Full moon madness and school begins!

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Well, things have gotten a tiny bit hectic with school starting today--t was generally chaos at the school, and if I had any illusions about how the children's behaviour was going to be--rather, how wonderful I imagined, and the key word here is IMAGINED, it was going to be--let me be the first to inform you that those illusions have been completely and surely shattered by day's end. LOL Ay karumba, as Bart Simpson would lament. Kids are kids are kids. Period. No matter where they live. Especially boys.

Thursday, was a day of rest. None of us ventured outside of the apartment. My stomach was really feeling off, and since I knew I didn't have THAT much beer with the gambling, I think it was the food. Who knows. Maybe I am poisoning myself with an overdose of bleach? LOL, is that possible? All I know is that I stayed in my jammies, took to my bed, and read the whole rest of the Steig Larsson book, "The girl who played with fire" which was wonderful, and read another whole book called, "Little Princes" by Conner Grennan. It's been a long time since I was able to read 2 whole books in a day. I slept that whole night, Thursday, and woke up feeling refreshed and ready to venture out on Friday. According to our book, Magic Xiamen, a non-resident can use the library if one pays a cash deposit. I may have to find the public library and pay the deposit so that I can take out books. I will surely go broke buying them, if I'm reading 2 or 3 per week and I won't be hauling them back to Canada so the local library will be my best bet, likely. It is kind of awful to go the this beautiful, big bookstore that's across the street from the school, and not be able to read but a tiny fraction of all the books inside. And of the ones there, most are classics which I've already read. Yuk. I am sticking my tongue out. Blech.
So, you are likely wondering how the teaching is going? Well, with only today to compare it to, I can only say that I hope things improve. I am the only teacher without a designated classroom, and have the misfortune to have to switch rooms in order to teach my 2 English classes and my 3 drama classes. I feel kind of "homeless", and I know all my teacher friends out there reading this will be able to relate to that comment. Today, with a room conflict as well, I was shuffled into a very small classroom space and we managed to stuff in about 12 students, and at least 1/2 of them poorly behaved boys, and survived (barely!!) without the air conditioning working. I was pretty God-damned crabby by day's end, let me tell you! That was the longest hour and a half of my life. I think I scared one Chinese dad when, with the door of the furnace-cum-classroom open I was forced to YELL at the little hooligans in order to control the mayhem the boys were trying to create. I don't THINK so! China or NOT, I will not have anarchy in my room. Having said that, my other little bitches of the day included going up and down three flights of stairs several times because the escalators were all turned off to save electricity (barbarians, LOL) and the general air conditioning in the building is off. Yikes. Yes, I am as salty as a Dead Sea barnacle as I write this blog and will be showering well before bed!!
Today, after lunch with Rich and Diane, Dawna, Joyce and I were so happy to have found ourselves a beautiful little coffee shop serving western style coffee. It had a tempting array of little cakes, and treats and it smelled so good and so familiar and so much like home, AND was SOOOOO clean. OMG. That is something here. Well, thinking ourselves very clever ladies, we decided to order some coffee to "go". Now, the menu was all in Chinese, but, being lazy, I didn't pull out my Chinese English dictionary. Mistake number 1. Ha! We made our orders: coffee-no cream, no sugar; coffee and milk, no sugar; coffee and milk, no sugar. The Chinese staff smiled and nodded, "Okay, okay, we make". We paid and pranced out of there, all proud of ourselves and marched across the street to our classrooms, blathering away at how clever we are, and aren't we just the bomb? HA! Mistake number 2 was not checking to see what we got before getting all the way across the street and esconsed into Joyce's room! I sat down, mouth watering, anticipating my latte, I opened the lid to have a big swallow.....mmmmmm, oh-I-can-hardly-wait, yummy, yummy, yummy, WT_?? Hot milk. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Hot MILK? I blinked and blinked again. Waaaaahhhhhhhhh. LMAO! Yup. Dawna got coffee, but Joyce and I got ourselves 2 delicious and frothy, mmmmm, mmmmmm good hot milks! Seriously, they must have thought us bizarre, those crazy white ladies so happy with their orders of hot milk. DUH! We roared with laughter. So much for that much-needed hit of afternoon caffeine. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. No wonder I felt like sleeping in the afternoon, with the heat and the hot milk. Live and learn. Gonna be hauling out the dictionary for the next trip to that place. If I can work up the nerve to get over my embarassment anyway. LOL
Tonight, after surviving our first day, we were all tired and somewhat subdued. I suggested we have a quick bowl of soup at the restaurant downstairs before heading home. We enjoyed our soups and were just arriving at the bus stop when our noses were assualted by some HORRIBLE, disgusting smells, I think it is the stinky tofu we've heard about. Apparantly, it is some sort of fermented tofu and somebody was cooking that crap up to consume, an overwhelmingly vile idea, well, I was holding my nose, Joyce was holding hers, as was Dawna. Mouth-breathing is such a life-saver for us some moments here, lol. I, of course, started to giggle, my stress response of late and then almost bust a gut outright when Joyce pronounced, "That is putrid with a capital P! I wish I could hold my breath for about 10 minutes!" That just finished me off and I couldn't help but giggle like MAD, I noticed I had quite a berth around me cuz who wants to stand next to the crazy white lady at the bus stop who's laughing like THAT? She's gotta be nuts! Yup, that's me. GOD, it seemed like the bus would never arrive so we could make haste our escape from the odiferous breeze. It did though, thanks be to GOD. I wonder what tomorrow will bring? I have some homework to do and have my first class tomorrow morning at 8:30 am so better sign off for tonight. 😊

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Photos

The beautiful, big, bookstore
Situated across from our campus, this bookstore has proved useful; I purchased a Chinese English Dictionary, and my coffee press. :) I like it.

Comments

[Dawn]

Hey Carolyn! Just caught up on about 2 weeks worth of your blog. What an experience you are having!! My skin is crawling with your description of bacteria and cock roaches and I love how honest you are. I don\'t think I\'d ever admit that I peed on myself! LMAO!! Can\'t wait to read more. Miss you, my friend!

[Evette]

Books in China
Hello, My name is Evette and I'm from Toronto, Canada. I'm really enjoying your blog. I am hoping to teach English in China next year. I'm an avid reader are there a lot of English non fiction and fiction books there? It is so nice hearing about your experiences and seeing all your photos. I'm planning on teaching in Beijing but we'll see