Week 3 in China

What I Learned

Traffic is crazy.

And in all honesty, I think that sometimes pedestrians legitimately do not have the right of way. You can't hesitate. Either you're going and they might hit you, or you're waiting.

Wanderlust does not mean that you can't also be homesick.

Here we go

The Chinese work for efficiency, not for the customer.

Leave bone sin your meals. Finish orders all at once.

They don't give you drinks with your meal. Not even water.

I have not been to a place yet, where they will just give you drinking water with your meal. It just doesn't happen. Bring your own water bottle everywhere or coins to buy plastic ones along the way because you have to stay hydrated.

There are a lot of crowds and a lot of cutting.

It is so so crowded in China. And that means bubble space does not exist here. It's normal to bump into people and have people bump into you. They also cut a lot, just kind of push there way into lines or places. Some of it is definitely intentional, probably because I'm a foreigner but most of it is just a cultural thing. If you can find a space or squeeze in closer then you do. It's not really considered rude and everyone does it to each other here.

Go with the flow.

From what I've experienced so far, th people here aren't super big on planning ahead and having all the details worked out. I think it might stem from the fact that there are so many people here and you just have to go with the flow all the time. It's created a really difficult working environment for me but that's just how they do it here and for some people, that works great.

The Chinese people are really great.

Forget about the cutting for a second though because The Chinese people here are seriously some of the best people you will ever meet. Yeah they do things differently but they will care for you as if you were their own. They will make sure you are drinking enough and that you're not pushing yourself too hard. They worry about if you're getting enough to eat or if you'll catch a cold in the rain. They just care, a lot.

What I Did

Not a lot to report for this week. Still learning, growing, and adjusting. Had some great times with Linda, our Chinese coordinator and a big change in my teaching schedule.

Sunday

Another week here in China, another week at church. I didn't take my picture with anyone but Sunday night, I and the teachers I work with went out to eat with our Chinese school coordinator Linda. She is seriously the sweetest lady and she originally invited us over to her house for a traditional Chinese meal but her brother got in a car accident and she was watching his kids. But she still took us out to eat!

She picked us up in her car and seriously, I hope I never have to drive in China because it is terrifying. Cars move withing inces of each other and straddle lanes. They lay on their horns all the time and it's nuts. I would have a panic-attack if I tried to drive here.

Linda drove us to a mall and we went to Mr. Pizza and got some cool drinks, interesting pizza, and awesome salads. On our way there we had a legitimate thunderstorm and I love that kind of weather, so I was fine with walking through the rain, but Linda thought that we would catch a cold so she insisted on having us wait so she could walk us with the one umbrella that we had between the five of us. I love this lady. She also drove us home and walked us to our dorms because it was dark. She also invited us to her house next week and said she'd be happy to take us on a tour of Nanjing. Insider info, score!

Monday

Second week of teaching begins! I honestly cannot believe it, it is going by so fast. I taught my kids and had some pretty fun lessons teaching them about idioms. I think they are starting to open up a little bit, talk, and let me know when they don't understand things, which makes teaching a lot easier.

I and the other teachers/volunteers I work with went and got egg-waffle cone ice cream when we were done teaching. When the five of us were waiting for our delicious treat I realized, or I was able to put into words something that I had noticed about the Chinese people here and how they work. I watch as the lady behind the counter finished cone after cone and put them in the cups, lining them up on the counter. I knew that the other man behind the counter would go to the back of the store, scoop ice cream into the cones, drizzle them with chocolate, and drop a few sprinkles on top. He didn't have any other customers to help but he waited to scoop the ice cream until all the cones were done and he could take them back all at once. It is more efficient that way. It's not laziness, they just don't think of the customer in the same way that Americans prize them.

They do the same thing with other food. They don't remove all the bones or fat because it's harder and they figure whoever is eating it can jsut do that themselves. And it's not just with food. The air conditions was still broken in our apartment ... after three weeks. Every day, our head teachers put in a request to have it fixed. There was another room that had theirs fixed but still not ours. And I don't think it's laziness of anything, the Chinese people are such hard workers but they just kind of expect you to deal with it, because they've had to deal with harder stuff.

Tuesday

Homesickness hit me hard that day, and it was a combination of things. I had been thinking about the holidays that I would be missing back home (Halloween and Thanksgiving) and missing my family and missing just being comfortable wherever I went. I'm not saying that I feel unsafe here in China, not that at all, but always standing out and knowing that communicating with people is going to be a hassle just kind of wears on you after a while. I was still a little sick from Sunday too.

Also, my livining conditions weren't the best. The air conditioning doesn't work and overhead light just kind of flickers, so we were sitting in the dark and super hot. I'm adjusting to the heat, which kind of worries me for later when it gets colder and I go home to Christmas in Northern Utah. Should be interesting.

Anyway, I was also worried about my vacation days because when I signed on with ILP, they promised about 2 weeks worth of vacation time. So, one full week off and two 4-day weekends. When we arrived, we found that they wanted to count the first four days we were there and training (not teaching) as our vacation and cut one of our vacations. We've been fighting for it ever since and I was to the point where I was ready to pack up my bags the last week of school, move out, and travel until I had to catch my flight home. And honestly I hated that. I didn't want to do that to my kids, or my fellow teachers, or myself but I was promised those days to travel this huge and wonderful country, and I was going to get that time, one way or another.

So all of this accumulated, the nausea and the stress and the heartache, until I just kind of broke down talking to my parents. I had been pretty good up until that point and I knew that it was bound to happen sooner or later. I definitely didn't get to the point where I was like 'I want to go home' because I have all these plans and vacations and things to see and stuff to do that I was looking forward to. But I realized that wanderlust does not mean that you can't also be homesick; you can feel it all at once.

Right after I Skyped my parents, things turned around. I went down to a teacher training and our head teachers told us that we were getting our vacation days. Woohoo! A couple hours later, in between teaching classes, we found out that they would be that weekend. We would have Monday and Friday off. So I'm started planning to go to Disneyland on Friday instead of planning lessons. I spent all of the day planning and buying train tickets with everyone. It kept me busy and kept my mind off of other things that would make me sad and homesick.

Wednesday

More trip planning and teaching throughout the day nothing too exciting or interesting happened until we went to pick up our train tickets. The day before, our coordinator Linda had offered to show us how to pick up our train tickets once we had bought them. So we went and tried picked those up. There is a kiosk for the train station in the mall and Linda drove us there... and it had closed just half-an-hour before. Well, we were ready to just head home, because we were about to miss dinner but Linda instead on buying us Subway and she would not take no for an answer. We said that we were fine adn that we could just walk home but she insisted and we went into Subway. Sidenote: The Chinese like to put corn and eggs on their sandwiches. But we went in and Linda helped us order and when we tried to pay for is she was like "No, no put that away. People will see. I will pay." and she didn't even get anything for herself.

So we had our sandwiches wrapped up and we were ready to go. As we were walking back to her car, because she told us that we could not walk home, we passed a bakery and it smelled wonderful. I just made a passing comment and, unfortunately, Linda heard. The exchange after that went a little something like this.

"We go in."

"No, Linda. We're okay."

"We going and look. Just look."

"No, really we're fine we don't want to keep you. You already bought us Subway."

"Come on." Her hand was already on the door and we didn't really have a choice at this point. We mumbled something like "Just look," and followed her into the store... where she promptly picked up a tray and tongs and asked us what we wanted.

"No, Linda, you told us we were just going to look. Did you lie to me?"

"Yes," she giggles, "I'm going to get you bread for your train ride. What do you want?"

So on top of Subway and driving us home, we also had four loaves of bread to take with us to Shanghai.

When we got home we had another surprise waiting for us and not exactly a great one. Our head teachers told us that we would be teaching for an extra hour a week, and our new classes were going to be kindergartens. I was actually pretty upset, not because of the extra time or work but because I had finally settled down with my classes and gotten comfortable being in front of them and I know that I am really not very good with little kids. So I was nervous and angry that they hadn't told be about it before, and just not really in a good mood after that. I knew that it was going to be a lot of added stress and effort on my part because I don't know how to handle it. Oh well, I guess we'll see how it goes.

Thursday

With our extra teaching assignment came a training session, bright and early the next morning. We had been planning to try and pick up our train tickets then, so our head teachers offered to pick them up instead since we couldn't. So we all gave our passports to them and they went to go and pick those up while we were training and teaching. Training went... bad. At least for me. I was just really stressed the whole time because I didn't know how i was going to handle a class full of little humans and still emerge with my sanity and emotional health intact. It was so frustrating and when i get frustrated I tend to cry. So you can imagine what that looked like. The training ran late and I didn't have my stuff with me so I had to run home before going to the campus to teach so I was late for teaching as well. Overall, it was generally a not very fun day. But then, after classes we got ready, picked up our tickets, and caught our train to Shanghai for the long weekend.