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National Day Week and My New Bicycooter

Ok so I know its been about a month since I’ve posted here, but I’ve been so busy! I don’t know if anyone knows this – but being a teacher takes over your life! What at first sounded like a very easy schedule of about 8 hours of teaching English per week has since become 10 hours of teaching and about a bazillion hours of preparation/lesson planning/and grade marking! While I’ve had some quasi-teaching jobs in the past, this experience has certainly given me a newfound appreciation for all the fantastic teachers I’ve had throughout my life!

This post is not about teaching, however. This past week has been National Day week. National Day is the anniversary of the beginning of the People’s Republic of China (Oct 1, 1949) – and this is of such importance here that we get the whole week off! It is a great opportunity to travel, but unfortunately it is a great opportunity for all of China to travel… and that means LOT’S of people traveling (like 1.3 billion maybe?). Because of this phenomenon, Andy and I decided to stay in Chengdu and explore our own city a bit more (which we haven’t had enough time to do properly because of the previously discussed teaching job!). So with a week of vacation, what are we to do? Buy a bicycooter of course! Andy bought a bicycooter (electric bicycle) a few weeks ago, and so in order to keep up, I have now acquired one as well.

I’ll try to put a picture below, but I’ve been having trouble doing that lately…

I have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive at the thought of navigating the traffic (cars, bicycles, pedestrians, trucks, bicycles with big things on them, etc) in Chengdu with a bike, but it turns out that it is really not that bad! Ok, there are crazy things that happen almost constantly, but everything seems to make more sense when you are part of it. Everyone seems to rely on courtesy and calmness to get through it all. We did actually manage to find some helmets also (a commodity which is very seldom seen here), and it feels much better to be wearing them!

For the remainder of the week we’ve pretty much just been hanging out and riding around trying to figure out where things are – Chengdu is really huge and there is so much to see. It’s cool to be able to explore it in a leisurely (and cheap) way, and it makes it feel much more like a home.

Too bad we have to go back to class on Monday…

Gongbao Jiding

It looks like I’m not doing a very good job of keeping you up to date on the latest Chengdu happenings… Things have been pretty busy as this is the first week of work! We’re also trying to finish our TEFL course of which the deadline is quickly approaching.But, here’s a bit of an update:

Gongbao jiding is like my favorite food ever! (And I am so grateful that I remembered how to say it, because that’s about all we’ve been eating as of yet…) You see, things become challenging when all the restaurants only have Chinese menus, but luckily they all serve about the same dishes, so once you know a few by name you can just order those!

Here is some gongbao jiding (spicy chili chicken with peanuts) that is almost finished:

Another thing keeping me busy is the invasion of camel crickets into my apartment! These creatures are pretty giant, and they just keep coming! I’ll have to take a picture of one and post it for you to see, but… does anyone know how to get rid of camel crickets??? Apparently they like dark humid places which is why they are most often in the bathroom, but this place is pretty humid in general.

And lastly, I start teaching tomorrow! The university doesn’t seem to strict about what will be taught in the class, so I’ve been trying to come up with a curriculum to use. I’ll be teaching two different classes in the IT school – Comprehensive English (which combines reading, writing, speaking, and listening) and English Speaking and Listening. All the students will be 2nd year students who will be studying in Australia next semester, so the main purpose of the courses will be to prepare them for their experience in Adelaide.

Andy and I also signed up for a Mandarin Chinese class. Its only 6 hours per week, but should definitely be useful. Getting around town is such a challenge without much knowledge of the language, and I feel so bad for the poor employees at the stores that just don’t know what to do with us! So yeah, its gonna be REALLY good to take some classes!

Oh yeah, and more pictures on Picasa! Including this one of Andy teaching his first English class (he started yesterday…) 🙂

Made it to Chengdu

Ok, so I was planning to write more in here earlier but I think Andy has pretty well covered our adventures! And you may want to just continue reading his blog because it will be far more entertaining than this one here…

We had a good week in Macau hanging out with some friends – but we were kind of anxious to get on to Chengdu to rid ourselves of our luggage and see what the University had in store for us.

On Monday, we left Coloane (a small island that is part of Macau) and headed to the border of China by taxi – here we crossed the border into Zhuhai and again took a taxi to the airport so we could fly domestically to Chengdu. We had no idea if we were going to be picked up from the airport because when I informed our contact at the University of our flight information and timing, I forgot to specify the date! I was just hoping she got our latest email in time! Luckily, she was waiting for us when we arrived, and even more luckily, she came in a big car!

We are now getting settled into the apartments that have been provided by Sichuan Normal University, and acquiring some essential items (most importantly – lots of cleaning supplies!) We’ve found several little supermarkets that are within just a couple minutes of walking from the flats, and have had a couple short tours of the campus, which seems fairly nice – and very large.

By the way, I’ve posted some pictures on Picasa here – I was originally using flickr, but it looks like it won’t work from China!

Arrived!

Well, after many hurdles, I have finally arrived in Macau!  Not mainland China yet, but getting close!