This weekend Vi and I went to Dapeng. It's a town in Shenzhen but you would never guess on the way there or once you arrived. It's an ancient town where they built a military fortress to fight against the Japanese Navy in 1394. It was also the site of the first battle of the Opium War. There, the Chinese Army defeated a British Navy fleet only using canons from land and only fishing boats because they did not have a navy yet. The old village area is still the same with the outlying areas being factories everywhere, typical China. The ancient village does have electricity and people still live there. It was really cool to walk around and see people in their everyday life (well, it was Saturday) and just being part of it for a short time. We saw all of the normal stuff: people doing laundry in the streams, people washing clothes in the streams, kids trying to catch animals, most people playing mahjong and older women making things with her hands sitting outside; it was all really interesting to see. Vi was disappointed because she was hoping for something more like Lijiang or Dali, like our trip from last year, but it was nowhere near as touristy.
We ended up staying the night across the street from the village which just happened to be a beach. We didn't know there was a beach there so we didn't bring our bathing suits. Plus, it's been crappy weather all week and it did slow up this weekend enough for us to have a good time in just a little rain. We hadn't gone anywhere for awhile and were really happy we decided to go dispite the weather.
I've already posted pictures and there's a video of the shipping yard that we saw on the way there but we've never had this view of the shipping yard before so I had to take a video. I don't know if it's big compared to others but it is HUGE.
We're planning another trip soon to Chengdu, Sichuan. They still have the quake zone that you can see. Chengdu is where the majority of the destruction from last year's earthquake happened and it's also the home of the panda reservation. It won't be next weekend since that's the 4th of July but the weekend after that we should be going up there, very exciting.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Sleep Talking
Normally I wouldn't write about a dream or me talking in my sleep but I just wanted to share. I've been talking in my sleep quite a bit lately (I've been exhausted) and waking up Vi. Luckily for me she thinks it's funny. The other night I spoke Chinese in my sleep and she was able to understand what I was saying. It was just a simple sentence, "Ta shuo wo." The translation is "He told me". Something easy, yes, but it was the fact that I was actually dreaming in Chinese and even spoke Chinese in my dream. While my Chinese is far from good, it has become decent recently. Ok, that's all. I just wanted to share my excitement. That's all for now.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Update
I haven't posted a blog in a while simply because life's been normal, but still great. I guess the only interesting thing is that my class was cancelled this last week because so many of my kids were sick. Two of them had Hand, Foot, Mouth disease while over 20 others had a high fevers. It was so bad the CDC came out to sterlize the entire room, but didn't bother with the rest of the school. Since I haven't had any students, they've had me bounce around from class to class helping out and filling in for any absent teachers so it's been a normal week, just not with my kids.
The big trip I was planning with a couple other teachers has been cancelled because I've picked up some more tutoring jobs and they want me to tutor everyday during the summer so the money's just too good to pass up for such a short time. I'll probably take a couple weekend trips to some other cities with some of the teachers and Vi so hopefully there'll be some cool pictures and stories to share coming up.
That's all for now, I'll be sure to try to keep everything up to date.
The big trip I was planning with a couple other teachers has been cancelled because I've picked up some more tutoring jobs and they want me to tutor everyday during the summer so the money's just too good to pass up for such a short time. I'll probably take a couple weekend trips to some other cities with some of the teachers and Vi so hopefully there'll be some cool pictures and stories to share coming up.
That's all for now, I'll be sure to try to keep everything up to date.
Friday, June 5, 2009
My Crazy Week
This week was a strange one. First, the week started with a working Sunday which is never fun. Then, Monday was International Children's Day, although I don't know any other countries that celebrate it so I'm not real sure what makes it international and finally, we had no power for the entire day on Wednesday.
I'll start from the beginning. We worked on Sunday because we had Thursday, Friday and Saturday off for Dragon Boat Festival so the public schools make up one of those missed days on Sunday, yay.
Children's Day on Monday was really fun and a new experience for me. Last year on Children's Day, I only taught adults so we didn't celebrate it. This year, I was told there'd be a show by our class students and their parents and I was also to create a 3-10 minute skit that should make everyone laugh. Right before the holidays I was also informed I'd be co-hosting the day's activities with one of the moms and I'd only be speaking in Chinese the entire time. Well, they wrote out a script and I put all of the Chinese in pinying (Chinese with Roman alphabet) on notecards so I could actually read it. I haven't learned to read actual Chinese characters yet, but I have begun the process.
Monday morning came and I dressed nicer than my normal t-shirt and shorts to go to school. When I arrived, Meier's Mom (the other co-host) was waiting for me with a purple wig for me to wear. The skits were performed mainly by one student and either their mom or dad or both. A couple skits had numerous kids and parents involved. The skits ranged from famous stories being acted out, singing, Beijing opera, magic, story-telling to cooking demonstrations. My skit was called short because the other foreign teachers were involved but some of their Chinese teachers didn't let them leave their classrooms to help (I forgot to add, my class was the only one in the kindergarten that had parents in the classroom or that did a show).
After all of the shows were over, all of the parents, students and teachers from our class went to a 5-star hotel's buffet. The parents paid for the teachers, excellent. It was a great lunch and one I really needed. I haven't been eating Western food very much because it's so much more expensive than eating Chinese or cooking at home and I've been craving it pretty badly so that took care of that need.
I've posted pictures on picasa from Children's Day, they're not the greatest but they're ok. One of the parents will be making me a copy of the video from the day so I'll post that video online, too. It's obviously longer and I'm not sure where I'll be able to do it since I can't access youtube but I'll figure something out. This way you can all hear my Chinese.
On Wednesday, the school and the entire area was without power. The government shuts off the power in certain areas during the summer for a day in order to save money and electricity. Luckily, I live in the city center so they'll never do it to my apartment area. The parents and Chinese teachers, not the foreign teachers, were told the day before so I only had 4 students show up to school. Needless to say, I didn't have to teach that day which was quite nice. Before 9am my shirt was completely wet from the sweat because it was in the low 90s that day and the humidity here is extremely high, and that's coming from someone who lives in humid Atlanta.
It was a pretty crazy week but luckily it's over and I'm able to sit back and relax finally. It's a beautiful Saturday and when Vi comes back from work after lunch, we'll head to the beach for the afternoon and evening. If it's a nice day tomorrow, too, we'll probably head back to the beach for the whole day. It's just so hard to stay in the city when the beach is so close and it's so beautiful outside.
Until next time...
I'll start from the beginning. We worked on Sunday because we had Thursday, Friday and Saturday off for Dragon Boat Festival so the public schools make up one of those missed days on Sunday, yay.
Children's Day on Monday was really fun and a new experience for me. Last year on Children's Day, I only taught adults so we didn't celebrate it. This year, I was told there'd be a show by our class students and their parents and I was also to create a 3-10 minute skit that should make everyone laugh. Right before the holidays I was also informed I'd be co-hosting the day's activities with one of the moms and I'd only be speaking in Chinese the entire time. Well, they wrote out a script and I put all of the Chinese in pinying (Chinese with Roman alphabet) on notecards so I could actually read it. I haven't learned to read actual Chinese characters yet, but I have begun the process.
Monday morning came and I dressed nicer than my normal t-shirt and shorts to go to school. When I arrived, Meier's Mom (the other co-host) was waiting for me with a purple wig for me to wear. The skits were performed mainly by one student and either their mom or dad or both. A couple skits had numerous kids and parents involved. The skits ranged from famous stories being acted out, singing, Beijing opera, magic, story-telling to cooking demonstrations. My skit was called short because the other foreign teachers were involved but some of their Chinese teachers didn't let them leave their classrooms to help (I forgot to add, my class was the only one in the kindergarten that had parents in the classroom or that did a show).
After all of the shows were over, all of the parents, students and teachers from our class went to a 5-star hotel's buffet. The parents paid for the teachers, excellent. It was a great lunch and one I really needed. I haven't been eating Western food very much because it's so much more expensive than eating Chinese or cooking at home and I've been craving it pretty badly so that took care of that need.
I've posted pictures on picasa from Children's Day, they're not the greatest but they're ok. One of the parents will be making me a copy of the video from the day so I'll post that video online, too. It's obviously longer and I'm not sure where I'll be able to do it since I can't access youtube but I'll figure something out. This way you can all hear my Chinese.
On Wednesday, the school and the entire area was without power. The government shuts off the power in certain areas during the summer for a day in order to save money and electricity. Luckily, I live in the city center so they'll never do it to my apartment area. The parents and Chinese teachers, not the foreign teachers, were told the day before so I only had 4 students show up to school. Needless to say, I didn't have to teach that day which was quite nice. Before 9am my shirt was completely wet from the sweat because it was in the low 90s that day and the humidity here is extremely high, and that's coming from someone who lives in humid Atlanta.
It was a pretty crazy week but luckily it's over and I'm able to sit back and relax finally. It's a beautiful Saturday and when Vi comes back from work after lunch, we'll head to the beach for the afternoon and evening. If it's a nice day tomorrow, too, we'll probably head back to the beach for the whole day. It's just so hard to stay in the city when the beach is so close and it's so beautiful outside.
Until next time...
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