After just under a month of teaching, I found myself on a week of holiday time. A small group of us ventured by plane first to Beijing for 3 days and then on to X'ian for another 3. Visiting Beijing on my own terms was much nicer than the whirlwind tour I took 4.5 years ago. I actually got a sense of the city. On the first day, we went to the Forbidden City and T'ianamen Square again, but while everyone else went to the Temple of Heaven I went through one of Beijing's Hutongs (the walled-off sections of housing that [View Full Entry]

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Today I finally ventured, with three others, into Dalian. When we arrived at the final light rail stop, we were met with my first line crush. As in, we were in deadlock with a few hundred (or thousand?) people all trying to move through the turnstalls to get out. I’ve never in my life seen so many people squeezed into such a tiny space; my memories of Korea don’t match that! Every other stall was broken, which made things even more complicated. We wandered around for a while before I decided it was time to enter China Mobile and try to [View Full Entry]

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*I just need to make a note that I am aware in the original blog I wrote "tears" where I meant to write “tiers.” I had jetlag, and I only noticed this horrific faux-pas the day following its posting. The school year has started and the students (in their green and gold uniforms) are swarming the grounds. My teaching schedule is pretty fantastic, what with all the art and the drama classes, and the unbelievably supportive department behind me, handing me resources to help make things run more smoothly. I’m enjoying the students with their names like Reacherson, Dracula (f [View Full Entry]

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I’ve survived my first week and a bit in China! To those who have e-mailed and received no response, I apologize. We haven’t had any time to breathe thus far on the journey! Since arriving, we have been moving non-stop, from meetings about the school and the job to shopping at the German version of Costco, Metro, and Walmart (but not just regular Walmart. The Walmart SUPERmart) both within one-hour time frames. Shopping for everything you need in a one-hour time frame inside giant warehouse-style stores in one hour is bad enough, but when most labels are in Chinese only, it’s [View Full Entry]

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