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Week 1 in China: Part 1

Challis Hackley
Sep 18, 2017
9 min read

Okay so these first two posts are going to be longer than usual because I'm talking about my first week here in China and there was a lot going on. So next week, you'll read about Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. But for this week here's what I learned and here's what I did. If you don't want to read about my crazy week in detail then you can just read what I learned and be on your merry way, but I will say, there are some good bits in there. Enjoy!

What I Learned

Don't accept compliments.

They will think that you are super conceded. It's just a part of their culture to be kind of self-depreciating. So instead of saying 'Thank you' when someone compliments your hair, say 'No, it looks awful. But your outfit looks great today.' They will then decline that compliment. It takes some getting used to but my roommate and I are literally practicing on each other so we will get the hang of it eventually.

If your a lady, don't smile at the men.

This is just kind a loose rule here. Some of the things you will here don't really apply to you because you're a foreigner, and the locals will looks at you and know that you are a foreigner. But just so you know, the guys here will take it to mean that you want to further your relationship with them. And you don't need a pack of men following you around. You will be plenty conspicuous without them.

Don't flush the toilet paper down the toilet.

Seriously, don't do it, not ever. Don't flush anything down the toilet that is not pee or poo. The pipes here just can't handle it.

That present on the side walk may not be dog poo.

Speaking of excrement, lets talk a little bit about potty training here in China. So, Chinese parents don't always use diapers to train their kids. The kids will sometimes wear split-back pants, with no underwear. This allows the parents to help them go potty any and everywhere. So that pile of poo on the side walk may not be from a pet dog...

What I Did

Anyway enough about poo. China really is a great place and I feel like I have seen so much since I've been here. Here's what my week looked like and what I did. So far, I'm having a blast.

Monday

So I began my long trip to China at 11:00 am on Monday morning, driving to the airport. I got there and met up with an ILP representative who gave me my visa, passport, and a few other things. I checked my bags, said my goodbyes, and went through security. While I was waiting for boarding i got to meet a lot of the other volunteers who were on my same flight. We padded our flight and, sixteen hours later, landed in Shanghai.

Tuesday

In our little group of volunteers, I grabbed my bags from the plane, went through customs, and loaded up my checked bags. They have free trolleys in the Pudong International Airport which was fabulous considering all the luggage everyone had. So we come out into the front of the airport and we're looks for our local coordinator who should be holding a sign and waiting for us. We didn't find her at first but we did find another volunteer who was going to a different city. Eventually, our local coordinator found us and one of the first things she said was, "We have to hurry because we are taking a long hour bus ride from Shanghai and Nanjing and buses are not allowed on the the highway from 2:00 am to 5:00 am." At that time it was like 9:20 pm and we were the last of the three groups to fly in so everyone had been waiting on us. So we had a quick break to go to the bathroom and get some water, take a group picture too, and then we were off, racing through the airport to get to our bus.

We all got there in one piece although one girl didn't make it out of the elevator with her cart before the doors closed, and had to ride it up before coming back down again. When we started loading up the storage compartment on the bus, it quickly became apparent that not even half of our luggage was going to fit there. So we went and claimed seats in the bus and then started loading up the empty seats.

I felt bad for anyone and everyone that tried to lift or move my luggage because I had gotten to maximum efficiency. My carry-on suitcase weighed about fifty pounds. It had all the children's books that were donated to me because carry-ons don't get weighed. The books would have taken up too much space and weight in my checked bags and both of my checked luggage were pushing fifty pounds by time I got done with them. When I got on the first plane, there wasn't enough overhead storage, so the flight attendant had to check my carry-on. I was trying very hard not to laugh when this little lady tried to lift it and I offered to take it wherever it needed to go but she just told me to take my seat.

We eventually got everything in and settled in on the bus, which was definitely designed for Chinese people because I barley fit in the small seats, and not comfortably. Our local coordinators had bought Burger King for us to eat on the bus ride but I'd had like six meals on my last flight so I wasn't very hungry at 10:00 at night, which is about when we got underway.

Driving out of Shanghai, I was so surprised with how much China reminds me of Cancún. On our drive from Shanghai to Nanjing, the only vertical features to the landscape where man-made or trees. And the trees were dense and green on either side of the road. There was nothing to see past them. It is so humid there, just as humid as Cancún, although I was telling myself that it was getting better as we trekked farther into the continent and away from the ocean.

Wednesday

From what I can tell so far, Chinese drivers are not as crazy as Mexican drivers. Although I am hardly a reliable source since I was asleep for most of the drive.

And, guess what, 2:00 am rolled around and we still hadn't made the it to Nanjing. So we pulled off at a rest stop, where I had my first experience with Eastern toilets, and we waited, painfully slow, for 5:00 am to come around. In that time though, there was definitely a lot of bonding and getting to know you going on. Situations like that either bring out the best or the worst in you and I think bonding over our misfortune brought us all closer together really quick.

So we left at 5:00 am on the dot and arrived at Nanjing Forign Langiage School forty-five minutes later, only to find ourselves locked out of our apartment floor after unloading the bus. We had trekked up five flights of stairs multiple times in what felt like 90 percent humidity, carrying big, heavy suitcases, and found that the door to our hallway was locked, and even though we all had keys to our rooms now, we could not reach them.

More waiting and bonding ensued and eventually our head teacher handed us our meal cards and sent us to the cafeteria for breakfast while he tried to figure it all out.

So we went to the cafeteria and our local coordinators showed us how to order and pay, a lot of pointing a lot of trying to figure-out-what-that-is-before-I-order. But we got our food, and dug in, and let each other try out food so everyone could start figuring out what this whole food situation was like. I'll tell you what, breakfast is definitley my favorite meal here in China so far. Warm sweet buns and cool yogurt drinks and hard-boiled egges. It all tasted really good.

When we came back, the door was open and we could finally move our stuff in and unpack. We share rooms here, and my roommate and I are at the end of the hall by the washer and dryer. It's a long trek up all those stairs and to the end of the hall but my legs are going to look awesome by the end of this trip. As I unpacked, my roommate took the first shower. I was surprised how fast is was to unpack, there was definitely enough space for everything I brought. I have a special place for my books and toiletries, and a little hidden stash of American food. I showered before I had totally finished unpacking and let me tell you, I have never enjoyed a cold shower, any shower, more in my life. It was so nice to be clean after thirty hours of traveling and layover and waiting. I felt like a new woman with food in my stomach and a nice cold shower to wake me up and drive off the heat and humidity.

I finished unpacking and spent most of the morning getting to know my roommate and talking. We were both really tired so there was none of that pesky social anxiety or nervousness and we learned a lot about each other.

Lunch rolled around and it was considerably less enjoyable for me than breakfast had been. I got your standard rice and then another meat and noodle dish. The meet tasted good, the rice was filling, the noodles had a weird texted, but what really got me was the cubes. I didn't really know what I ordered and what I was eating, so when I came across these little spongy cubes I figured I would try it. I like to think that I would try anything at least once. So I ate it and really don't like the texture. Most of the other girls I was with had also gotten the same dish. After trying, and failing, to get some of them to try it too, we all kind of decided that is was pure fat. Gross, but I could live with it, that is, until my roommate pulled out a cube of the mystery substance and found something akin to hair or fur still attached to one side. Nevertheless, I definitely gagged one or twice looking at that piece and feeling it in my stomach. I wasn't very hungry after that, but I made sure to finish my rice. Rice is safe...right?

After lunch we went and explored the school campus, becuase it it massive. We found a pond and some rock statues and located the various basketball courts and the track. There was a small white dog that looked like a miniature version of a cross between a wolf and a coyote. This little guy found us at the track and almost followed us all the way home. He was cute in a I-don't-want-to pet-you-because-you-might-have-rabies-but-I-like-how-your-ears-flop-when-you-run sort of way.

We came back and hung out. My roommate and I were so tired though. We knew that we had a meeting at 3:00 pm, so we set an alarm for 2:30 pm and took a nap. At 3:10 pm, we woke up and realized we were late. Great, first impression, right? We eventually made it to the meeting and met some of the local teachers that we would be working with. After the meeting We went back to our building only to find that we were locked out...again. This time though, when they came to unlock it, they also gave us keys to that door, so hopefully that will be the last time.

After the meeting a big group of us went out into the city to find a market and a bank. Some of us didn't have any yuan yet, so we all couldn't ride the metro. It wasn't a long walk so we made an adventure out of it. Found the market, no problem, and had fun just looking at everything. I didn't buy much because I didn't know what I needed and it's all in Chinese so I wasn't sure what everything was. The Google Translate app has a really cool visual function, where you can take a picture and it will translate everything if yo know what language it is in. It's just like normal Google Translate though, in that it you get some really weird results some times. I have a feeling that bad English translations are going to be my new favorite thing.

I noticed the first person taking a picture of me when we were checking out of the store. This lady with her little daughter It is really a thing here. They just don't see white people that often so it's like an experience for them. We came back late, so I missed dinner, but i wasn't to distraught about that.

At the end of the day, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. But it's either a good experience or a good story.