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Published: January 6th 2009
School
It's on the 3rd floor. The big sign says 'Aston English'Happy new year! We arrived in Zibo about a week ago- the final destination of our 'journey to the east'. This is the place where we're going to be living and working until the end of August! It's the second city of Shandong ('East of the Mountains') Province and it took us four hours to get here on a speedy and slick train from Beijing.
Our apartment is fab. A gigantic lounge and two double bedrooms (would you like to come and visit?). The only disadvantages are plumbing (smelly), wiring (terrifying) and the fact that it's on the 6th floor (no lift). Did you know it's the first time me and Tristan have lived together? We've bought a netbook and we have internet access here so it's brill (and hence the record-breakingly long blog entry). The area is weird, it looks really horrid with lots of concrete apartment blocks with badly lit stairs and bars on all the windows. But it seems safe as there are lots of families about. There's no waste collection so we have to chuck out rubbish on a pile like everybody else and we buy our drinking water from a man who delivers it in
On your bike
On our way home with some speakers we'd bought from the IT market big bottles (just like in Guayaquil!). We're next door to a big school which is funny because really loud orchestral music is blasted into the playground during breaktimes (I don't know why they do it) and we can hear it really clearly in our apartment. There are little cheap restaurants and street stalls all over the place- around our apartment and the school. A lot of yummy thick noodles in broth and spicy stuff, quite simple and hearty- it's really good, though there is some mucky food on offer that we're trying to avoid. On the last couple of nights we've started to cook for ourselves which is probably not as cheap as eating out but the shops have brilliant produce and it means we can sit on our sofa to eat rather than on teeny tiny stools at the side of the road.
I've already started teaching because I was needed to cover some lessons and I wanted to get into it straight away (it's quite scary!). We don't start our full-time contracts until the 19th though. The school is great. It's a half hour walk from our apartment but we've bought bikes so it doesn't take long-
the city's very flat. Our bikes were a bargainous 30pounds for both. They are a little bit rubbish and the chains keep falling off but there are bike-fixer people everywhere who charge 20p to get us back on the road so it's not a problem.
There are only really two other full-time foreign teachers at our school, Brad and Frauke-from Canada/Holland. It's great because they are a couple and the same age as us. The rest of the staff are all Chinese and young as well. It's a private school so kids generally come to Aston for two hours a week (at the weekend) to subsidise their normal school English lessons. There are also some adult classes on weekday evenings and some pre-school parent/teacher lessons. When we start teaching properly it'll be the 'Winter Intensive' period, when the kids are on holiday from their normal school. Then the normal term starts in the middle of Feb and runs right through to the end of our contracts in August.
Each lesson is taught buy a foreign teacher (us!) and a Chinese teacher. The foreign teacher plans and leads the lessons and the Chinese teacher assists. It works really well-
the kids all have workbooks and the curriculum's quite strict so we don't have to be too creative- just get through the material we're supposed to! We had two and a half days of training when we first arrived in Zibo with our Regional Manager' which was good fun and we were welcomed to the school with a staff outing to a Muslim (Xinjiang Province) restaurant on our second night.
We've hardly had chance to explore the city. We've been so busy with training, getting our apartment sorted (buying laptop and speakers!) etc. but it seems as though there'll be plenty to entertain us here for eight months. Around the school there's a big park; a fantastic street called 'walking street' (thought not pedestrianised!) where there's loads of little shops, family restaurants and street food; a humongous 'RT Mart' and 'European Street' for when we're feeling homesick.
The other teachers ahve been really helpful in getting us sorted here...from teaching us how to use our (Chinese) DVD player and washing machine to translating for us when we were bargaining the price down on the netbook at the IT market. We've already had three Chinese lessons form one of
the Chinese teachers. His name is Star. All English students in China are allocated an 'English name' when they first start learning. Some of them are hilarious- the other day I taught a kid called Superman (no joke). Other favourites include a girl called Rabbit and another girl called...wait for it...'Boy'!!! The Chinese language is going the be a real struggle to get to grips with. There are four tones so accurate prononciation is vital or you end up saying something completely unrelated to what you want to say. At the moment we're trying to master how to tell a taxi driver where we want to go and how to order something (that we actually want) in a restaurant.
BREAKING NEWS! I've just had word that we're going to have some visitors tomorrow. A couple we met in UB are going to come and stay with us for 2 nights!
I'll just quickly tell you about our New Year's Eve. We were a bit worried that it would end up being a dry one as we'd only just arrived in Zibo. We were wrong! Brad and Frauke arranged for all the school's staff (about 20) to go to
a KTV (Chinese kareoke). It was brill. We had a private room with a big screen, two mics, lots of beer (and popcorn and fruit). The Chinese people screeched to horrific Chinese pop music and us foreigners crucified some Western classics.... a great way to bring in 2009.
We were suypposed to be taking a trip to Xian (Terracotta Army) in this free time we have before teaching kicks in but already the whole of china is coming to a halt for the fun up to Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) on Jan 26th. The train system just gets completely jammed up for a month as everyone goes to their family home to celebrate. We found that we would be able to get there but the trains for the return journey would probably book up so fast that we wouldn't be able to get back in time for teaching on Sunday. Not to worry, we should be able to travel a bit in Shandong Province (where there's plenty to see). For the moment we're still settling in and meeting people. The weather's perfect. Blue sky (I can't say clear because it's quite smoggy) and cold but not too cold
how precise). I still look like an Arctic explorer in my down coat but I'm hoping to buy some more attractive clothes soon.
It's a weird feeling being a foreingner here. As there are so few of us we just get stared at all the time. Especially now we have bikes- people just think we're hilarious and they nudge their friends and say 'foreigner' or just crowd around us when we're trying to do something like buy some fruit. The other day a chap approached us on the street and introduced himself. He's from New Zealand and has lived in Zibo for six years. There are so few foreigners here that he knew that we're 'new' and so he welcomed us!
Lots of people have asked about sending stuff here. I think it's impossible for us to receive any post here at our flat. However, I'm told that it's OK for stuff to be sent to our school. The address is....
Zibo Aston English School
3rd Floor, Unit B
Hong Cheng Building
25 West Renmin Road
Zibo
255000
China!
It's probably best not to send any parcels...unless they have very little value as I don't think
we'll be able to receive them.
OK it's time for bed. I'm not sure what to do with this blog now that we've reached Zibo. It's been a great way to communicate with everyone and it's been fun to write so I think I'll keep writing bits about what we're up to every now and again when there's something interesting to say....
...until then, lots of love from us x x x
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erin and adam
non-member comment
Please keep writing the blog!!!!!! I really love reading it. It sounds like you guys are settling in well in Zibo (have you worked out how to pronounce it yet). Loved the reference to Erik it made me chuckle. Enjoy the new year which i bet will be an experience. Love Dye xxx