Daily Life

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We now temporarily interrupt the vacation blogs to give you a taste of life in Shenzhen over these past few days:

1. On Friday, we had Chinese Class. Our contact teacher forgot. The driver forgot. We had to make them both feel like fools and call them at 1:45 asking if we could still have a ride. On the way there, our driver kept answering his cellphone and suddenly we swerved over to the side of the freeway behind another stopped car. Out came one of the other CTLCers who lives even farther out in Bao'an than us. Our driver pointed at him and excitedly said "Chris!" (we can't communicate with our driver except for a few words here and there since we don't speak each other's languages). Apparently the person driving Chris needed to get other things done so some calls were made and a random freeway exchange happened. Naturally.

2. After class, we bought a new hot plate and wok at Walmart. Yay! Martin is now trying to perfect making the eggplant dish we learned in Yangshuo. Last night was the first experiment, and it came out yummy.

3. On Saturday at lunch, Martin got a food that we'd had once before. We couldn't tell what it was, but we'd both tried it a few weeks ago and thought it just tasted weird. I didn't like it at all and stopped after one bite, but Martin plunged in as usual. Since we were eating this time with Shaka, Martin took the opportunity to ask what it was. Shaka said, matter-of-factly, "oh, that's pigs blood." Um, excuse me? Thinking he must be mistaken, Martin pointed again and moved the dark brown tofu-like substance around with his chopstick. "This? It's pig's blood?" Shaka: "Yes...it's...how you say...congealed pig's blood." Oh. Naturally. The vegetarian tried it a few weeks ago, no big deal. I tried to hold down my vomit for the rest of the lunch period, and Martin just smiled and nodded. Yep. It's called Blood Tofu, and wikipedia can educate you on it too.

4. We'd been told we 'maybe' had to teach Sunday. At lunch Saturday, Shaka said "I'm sure of it. You teach." We knew students had classes to 'make up' some days they missed while on vacation (cause you can't actually have a vacation) but we had no idea about our schedule. Harry had said no. We texted Harry again. "You don't teach. It's your holiday." Whatever that means. So, we told Shaka that Harry said no and accepted that as the answer, as Harry's been around for years and Shaka is still relatively new to the school. We slept in and lazily walked to our office around 10am. Shortly after, a student walked in..."Martin! You teach now!" ....What? I called Harry while Martin tried to communicate with the student about the change in schedule. Harry said "No, the student doesn't know. You don't teach. The students don't know, they will have a different lesson. Just refuse him." This embarrassed the kid naturally, but what else could be done. About an hour later, another knock on our door-- this time, one of my students. He was nervous and all his English was lost in the nerves, so we communicated with miming and the few words of Chinese I know. He was telling me to go teach. I said no, different teacher now. I don't teach. He apologized profusely and left. Ohhhhh, CHINA! We still have no idea if we were really supposed to teach or not. Who knows. I'm sure other teachers were gossiping about us at lunch today, but that's the joy of being the 'waijjiao' (foreign teacher)...they'll always be saying something about you, but you'll never know it. 😊

5. Back to teaching regular schedules tomorrow. We're still on the every other week schedule, so I teach 6 classes one week and 7 the next. It's a rough life. In our off time, I'm studying Chinese and reading and Martin's playing ping pong. We've also been watching the Harry Potter movies at night...speaking of which...time to go finish The Goblet of Fire! 😊

Stay tuned for the last blogs of vacation...they're coming, I promise.

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Comments

[Mom/MD]

and the experiences continue!
wow...thanks for the sideline about the pigs blood tofu...and I will say no thank you to that meal right now...so please don't try and perfect that one Martin! From what I read it's supposed to be a cleansing to your body...so have you experienced that cleansing Martin?! (TMI no doubt on that one!!) Am so glad that you guys had such a great time on your vacation...even with all the bumps, scrapes and bruises! Looking forward to more entries on that. Also hope you can settle back into routine this week with classes...sounds like even the students were experiencing a little of the "nowism" by not knowing who was teaching where/when! Should make you feel better that they were in the dark as much as you guys were! Love you both!