Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My School and the Staff

So this is the outside of my apartment. I am on the first floor, Michelle is on the second floor.


Here are the ping pong tables whic are directly outside the apartment. Can be a little annoying when I am trying to nap on the couch.



This is the school gate.

This is the school name in Chinese with the admin. building on the left, student cafeteria on the right and primary school in the background.

This is the Admin. Building where the prinicpal, vice principal and office staff work.
This is the Primary school building.
This is the Junior and Senior building.
Here is the teachers cafeteria. We get served our food through these windows and use a prepaid card to pay for it.

This is where the students and the teachers wash their dishes after every meal. It's a trouf with water.
This is the Principal, Mr. Jin
This is the Vice Principal, Mrs. Chen. She is our mom away from home. Always concerned about us and making sure we are warm when we wear our t-shirts while everyone else is in jackets.
Here is the Senior 1 and Senior 2 teachers office.
This is our FAO (Foreign Affairs Officer), Mr. Zheng.
This is the Senior 2 English teacher, Mrs. Zheng. Not married to the FAO just has the same last name. It kind like Mr. Johnson or Mrs. Smith.
This is the Senior 1 English teacher, Mr. Jon but we call him Addison. He picks us up for lunch and goes around the town with us to help us find things we need. Very helpful!
Seventh Grade English teacher on the left (Can't remember her name) and Eight Grade English teacher, Mrs. Jo on the right.

These are just some of the other teachers I see everyday. Do not know their names or what they teach.
This is the Gym teacher I have a small crush on. But he doesn't speak English and as you can see from the picture, doesn't like to have his picture taken.

This guys is always trying to teach me Chinese. It usually ends up with me making a fool of myself and everyone in the office laughing at me. But he is very nice and always says "Hi" and always uses my name.






This guy is hilarious. Everytime I walk into the office he always says, in Chinese, that I am beautiful. It's a nice pick me up some days and other days it's a little creepy.
So that is my school and the teachers I see everyday.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

My New Place

Where to begin? Start from where I left off I guess. So we went out to eat with our friends in Yongzhou on Friday night after we had finished packing our bags. It was great, and I was really sad to have to leave all of them but I was still grinning on the inside. Went back to the school to go to bed, which didn't happen easily. Woke up the next morning at 6:30 to gather my stuff and headed out the door at 7:00. Locked everything up took the keys and the cell phones and dropped them on the Weasels desk. No one had said a word to us yet.

Got stopped by one of my students and she wanted to know where we were going. The Weasel had apparently told the kids we were leaving but no one else. That was hard to say goodbye to her. Rose was the one who had taken us out and around the city and I felt terrible bad about leaving her but we had to go.

Grabbed our bags and proceeded toward the gate and down the driveway. As we approached the gate and tried to walk through the security guard was waving his hands and speaking in Chinese at us but we kept walking. It was pretty obvious we weren't coming back considering we had our suitcases, backpacks, and purses. We made it through the first gate and were headed down the driveway when another man, I assume a teacher or someone from the school, tried to stop us again. Waving his hands, speaking in Chinese and looking like he was going to make a swipe for one of my bags. He was calling someone on the phone, I can only assume the Weasel. We put our heads down and kept walking down the driveway till we reached the end where there just happened to be an open taxi. We put our shit in the trunk and drove off to the bus station.

We got on our bus to Guilin. Funny side story, when you ride buses here there is always a driver and an attendant. So the driver and the attendant on our bus to Yongzhou happened to be the same for our bus out of Yongzhou. And they remembered us and we remembered them. They just smiled and smirked as we got on the bus and they put us in the front seat directly behind the driver. Too funny!!

So we arrived in Guilin, caught a bus to Yangshuo and finally made it back to Buckland at about 2pm. Long ass day! Everyone was confused as to why we were back but Betts met us and was very happy to see us. We had a little debriefing with her and got the full story as to why we were pulled. So besides the fact that the apartment was still not fixed and we had given them 2 weeks instead of 1 week it turns out the school had been disrespectful to the Buckland organization.

Prior to National Day Betts, Pippi, and Leo (employees of Buckland) had come to visit Yongzhou and see all the teachers and apartments. When they came to our school no one greeted them at the gate and they had to sit around and wait for us to get out of class. This is highly disrespectful and not the Chinese way. Needless to say Betts, Pippi, and Leo were furious and after seeing the apartment it only got worse. Later that day Owen Buckland, the head guy, came to our school to speak with us, The Weasel, and the principal. He checked out our apartment, agreed with what we were saying and gave them a week. After meeting with us he said he was going to see the principal. We watched him walk over to the Admin. building and then about 5 minutes later we watched him walk back to his car and leave. We had no idea at the time that the principal wouldn't meet with Owen. So that was the straw that broke the camels back. Two weeks later he asked Betts to call us and talk to us about leaving. Since she had already done that during her visit she simply called and told us to pack.

After hearing this story we were informed that the school had already sent a fax to Buckland saying that we had broken our contract and I am sure a bunch of other nasty things. So we wrote down our accounts of what had happened and why we had left. We were not breaking our contract, we were pulled by Buckland and they were not going to pay back the school. ASSES OFFICIAL CHAPPED!!!!

So we spent the night in Yangshuo, had some amazing Western food and celebrated Betts' and her husbands anniversary. And found a new bar with an amazing drink, a Chocolate Russian. Same as a Black Russian only you add Chocolate Ice Cream. OH MY GOD GOOD!! The next day we boarded a plane and came back to Xi'an. We met up with Frank, the "Owen" of Shaanxi province, went to dinner and then spent the night in Xi'an. The next day we got on a bus and travelled to Yangxian.

Most amazing bus ride every. We went through the mountains and when I say through I mean through. So beautiful!!! We arrived and of course couldn't find the people who were supposed to pick us up. So we got our shit and I went off to find a phone to call the school. I am getting a little to comfortable with this happening. I found a phone and as I was about to call our FAO came and found me. Him and the principal of the school had been sitting in the car at the bus station talking and missed us getting off the bus. So we got in the car and headed to the school which was not far from the bus station (Quick escape route!). We settled in and then headed out to dinner. We had dinner with the principal, two vice principals, our FAO and two teachers. Very fun and chatty people. I guess they really liked us and the fact that we were chatty as well, or at least that is what our FAO kept saying.

The next day we checked in at the police station, got our phones, went to the supermarket, got shown the vegetable market, and got all of transportation fees paid back to us. This was before dinner time at the old school it would have taken them a month. We met more teachers and ate dinner in the teachers cafeteria. Which is actually really good and very cheap, we got a card with money on it to spend there.

Everyone here is super nice and very friendly and more than willing to help us if we have questions or problems. The kids are great, a little more curious since we are the first foreign teachers here but that will pass with time. We have seen, spoken to, and eaten with the people here more in one week than we did in a month and 1/2 in Yongzhou. We had two of the Senior high teachers take us to get our haircut a couple days ago and then out to dinner. It has been a complete 180 degrees from our first school.

I just finished my first week of teaching which went really well. The kids got really excited during the activity and were yelling and screaming and the Chinese teachers didn't know what was going on. After the first day I had other teachers sitting in on my classes to see what was going on. They just sat in the back and laughed at how loud the students were getting. Again, everyone seems very happy to have us here.

Now on to the important stuff, pictures of my apartment. I haven't got any pictures of the school or the outside of the apartment because it has been raining. Another side story, the weather here is amazing. Cool, perfect fall weather. I am loving it. So Michelle and I have completely separate apartments, we are only sharing the building, she has one floor and I have the other.

This is my bedroom. Bed, chair, computer desk, actually closets and an AC/Heater.


This is my bathroom sink that isn't in the bathroom but it works for me. Bedrooms on the right, bathroom on the left.

Here is the bathroom with toilet, shower, washer, and mop bucket.


This is the washer from hell. It is the only annoyance in the apartment.

Allow me to explain. You wash the clothes in the left which you must fill with water by yourself. Then you rinse and spin in the right which you must fill with water by yourself. And all the water is then emptied on to the floor through a drainage hose and down the drain in the corner of the room. It is a process believe me. There is no pushing a button and checking it in an hour.

This is my living room. With TV, DVD, Cable box (only one English channel), water dispenser, AC/Heater and two couches. Very nice, very comfortable, and very new.



This is my kitchen. Complete with a fridge, electric hot plate, gas burner, microwave, ample counter space, rice cooker, and kitchen utensils.


This is my office. Which has a desktop computer and a cabinet that I store all my extra stuff in.


This is my Chinese laundry.We can hang our clothes outside on a line but my socks and underwear I will be drying in the apartment on my coat racks.

That's my new place. Much better than the old. The apartment is good, the kids are good, the staff is amazing, the town is a little small but only an hour away from a bigger city where some of our friends are and only 4 hours from Xi'an where everything is. I think I will enjoy my time here. This is real China, where street suddenly end and the countryside begins which I really like. And I can actually ride my bike without fear of being run over by buses and cars. So far so good!