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More random adventures to speak of! Another packed weekend of classes passed and another is about to start again. But I'll start from where I left off last.
We went to Nanjing last Friday since we were "maybe" going to go. It's a one-hour drive to Nanjing from Yangzhou so we went in the school's van, which is the principal's husband's company's van that we've adopted as the Shane van. A few staff members came with us too. It was a fun ride of Bob and I teaching them English and them trying to teach us Chinese. I now know how to say "knee," "receipt," count from one to five (poorly) and "thank you." I learned how to say "knee" because in my staff training class I went over idioms, teaching them "the bee's knee's," which they now say all the time! Somehow this translated to them teaching me "knee" in Chinese. But I'm very happy to learn any word.
The school in Nanjing is awesome. It's in a big building with the first floor taken by a preschool. The Shane school is on the second, third and fourth floor. But they've worked out an agreement with the preschool
to teach a few lessons a week to the preschool children. Thanks to this, half of the classrooms in the Nanjing school have a playground similar to one you would find at McDonalds IN the classroom. Ball pits and slides and tubes to crawl through. I'm endlessly jealous that the Yangzhou school doesn't have a ball pit I can teach in! Our school is very nice though, sans ball pit. The trip to Nanjing was short. We chatted with the teachers there, which was an odd change to be speaking with native English speakers, and then came back to Yangzhou.
Working at a new school means lots of schedule changes. It was bound to happen but on Sunday night Bob missed a lesson. In his defense I would have missed it too. Some weeks we've ended up with four versions of our schedule for the week so it's really easy to get confused. His lesson was supposed to start at 7 pm. We were out to dinner then at the Living Mall, which is actually semi-alive on the weekends! While we happily ate dinner everyone at school was wondering where we were which, of course, eventually turns into worry.
They apparently called us numerous times (we have a land line that came with our internet) but we weren't around to answer. Slight concern turned into panic so they sent someone over to our condo. No answer when they knocked so they smelled for gas fumes out of fear that we had a gas leak and were inside unconscious. No - we were just exploring the mall. They called again at 9 pm when we were home and realized we were safe. It wasn't until the next day that they told us Bob had missed a lesson and how worried they were. Demi, the principal, told us she couldn't sleep until she knew we were safe. We felt horrible so after three months, I have a cell phone again. I don't really want it, which is why we avoided getting one until now. Oh well. My point of the story is to illustrate that no one at home needs to worry about us because we have six moms (all of the school staff) in China looking out for us.
Monday we went in search of used bicycles to purchase and found nothing but heaps of rust with useless brakes.
So we're still bike-less and don't quite know if or when we'll get them. We also went out for coffee with some people from school because they know us Westerners like to have coffee dates.
The people who run the school are wonderful. This is starting to feel more like home and them our friends. Almost every day off of work we've had so far they've taken us to see some part of Yangzhou or taken us to eat at a popular restaurant. Monday they took us to coffee. Wednesday they took us to breakfast, took us on a tour of Slender West Lake, out to lunch and then for bubble tea. Next week, depending on the weather, we're going fishing at one of the staff's cabin in what they call the "countryside." We also have future plans of another trip to Nanjing to see the city and also a trip back to Shanghai for shopping, all suggested and implemented by the staff we work with who are incredibly friendly.
Amanda is our welfare manager - she helped us find our condo, showed us how to turn on the hot water and helps us with any other everyday-living
question we have, and we have a lot living in such a foreign country. Lizzy is the school's course consultant and is hilarious. Both Lizzy and Amanda are a year younger than me and speak almost perfect English so we've definitely bonded with them. Lizzy's birthday is three days after mine so we have plans to celebrate together. Demi is the school's principal and kind of our main mom here. She's always making sure we're happy and enjoying Yangzhou. Mary is the school's finance director. She doesn't speak much English but that doesn't seem to matter. Two weeks ago she made Bob and I dumplings. Then she bought us coffee cups and instant coffee to keep at school. Later that week she brought us sugar cane and today she brought us corn on the cob. See what I mean by they take care of us? We're pretty spoiled here.
Slender West Lake is the main tourist attraction here in Yangzhou, and it's beautiful especially now that we're getting into spring and everything is blooming. The park surrounding the lake is huge and you could easily wander around all day there. I'll let the pictures explain what it looks like.
I teach a class of engineers on Tuesdays and Thursdays and last night they invited Bob and me to dinner. Another giant Chinese dinner and every one of my students came. I was shocked. Every single one (there are about 30) went to work at 7 am and walked to dinner from work and didn't leave dinner until 9pm. For me. I know they all have families and children to take care of at night. It was wonderful to eat with all of them and a really good reminder for me that we mean to world to them. Before last night I had lost sight of how important I am to them but that was just what I needed to get my sight back in line.
And now for more random China info:
A pint of Haagen Dazs costs over $11 here. Doesn't sound so delicious anymore huh?
Meal time at a restaurant here is more like eating dinner at a good friend's house. It's incredibly casual. Move around the furniture however you'd like, change the television channel, help the server rearrange dishes on the table. It's all very informal.
They way they actually consume
food is much different as well. My example is shrimp. At home we first twist the tail off, then peel off the rest of the shell and eat it. Here you just put the whole thing in your mouth and spit out any shell. Same with meat and fish with bones. At home we cut around the bone and then eat it. Here you just shovel it in and spit out anything inedible. Very different from home but when in Rome...
A little boy on a motorized scooter crashed the other day because he was staring at Bob. Rather than looking at where he was going, he was turned around staring at Bob and fell over.
I think that's all for now. Not too many pictures this time because Bob's camera is missing, and I only lugged mine with us to Slender West Lake and a park by our condo. Cross your fingers his camera shows up, and I can post more pictures later.
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Pam
non-member comment
As usual I laughed and smiled and got a very warm feeling from reading this great blog. Thanks so much for the great insight into life in China. Glad you are enjoying it so much and have so many looking out for you! Makes my job of worrying about you from Washington so much easier. Love you guys!