock face:
Inside the passage it was impossible to see, and we had no flashlight, so I periodically took pictures with my camera to see what was coming up.
As the above shot shows, even with the flash, we couldn't see far into the passage, but we did find some cool stuff, like this narrow slit that was built to look at Qingdao's shore:
That's pretty much all there is to say about that adventure. By the time I got back to the streets of Qingdao, I was feeling pretty Qingdaoed-out. I decided to take a bus (which was an accomplishment for me, though I had a map and several friendly assisting strangers) to the ferry terminal to take me back home to Huangdao.
While I was waiting in line for the ferry, some Chinese dude came up to me and said "hello." This is not that uncommon, so I pleasantly answered his questions, though I was annoyed that I would probably have to talk to this guy for the 45 minute ferry ride. Turns out, the guy knows a bunch of teachers at the school, and he was a really fun guy to talk to. We talked about all sorts of things, from his hatred of the Japanese (this is pretty much taught in Chinese schools), to the taboo topic of politics in China, to the likelihood that my next/first/only wife will be Chinese. His name was Ford, and I'm pretty sure I won't be forgetting it.
When I got the Jusco (the mall outside of my building complex) I felt back at home. I went to the grocery store and decided to treat myself to a tasty meal. I got a dragon fruit, a cold dish that I can't remember the name of, and some Laoshan Vanilla Cola. (this all cost about 2 dollars Canadian).
Next week should be pretty calm, though I might be heading back for more Qingdao action during the weekend. The real thrill of next week is that a Chinese teacher at my school has agreed to do a language trade with me (though her English is eons beyond my Chinese). I'll let you know soon how it goes.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Current Jazz
As I said in my last post, I want to take some time to talk about teaching (as that is the main reason why I'm here). First off, I'll explain the setup of the school itself. There are two campuses, one in Qingdao and one in Huangdao (that's where I am). The Huangdao campus is just a temporary building with 5 classes in one apartment building, which has impressively been turned into what would like like a permanent school (this is the first year the school has been operating). The five class have 4 to 8 students per class, and specifically are the following:
- ECE (like kindergarten)
- year 1,2,3 (year 3 is equivalent to grade 2 in Canada, and so on)
- year 4,5
- year 6
- year 7,8,9
Chris, Fei, and I teach the year 7,8,9's, where I am the Science, Math, and Computer Science teacher (at least for this year). As this gives me a lot of free time, I'm planning to do science classes with the younger year levels. The first class I'm going to try things out with is the year 1,2,3 class, and I mostly plan to do fun demonstrations along with teaching basic concepts like the scientific method. It's really quite cool because there's no way I'd be able to do this at a typical elementary school back in Canada.
I started my full teaching load on Monday of this past week. Classes have been fun, specifically science class. Out of the 4 classes we've had, I've done 3 experiments, two of which required burning something! I actually don't have Bunsen burners, nor a lot of other equipment, so I've had to be quite resourceful, which has made things all the more exciting.
On Friday we had Sports Day, which is like Track and Field Day. The kids ran some races, competed in some team events, and played some sports like ultimate rugby, which is similar to ultimate Frisbee. Here's a picture from the tug-of-war event that I was running:
Sports day ended a little early, so the kids spent the last 30 minutes or so playing whatever. I hung out with the year 1,2,3 class because they were playing with LEGO, and well I love LEGO.
I should point out that I had them do the piece sign.
This weekend I did a few things.On Friday night I went out with a bunch of the teachers to some ex-pat bar. It was fun but nothing special. Saturday was a lot more interesting with Luke (year 4,5 teacher) taking me to the market, which was where you can buy cheap food from local farmers. I also got to see some really beautiful areas of Hunagdao which are quite close to where I live, but I forgot to take any pictures.
In the afternoon we went to Silversands beach (in my previous post, there was a picture from Goldensands beach). I spent some time in the surprisingly warm ocean, but spent most of my time playing soccer with a group of Chinese guys that asked to play against us. Of course, when talking to these guys, I had no clue what they were saying, but with a lot of pointing to the soccer ball and the goals and such, well we were able to play a normal game of soccer.
When it was time to leave, I decided to try to walk back from the beach to my apartment. I figured if I could do that, I would have achieved a major navigation milestone for myself. You see, usually I'm petty good at navigation, but there doesn't seem to exist a map of Huangdao that you can buy. So instead you have to rely on different methods for getting around. Here's a picture I took of my apartment complex that I found one morning:
And here's one I found on my walk home last night:
I've also become a big fan of using the satellite image feature of Google Maps to help me learn about the geography of where I live.
My walk back was fairly uneventful, with a few conversations with strangers that didn't go too far as my Chinese runs out pretty fast (hopefully you're getting a feeling for the frustration of not knowing the language, and why I'm trying so hard to learn). I also found this boat which I thought was rather beautiful (piaoliang - that's a good word to know).
That's pretty much all for now. I'll leave with one final picture from my walk home. This is a picture of a giant inflatable ball that kids can use to walk around on water with. Quite cool!
- ECE (like kindergarten)
- year 1,2,3 (year 3 is equivalent to grade 2 in Canada, and so on)
- year 4,5
- year 6
- year 7,8,9
Chris, Fei, and I teach the year 7,8,9's, where I am the Science, Math, and Computer Science teacher (at least for this year). As this gives me a lot of free time, I'm planning to do science classes with the younger year levels. The first class I'm going to try things out with is the year 1,2,3 class, and I mostly plan to do fun demonstrations along with teaching basic concepts like the scientific method. It's really quite cool because there's no way I'd be able to do this at a typical elementary school back in Canada.
I started my full teaching load on Monday of this past week. Classes have been fun, specifically science class. Out of the 4 classes we've had, I've done 3 experiments, two of which required burning something! I actually don't have Bunsen burners, nor a lot of other equipment, so I've had to be quite resourceful, which has made things all the more exciting.
On Friday we had Sports Day, which is like Track and Field Day. The kids ran some races, competed in some team events, and played some sports like ultimate rugby, which is similar to ultimate Frisbee. Here's a picture from the tug-of-war event that I was running:
Sports day ended a little early, so the kids spent the last 30 minutes or so playing whatever. I hung out with the year 1,2,3 class because they were playing with LEGO, and well I love LEGO.
I should point out that I had them do the piece sign.
This weekend I did a few things.On Friday night I went out with a bunch of the teachers to some ex-pat bar. It was fun but nothing special. Saturday was a lot more interesting with Luke (year 4,5 teacher) taking me to the market, which was where you can buy cheap food from local farmers. I also got to see some really beautiful areas of Hunagdao which are quite close to where I live, but I forgot to take any pictures.
In the afternoon we went to Silversands beach (in my previous post, there was a picture from Goldensands beach). I spent some time in the surprisingly warm ocean, but spent most of my time playing soccer with a group of Chinese guys that asked to play against us. Of course, when talking to these guys, I had no clue what they were saying, but with a lot of pointing to the soccer ball and the goals and such, well we were able to play a normal game of soccer.
When it was time to leave, I decided to try to walk back from the beach to my apartment. I figured if I could do that, I would have achieved a major navigation milestone for myself. You see, usually I'm petty good at navigation, but there doesn't seem to exist a map of Huangdao that you can buy. So instead you have to rely on different methods for getting around. Here's a picture I took of my apartment complex that I found one morning:
And here's one I found on my walk home last night:
I've also become a big fan of using the satellite image feature of Google Maps to help me learn about the geography of where I live.
My walk back was fairly uneventful, with a few conversations with strangers that didn't go too far as my Chinese runs out pretty fast (hopefully you're getting a feeling for the frustration of not knowing the language, and why I'm trying so hard to learn). I also found this boat which I thought was rather beautiful (piaoliang - that's a good word to know).
That's pretty much all for now. I'll leave with one final picture from my walk home. This is a picture of a giant inflatable ball that kids can use to walk around on water with. Quite cool!
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