Today I woke up at about 4am, WIDE-awake. So as not to disturb my roommate, I took my camera and laptop into the bathroom and spent time downloading the first the photos and writing the first two days of my blog. Time rolls right around. As it turns out, I was not alone in the early rising. Several people shared this over breakfast. We should have had a party then.
Today, following breakfast, we will get a tour of the school that we will be working at as well as some other places in the neighborhood. We have a great HUGE map, all in Chinese characters which aren’t really that helpful. Getting oriented is tricky, but good.
My goal is to learn at least one new Chinese word or phrase a day. So far we have
Ni hao-hi or hello and
xiexie-thank you
Today’s words are:
qing-please
zaijian- goodbye
haochur-delcious
My husband Dic
k and I were able to work out the glitches of getting to talk on Skype. The 15 hour time difference is the trickiest. I thought I was calling him at a reasonable time last night. It turned out to be 4am his time…not so convenient. But on the other hand, we can have audio and video contact across the ocean. Thank of all the generations of travelers who left their loved ones and had o
n option for contact. Wow!
We ate our first real brea
kfast in China (and interesting combination of hardb
oiled eggs, white bread with peanut butter, really vile instant coffee upon request…and then egg cakes with corn and veggies in them, a really thin rice pudding without sugar, dim sum buns and some other things I can’t quite recognize.) Then, my great roommate, Jenny, and I took a three-hour after breakfast nap and got up on time for lunch. We will not starve on this trip.
After some technical difficulties with charging my computer, I talk with Dick on Skype again. What a treat! I was even able to hold up the map I had discovered and he could see with enough detail that he was able to follow the whole route. Amazing!
Then we went a
little bus tour of the area, finding out where the local Wal-Mart is, may beautiful parks, other stores of interest, a high school that we will be able t use their pools, and then we got the first glimpse of the school that we will be teaching at. It is call Yaci Primary school number 4 and it is the premier school in the area. Ab
out 1000 students go there, and it has an amazing facilities including a theatre that seats 700 people (at an elementary a school!) This is where we will be doing performances for the parents on the Friday nights of each week we ar
e teaching. The temperature is hot here, so we were sweating as we walked throughout the campus, but got to see classrooms, art and music rooms, even a ballet class in session. We all enjoyed seeing huge posters featuring our photos and info under each of us about our bios. We hope to get smaller copies of these as a
souvenir. They are VERY excited that we are here.
After dinner (another feast) 11 of us walked over to another massage place. This time I got a full body 1-hour massage for about $9.00. Not quite as nice a place as the last one, but still got to keep releasing the tension. They do even the full body massages in a ro
om with three other tables and without having you remove your clothes. Not much privacy, but feels a little bit safer when the staff speaks nearly no English.
Places are beginning to seem more familiar in the area. Navigating without being able to read street signs takes some getting used to. Several people have been lost for hours at a time. Hopefully, we are going to get some hand drawn maps with English writing on them, but not yet. Our hotel is a bit obscure, so even asking directions doesn’t necessarily get you back. And the directions may be in Chinese, which is limited assistance to most of us.
To bed at a little after ten and getting ready for the full day’s teacher training tomorrow. Time to get our grown up teacher clothes!
Just a note: I am able to get email on my gmail account which is Patti@pattistory.com if you want to contact me. That is pretty cool, too.
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