Kaishi Shanke (Class Begins!)

Hey hey my friends.....long time no blog. Apparently the "Net bar" that I have been frequenting in my neighborhood does not support the use of blogs.....no fun for that place. Well I made it to my apt. and wow, last Friday was quite an ordeal for me. We all got up, got pretty (that was a very important stipulation of the program...must look pretty for the government and schools who are paying you and taking you to your free living accomodations, hahaa) and signed some contracts. It turns out that while many, ie "most" other teachers in my program are in groups of at least 2 and up to 5 teaching at the same schools, I got "lucky" and am the only teacher from my program teaching at the Luohu Foreign Language school. So I am sitting there talking to myself saying, "self, you can do this, you can teach by yourself." Others were wisked away in groups in school vans to their school, but I get into a taxi with my contact teacher and with the promise that I am really lucky and going to the second best school in the city, I set off for Luohu, the 'old district' of Shenzhen (by old, i mean 25 years).

We drive up to the school and have a poke about, and I've got to admit...I'm pretty impressed, the buildings are white and expansive (covered in white tile of course....it's Asia) with cascading vines from potters on each of 5 floors....I'm thinking, ok, no problem. Then we walk across the street to my apt. building and sure enough, the buildings and the neighborhood are nice, so hey, no problem. So then....I get to my apt. and I almost start crying.....there is dirt all over the floor, pots in the sink, sofa cushions not on the couch but instead on the guest room bed, incense sticks everywhere and a gross duvet on my bed. My contact teacher said he would leave me to 'have a nap' and then we'd go shopping together in an hour.

Well I sure as heck wasn't about to sleep on any of that until it was clean, so I busted out a broom and got to work before I started feeling too sorry for myself. Mr. Yang (contact teacher) took me out and bought me cleaning supplies, new sheets and a duvet and a desk lamp. So Friday night I did my best impression of Cinderella and cleaned the darn place up. The kitchen is still a bit ummmmm, yucky, but substantially better than before. After Friday night I came to love my apt, amazing what a little cleaning does to a place. It turns out that I think I've got one of the nicest living accomodations of all the teachers, so I feel bad to have thought it so crummy to start off with. There are some teachers living in the student dorms acting almost as RAs, yuck, and people who have only concrete for floors. That's actually pretty bad considering that Shenzhen is a VERY rich city..kids at my school roll up in Porche SUVs!

Saturday I decided to fire up the washing machine on my porch....ha! I sat on my three-legged stool with my dictionary in hand looking up all the characters on the washing machine to make sure I didn't press an 'add red dye' button or something while trying to wash my clothes. I figured out that i shouldn't have to worry about any colours 'bleeding' in my laundry, as there isn't a hot water option...it's all just kind of outside temperature water. My first load took 2 hours, but that was my own obsessive complusive fault....I kept checking the clothes (pulling the accordian folded plastic lid back) to make sure they were still the right colour and it turns out that when you do that, you must press the power button again, otherwise the spin cycle won't start. Learn something new everyday..... Oh and then at the end, all the water is dumped out the bottom, so there had better be a floor drain down there somewhere....

School started today...I am currently in my temp. office between classes, well actually I thought I was supposed to teach now, but instead my 'students' have English reading class instead, go figure, the schedule is still messed up. I am supposed to be teaching 25 students in each class (the big classes of 50 are divided into 2 and I teach half and Ms. Barbara teaches the other half) but Ms. Barbara is still in America and doesn't return until Sunday and then has to go work on a visa problem in HK on Monday, so I'm teaching huge classes of 50 until she returns....woohooo.

My students this morning were pretty good....I gotta say, the gals are much much better at English than the fellas, maybe that's only true in Junior 1, we'll see in 20 minutes whether the boys in Junior 3 pick up the slack.