Going (to my new) home

Trip Start Jun 10, 2008

Trip End Jan 25, 2009

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Flag of China Shaowu, Fujian, China
Saturday, August 30, 2008

So this is where I am now. This will be my 2nd to last catch-up entry. I'll admit, I was impressed by how pretty the city is at nice. A river meanders through it (although I haven't dared to try swimming yet), it's nestled up in the mountains, really a sleepy little mountain town, but a decent enough transportation hub, sufficient shopping, great for bike-riding, nice people, very unique food. This coming week I'm supposed to start my Chinese lessons, although I've yet to meet the teacher and meet up with this art teacher who's supposedly the bomb with calligraphy. maybe he can give me lessons on that. Things are looking better every day as I settle into my new home.

I'm feeling lazy, so here's an email I sent to my parents to recap the first week here -
Like I was saying, my new situation is pretty good. It's nice to be all settled down, even if my apartment is pretty old and beat up. It's about the same quality and size as my townhouse at St Mary's, minus the 2nd bedroom. I like the town a lot. It's really sleepy but it has this really old river quarter with all really old, somewhat beat up, but still liveable all red brick houses. And that areas gorgeous. The only old city gate still standing is one block towards the river from my house and you can go for a walk along the whole length of the town amongst these old houses. Plus I've been doing a bit of biking outside. A 10 minute ride lands you in the middle of mountains, farms, and forests, it's really beautiful. I've seen more birds in the last 10 days than I saw in the last 3 months combined.

Nightlife in the city is pretty nonexistent, but this is a good hub for travel and train and long distance bus travel is really cheap. I'll probably head up to see a friend in the Shanghai area at some point, and I also plan to catch one of the highspeed trains to Beijing over a holiday sometime (about 50 for both ways), plus I want to see some of the other teachers in South Hunan province. Besides the high speed trains, a trip will cost me maybe 30 bucks both ways if I take a train, even less if I take the long distance sleeper buses. O and I still plan to head over to Thailand for the National Day break (27th-5th). Flying those discount airlines that trip should cost me around 350-400 total. Not bad huh? The flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (Think Baltimore to Boston) is only $15. How crazy is that. Also, I bought an acoustic guitar for about $35 so I figure I can easily occupy myself for an hour or two a day trying that out again. My fingers ache with calluses right now though. There's no oil paint to be found, but there's an art supply store with watercolor and calligraphy supplies. I plan on meeting up with an art teacher who lives in the building next door for some talk about art and maybe some help with working on my calligraphy. The lack of things to do, besides eat, I think is sticking me with a need for quite a few of hobbies.

Home 1

I'm meeting some cool people around here too, and my Chinese is getting a challenge. I really need to work on my pronunciation because I can understand them, but they have no idea what I'm saying a lot of the time. They've got a really heavy accent though, so I guess it's not that surprising. The teachers I work with are cool, because it's primary school I get a teaching assistant for every class, they're all young 20-somethings, and all teachers who are just in their free period and are on the bottom end of the schools pecking order (as opposed to my Foreign Affairs Officer - obviously at the top because he's an FAO that doesn't speak a word of English is prolly in his 70s doesn't come to work until 2-ish and has a few beers before showing up. He's an awesome guy though, really funny, I have a smoke and a cup of tea with him every day when I finish classes). O right, but my classes... They're a lot of fun, the kids in most of my classes are pretty well behaved, and they've been enjoying the class a lot. They're English ranges from literally just in from the countryside, not a word and like half the alphabet (but they're improving rapidly, mostly thanks to my brilliant teaching methods...) to knowing greetings, some adjectives, counting, the alphabet and writing (kind of) some really simple nouns like dog, cat, pencil, etc. But none of their listening or speaking skills are particularly good, save maybe 10 kids total (out of my 480 total)Funny thing though, the better the classes English, the worse the behavior. I have one class with 45 guys and 15 girls and they've been studying English for two years - imagine how well they behave... I really wouldn't be surprised though if the less experienced classes are better than my "advanced" classes by the end of the year. I'm glad they're not little shits like I'm sure middle schoolers would have been..