Where on earth to start?
Today makes exactly two weeks since my life began in China. So much has happened but I will try to give you a decent overview of what it has been like! I think it has finally started to hit me today that this is my life now....I actually LIVE here! It has been fun and crazy and frustrating all at the same time!
The day we arrived in Wuhan our waiban, Henry, picked us up at the airport and drove us the hour or so drive to Huangshi. He and his assistant, Diana (she basically takes care of us), took us out for our first Chinese meal. Diana asked me what we liked and I said "Well, I know we both really like chicken." You know, try to play it safe, right? Don't want to get food poisoning on day one. Nevertheless, Diana ordered pigs feet, goose and eggs, spicy tofu stuff, and some kind of soup. I can't say it was the best meal I've ever had but we managed to eat some of it! We got to see our apartment for the first time, which looks a little bit rough around the edges. Luckily, our amazing Huangshi team had come to our apartment before we arrived to clean up the place for a few hours. From what they described, I'm pretty sure Camille and I would have cried had we seen the mess it was in before they got to it! Theres no making the "squatty potty" look any better though...it is what it is! We are very grateful for their help though! That night, a few of our team members came to rescue us and took us to a tea house, not far from where we live, that has western food! This and KFC (also right by our apartment) are the only places with western food...so frequent them quite often!
Camille and I were taken to our school, shown our classrooms and office, and were introduced to some of our bosses. Chinese schools have a chain of command because they are so large, so we are basically the lowest on the totem pole! We got our class schedules and discovered that we were going to share Senior 1, meaning I would teach 8 classes and Camille would teach 7! Going in, we though we would each have our own grade and be teaching 15 or 16 classes a week! When we heard this, we almost freaked out because we thought we'd have way too much free time on our hands and get incredibly bored! Then, the school decided it was unfair for me to have more than Camille so they gave me one Senior 2 class and Camille two Senior 2 classes, so that we each have 9 and all can be well in the world once again! Nine classes is the equivalent of teaching 6 hours a week, less than one day of teaching in the U.S.! This is so crazy! It is surprisingly harder than it sounds, though, because each class has 60ish students, which can be difficult to manage and theres also that one major factor, the language gap, that makes your brain hurt from trying to comprehend and understand what the students are saying and trying to help them understand what I am saying! Basically I've started to speak incredibly slowly and use body language and hand gestures to convey what I mean. I do so much with the Chinese people that it is starting to become a habit and I do it with everyone! Camille and I are starting to annoy each other with our profound annunciation and slow speech...its still really funny though!
Huangshi is described as a town, but upon arrival, we realized that this is sooo not a town!!! It feels more like a major city like NYC. There are people everywhere, cars everywhere who are about to run over you at any second, and there are stores everywhere! Seriously, I've never seen so many stores in all of my life! We haven't had much time to go shopping yet, but soon we will be hitting it up! Camille and I live right in the heart of the city, right off of the busiest road. Sometimes this is annoying because it can be loud and crowded. But on the positive side, we have a lot of restaurants, street vendors, a mall, grocery stores, a gym, and even a coffee place right outside our door!
Because it is a town in China, we really are like celebrities here! Especially with our blonde hair, we get gawked at everywhere we go! Some people are really funny about it though, taking triple or quadruple takes just to make sure we are real. We've had people stop us in the street to ask for pictures. I've even caught a lot of my students taking out their cameras or phones to take pictures while I'm teaching. Our team jokes about it because sometimes it is funny and you feel like a celeb but other days you just kind of feel like a freak and wish people would stop staring! These are usually the days when we find ourselves getting an ice-cream fix from KFC! haha
This weekend we got to go to Wuhan for some team meetings and bonding and it was a ton of fun! Wuhan has 8 million people in it and has become more westernized than Huangshi with things like Starbucks, DQ, McDonalds, and Papa Johns. Our Huangshi group basically gorged ourselves with American food like pizza, burgers, and milkshakes!!! It was awesome! It was the first time I've actually felt full since being here. Unfortunately, we were all feeling a little sick and sluggish on Monday! Luckily, Camille and I do not teach on Mondays!!! woo hoo three day weekends every weekend! Food has probably been one of the hardest adjustments for us. We are having a hard time finding things that we like and it is very different from American Chinese food. We have found ourselves a street vendor down from our apartment that sells jiatso (dumplings) and these are really good! We've gone like 5 days in a row for lunch!!! At the store we can get fruit and veggies and we found skippy peanut butter, which was basically all we ate for the first week! Once we get our kitchen a little more cleaned up, we are hoping to cook for ourselves a little more!
Overall, it has been a great and exciting experience so far! I know this was a lot at one time but this barely scratches the surface! Now that we have internet, I'll try to keep you updated more regularly with shorter stories :) Camille and I found out last night that our Senior 1 students have military training this week so I only need to teach my one Senior 2 class....AWESOME! We are going to try to finish getting our apartment together and decorate so it feels more homey. I want to do a before and after series of the apt for y'all so hopefully that will be coming soon! Please continue to pry for adjusting...I am nervous now that the initial excitement of being here is wearing off, we will start to feel homesick and secluded because it so hard to form relationships we you can't speak the language! Also, I told each class that I was Xn and no one had even heard of this! Please pry for the opportunities this year and for the seeds that will be planted!! I love you all so much!!! Keep the emails coming with the updates of your lives!
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