Hi everyone, thanks for checking in! I arrived in Beijing yesterday at 3pm (3am NC time...) after a 14 hour flight. The airplane was HUGE! There were about 60 rows with 12 people per row, which means the plane held about 720 people at full capacity. Isn't that incredible?! Two of my wonderful students sang and played songs for me on the guitar on my last day of student teaching (Juan and Magdalena from 2nd period, that would be you!) and I watched the videos I recorded of them as the plane took off from RDU. That was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me, and you know I'll always treasure those videos! I have the pictures we took on Friday in my room to remember you all by - unfortunately I had to leave my scrapbook at home since I need souvenir space on the way home, but I really do miss all of you a lot and while I'm having a good time here exploring, I'm also looking forward to seeing you all in 5 weeks!!
When we got to the school, we were taken to our rooms. The school is a boarding school, both for students and teachers, so we will be living in the teacher dormitories. I'm rooming with my wonderful roommate from freshman year of college! There are 2 bunk beds in the room with desks underneath, 2 closets, a bathroom, and a small porch area at the back. The room is pretty nice, although the bathroom is taking getting used to. In China, like in many countries (including Costa Rica, where I studied abroad for 5 months) you can't flush TP, it goes in the trashcan. The public restrooms are also usually just a hole in the ground and you have to carry TP around with you wherever you go because the bathrooms don't always provide it. Not trying to be graphic, just pointing out some of the main cultural differences I've noticed so far! The shower is interesting too because there isn't a tub to collect the water, there is just a drain on the bathroom floor, so when you take a shower the whole floor is covered with water and it takes a while to dry. But hey! You've got to expect differences like these when you're traveling - that's part of the experience!
After we got settled in, we took a 15 minute walk to Walmart (or Wu Mart as it's called here) and bought some things we needed. I have to say, it's very overwhelming to be in an environment where you don't understand a WORD of anything anybody is saying. I was looking for an iron in Wu Mart and went up to one of the clerks and tried several different hand motions that I thought would represent an iron and... nothing! So I drew a picture of an iron and she still didn't understand. I did finally find one today though! Mandarin is a tonal language, which means that inflection is really important when you speak and this also makes pronunciation really difficult. Since the pronunciation is so difficult, it's also really embarrassing to speak. This made me realize that next time I teach Spanish 1, the students would benefit from spending more time on the alphabet, on vowels, and more scaffolded speaking practice, before just setting them loose on a speaking activity. Speaking a new language can be really intimidating, and even embarrassing sometimes! I realized that if someone were to laugh at me for mispronouncing something or saying a word wrong, I would be much less likely to try and use the language with locals again because I would be more self-conscious. That also reminded me that we have to be really supportive of our students, and not call them out or laugh when they mispronounce words, because it's intimidating and I don't want them to be less likely to want to speak up in the future! (Although, sometimes we had fun with the pronunciation of certain words that came up: 1st period: "qué," 2nd period: "la clase de tecnología" and 3rd period: "trabajar" and that's okay ;) I got around fairly easily in Costa Rica because my Spanish was good and I had a lot of friends that were locals. Now I'm getting a completely different experience, without any knowledge of the language or local friends, and it makes me realize how important it is to prepare my Spanish students for travel because it's something I want you to be prepared for and look forward to!
Well today we went to downtown Beijing and walked around for about 7 hours. I underestimated how severe the smog was! There aren't too many people wearing masks but there certainly is reason to! You can barely see the horizon and EVERYTHING is covered in dust - the streets, all of the cars, the stores, and YOU when you get in from outside! We took a bus to the subway and then were downtown. We went shopping and had lunch out. It's funny because we went into like 3 different restaurants, looked at the menu, and walked right back out! The menus were completely in Chinese characters and some of them didn't even have pictures next to them. One of the customers was eating from a rabbit (or some small rodent...) skull so we definitely wanted to find a different restaurant after seeing that! It's really different and even overwhelming being completely immersed in another culture and language and even having something as simple as a menu be completely incomprehensible, but again, it's part of the experience! :)
Probably not worth mentioning, but I have a thing for finding weird/interesting signs abroad and in the US, so I thought this one was interesting. We saw it several times in Beijing and were wondering what it could possibly mean... no car bombs? no setting your car on fire? When we got back to the school I asked a local that speaks English and he laughed an said "don't set your car on fire on this street?" so it remains a mystery! I'm sure I'll see a lot more funny signs on this trip!
Well that's all for now! Thanks for reading and as always, feel free to post comments/questions. Stay tuned for more stories! Tomorrow we all have to go to the hospital for a checkup, on Thursday we're eating dinner with the headmaster, and Friday is our first day of observations in the classrooms we'll be working in (or *in which we will be working* if I'm going to be teaching English, I better watch my grammar! :) Hasta pronto!