So, Monday afternoon we hop on the bus for another exciting week of teaching. Complain about work the whole way blah blah blah and then we pull up and Holy God there's like 100 soldiers at our school!
Well, not exactly. The People's Liberation Army didn't roll a company deep on peihua U or anything like that. It turns out every year the freshmen need to learn how to walk and salute like an army. For two weeks. This involves a lot of sitting around in pseudo fatigues and then everyone trying to march in step for a few minutes, then getting yelled at. They haven't even gotten to saluting.
I am told there will be no rifles involved, or any kind of combat exercizes. This disappoints me greatly. Still, its pretty exciting teaching class, looking out the window, and seeing 10 x 10 squares of freshmen tromping about in camo.
I reflect on my own college experience. Would Pitzer have required us to dress in WTO - NO! shirts and march in step carrying signs saying SAVE THE SPOTTED OWL? I doubt we could get that organized. Still, I'd of liked to be the standard bearer. A girl can dream.
Teaching this week went a lot better. I had all my students give short speeches so i could figure out how their english was right now (not so hot, but that's why I'm here). This plan was solid right up to when i realized it was deadly dull. Still, it has to be done. Next week we can play charades. Really, anything to get them talking. Thats the whole point.
Oh, bad news about my culture class. Turns out the test is determined by the school, and its based on the book. Grant is all up in arms about this, but basically I'm going to assign the chapters I don't cover (Wales: A Retrospective) as homework and leave it at that. There's no reason I can't teach what I want and still have my students pass. I was gonna hit on the important chapters (England: A Retrospective) anyways. But Grant is absolutely livid, and is threatening to basically be a bad teacher or something I don't know. Frankly, I don't care. It's his battle, i'm just collateral damage if he does something stupid.
I like my apartment a lot more now. I had 2 big comfy chairs and a couch, but there was only room for 1 big comfy chair, so i helped grant move it down to his room which is absolutely misterable and devoid of comfy chairs. Finally unpacked my microwave thats been sitting on top of my refrigerator for a week. The floors are an abomination but that's a job for later. I got my phone finally, though I really have only 3 people to call. One of them is Ava, with the express purpose of complaining about my lack of modems. We are so close to internet in my room that i can TASTE the megabytes, inches from my grasp.
I know, call the waaaaahmbulance, whatever.
The kitchen came with this serious business knife, which i have mostly used for opening boxes to rice cookers and microwaves that confuse and astound (this is mine? srsly?). Though they also gave me a chopping block, and i was able to casually plunk the blade in such a fashion that it remains suspended, maybe a quarter of an inch sunk into the wood. This makes me happy as a clam.
So, you know, all I really need at this point is a flat pan and a spatula and I can at least start cookin me up some eggs, and move from there to more advanced techniques. Having little else for reference point, I have to look at cooking like kung fu, or some kind of science. One starts with cooking up a tasty egg. Mignon comes later, when I can find someplace that will sell me uncooked meat that doesn't blink at me, or low piteously.
The bedroom remains largely unchanged. The computer sits, nearly useless without access to the internets, and the trash can has been recently emptied.
My living room, however, is a hotbed of excitement. I now have my iPod as a source for music, able to pipe it to my TV via Xbox in some kind of unholy microsoft-apple union. This is good, because the wattage converter has a fan that is loud enough to actually be fatal, and needs drowning out. Also, my water machine finally came so I can spend less money on bottle water. This is kind of bad, actually, as now I need to start buying food to get some use out of my refridgerator. Still, i'm comfortable enough with my routine of restaurants and alleyway hepititis-spots that I can begin to branch out into cooking. Should I fail, well, there's the safety net.
Today I am planning on taking bus number 35 to... wherever. Worst case scenario, i know how to describe my school and which part of town its in, and can get home. I'm thinking of taking my camera, and maybe starting up a flikr account or something to post pictures upon so you can actually see the squalor of my living conditions. Its like being there, I assure you.
The weather is perfect right now, though. Its kind of amazing. Blue skies, cloudless, lends a body to feeling pretty good about things and such.
Oh, before I forget, here's my address.
No 2. South of BaiSha Road
Xi'an Pei Hua University
China
710065
I'm pretty sure that they really mean "south baisha" road, but Ava assures me that if you send a letter or something THERE it will go to HER and thus to ME. In a perfect world i'd have a P.O. Box, but this is an option that is notably "free".
So, now what remains is figuring out:
A bank account
A Modem
A cell phone
Why the doorbell on my door does not work (secondary objective)
How best to transfer funds to either my Wells Fargo Account or to My Parents so that I can Pay Off the Massive Debt in the form of Airline Tickets and also acquire a Nest Egg for when i am Ruthlessly Thrown back into a Country where I will be asked to pay more than Fifty Cents for Lunch.
A Chinese Language Tutor
The last one i've made some solid, if accidental, headway on. While Ava has been a largely useless figure in many of these endeavours (especially the internets!), she has managed to get my contract figured out, airline money to me, first paycheck to me, and is currently working on temporary residency. You know. The really actually important stuff. For the less important in general but more important to ME stuff, I've been relying on Grant's girlfriend Zhu Ting. She's been nothing but helpful in helping me figure out why my electronics won't work and how to fix them once i've broken them, as well as cell phone and bank crap. It turns out at her school "teaching chinese to foreigners" is a whole Major. So, y'know. There's a source. Its more headway than I thought I would have at this point, at least. During october.
So, I'm doing well, and i'm gonna go get lunch and then go on ADVENTURES IN... XI'AN!
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