I arrived in China 4 days ago, and promptly lost one of my carry-ons at the gate at the Guanzhou airport. It had all my art stuff, including my sketchbook (D-: D-: D-:), my summer clothes, and my hair straightener. I probably won't see it again.
Prior, Rob and I drove the scenic route down the coast from Sunnyvale to LAX. Big Sur was absolutely stunning. The flight over was absolutely unpleasant and horribly shitty, probably due to it being the cheapest group rate flight available. Imagine the smallest, most crapped economy class seats, and then imagine them half that size. Tiniest seats. Ever. And probably stuffed with cardboard. As a bonus, rather that fly straight to Beijing or even just make a transfer in Tokyo, we flew 15 hours all the way south to Guangzhou, where we had to take out our luggage, recheck them onto domestic, and fly 3 hours back up to Beijing.
Anyhow, been here 4 days. The weather has been mercifully cool for summers in Beijing due to near-daily thunderstorms (trust me, it's a GOOD thing). I have an awesome roommate and have met a ton of new people. It feels like we've been much, much longer than 4 days. The afternoon we checked in from our flight, we had the rest of the day off, but we had class the next day. We have class on weekends, though we do have a day off each in the next two weeks where we're scheduled for tours. It's quite literally a TESL for Chinese boot camp, but understandable considering they have to whip us up into teachers or something like that the three weeks before we start work.
So my daily schedule consists of this:
7:00 Wake up
7:40-8:00 Breakfast buffet at the hotel restaurant
8:30-10:30 Advanced Chinese class
10:30-11:30 TEFL Theory class
11:30-1:00 Lunch break
1:00-4:00 Teaching English class to a summer camp
After 4:00 Go out to dinner, then do my assload of Chinese homework and lesson plans
And yes, we did get thrown into teaching our own class on our second day. There are 4 class levels for our students--Elementary, Junior High, Senior High, and University. They're actually paying for the summer camp, which is ironic because we are also paying to teach them.
I teach a class of 16 older Junior High kids or about 14 or 15 (more or less... throw in the random 25 year old and 30-something, and a 13 year old). It's intense, especially since we have to come up with 3 hours worth of lessons each day. I had a co-teacher for the first day and a half, but he was moved to teaching University level students because they were... um, revolting.
So apparently Peking University was advertising this camp as being more grammar based, and that they would have 4 teachers at once... not 4 teachers total. The students felt rather ripped off about it and anyway... I'm now teaching alone. It's really hard work, but my kids are for the most part great and usually eager to learn.
Chinese class has been a mixed bag. I actually know some Chinese from my mom teaching me when I was a kid. I definitely am much better at it now than I was when the plane landed, because I finally had some reason to brush up on it. But my class now has 3 non-native speakers... and for two of them it seems their reading/writing skills are actually below mine (Caroline, the third, is amazing... she is better than me and knows a lot more characters). So, it being a conversational class, they do conversation. Slowly. Explaining a lot of phrases. It's the equivalent of sitting through an English class where people are talking like they're talking to little kids about the economy. Hurts my head... and the teacher never calls on me because she says I already have it covered. So actually, today I didn't do anything except sit back and do exercises... the teacher even told me I could lay my head down and talk a nap.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Colorado and back
Back at my house in Rochester, Michigan. I came back on Sunday after a horrible day of traveling--and had to go back to retrieve my luggage on Monday. I'm currently packing for my China trip. I leave for California for a few days with Rob on Friday, and then finally leave the country for a year next Tuesday.
I detest packing more than anything; I'm also getting slightly annoyed at my family's attempts to make amends (or not) for the lack of time we usually spend together. I'm pretty positive everyone else in my life has made a bigger deal out of not seeing me for a year than they have.
Colorado was pretty great, if only for hanging out with my old, good friends from high school. Our ability to do stuff was severely limited by the fact that it thunderstormed every day. I did get to go float down a river on an inner-tube and jump off a 20-foot cliff, which was pretty sweet. I also sprained my ankle attempting to longboard and burnt off a piece of my leg with a motorcycle tailpipe the last night I was in town. Durango is a great town, even if it's definitely pricey to get to. Our last night in town, we stayed up all night at Sho's partying with some Belgian tourists who somehow happened to be there.
I'm definitely freaked out about leaving. I mean, freaked out a lot. I can't believe I won't see my family for a year, and sad that for them it's all business as usual.
I detest packing more than anything; I'm also getting slightly annoyed at my family's attempts to make amends (or not) for the lack of time we usually spend together. I'm pretty positive everyone else in my life has made a bigger deal out of not seeing me for a year than they have.
Colorado was pretty great, if only for hanging out with my old, good friends from high school. Our ability to do stuff was severely limited by the fact that it thunderstormed every day. I did get to go float down a river on an inner-tube and jump off a 20-foot cliff, which was pretty sweet. I also sprained my ankle attempting to longboard and burnt off a piece of my leg with a motorcycle tailpipe the last night I was in town. Durango is a great town, even if it's definitely pricey to get to. Our last night in town, we stayed up all night at Sho's partying with some Belgian tourists who somehow happened to be there.
I'm definitely freaked out about leaving. I mean, freaked out a lot. I can't believe I won't see my family for a year, and sad that for them it's all business as usual.
Snippets from my trip
Monday, July 16, 2007
3:26 PM
Leaving California; heading off to Durango, CO for a few days to see some old friends, then back to Michigan for a few days more. Will return to Cali in about 10 days--after which Rob and I will roadtrip down the coast to LA and see me off for my year in China. Coupled with our roadtrip across the country from Michigan(Rocky Mountains, Arches National Park, and salt flats), this has been a summer of pretty hardcore traveling, even for me.
7:05 PM
The flight from SFO to Las Vegas can best be described as "hurtling". The pilot's idea of "descent" was a 20 minute nosedive. When I saw that my current flight had "No Services", I had no idea they meant a 19-seat (21 with pilots) mini-plane with no restroom. The pilots are young--maybe about my age, and talk like Nebraskan farm boys.
I'm now on a tiny, Beechcraft heading towards Farmington, NM, getting thrown through a storm cloud over the Nevada desert. I feel like a character in a WWII movie. The view is terrifyingly, apocalyptically gorgeous--The skycap is black, the horizon blood-orange. I can see lightning strike from sky to ground and a funnel cloud form. The plane circles steeply. 50 or 55 degrees to the left. I can see the blue-grey clouds stroking the ground. The landing is swift; a sound like a disaster, and then surprisingly smooth as it coasts. Some raindrops streak diagonally upwards against my window. The must be less need for an airstrip for these little planes. I wonder at terrifying freedom the pilots must feel to pilot small planes through the births of desert storms.
7:46 PM (8:56 Mountain time, now)
The plane landed in Cedar City to drop off half the passengers. The pilots announced that we could take a pit stop since it would be 10 or 15 minutes before we took off again. It's turning into a layover as they're waiting for the weather to clear. The horizon looks like a postcard--blood orange and bright yellow (sunset) with streaks of grey and pale pink rubbed down from the the indigo grey sky, the color stopping abruptly against navy mountains the shade of night. Every so often (more rarely now), I can see a stream of lighting strike vertically down.
9:14 PM
Back on the plane. We're now flying through the rain. the reason I can tell is because every time the winglight strobs, I can see raindrops flash frozen-illuminated by the light. It is noisy like hell outside-literally, like hell. It feels and sounds like we're flying straight through hell. A million bats and demon-lets flying straight into the side of our plane shaking us off our course. Sounds and feels like we're in a blender. Turbulence feels like we're about to die.
Anyway, a recap of the past week:
Saturday, 7/7:
Arrived after 9 hours of traveling; totally exhaused. Went out for seafood. The food was great, except that they forgot my order.
Sunday, 7/8:
Went boogie-boarding in Santa Cruz. It was cloudy and cold (wetsuits are awesome) but there were 6 foot waves. It was Rob's first time in the ocean, and a pretty impressive outing too considering the fact that he can't swim. Walked along the boardwalk afterwards, which was super-nice.
Monday, 7/9:
Checked out the Kwik-E-Mart in Mountainview (a couple blocks from the Googleplex); will post pictures up soon. They were out of Buzz Cola and Krusty-O's, so we got a "Simpsons" donut and a Squishee instead. Brilliant bit of marketing there--it cost 7-Eleven less than 1 million bucks to outfit the dozen or so Kwik-E-Marts across the country, and normally I would never make a pilgrimage to a 7-Eleven or buy a donut or Slurpee. I don't even like donuts.
We also went hiking at Santa Clara State Park, I think, and we nearly got lost. Well we got lost a little bit, but we hiked back to the main road and made our way back. It was awesome. We also saw the world's lamest waterfall.
Tuesday, 7/10
I had the stomach flu. It sucked. Stayed in bed all day, could barely move because stomach flues make you so weak.
Wednesday, 7/11
Chilled out all day because I was still sickly and weak. Had lunch (like I did every day, except for Tuesday) at Google. Saw Ratatouille that night (with Rob, of course!). It was a cute movie :-) and the rats looked squishy.
Thursday, 7/12
Went to a special Google dinner that Rob had gotten tickets for. They had a 4 course dinner paired with 4 different wines that were based off of recipes from a master fishmonger/sustainable fishing pioneer. I was pretty lukewarm about the food (flavor pairings blah blah blah... thought I could do better, personally) except for the dessert. I was quite right that all the recipes were by the fishmonger himself except for the dessert, which was devised by the Google chef. A good fishmonger does not a good chef make, IMHO.
Friday, 7/13:
Raced down to San Francisco to check out Jeffrey's Toy Store. Had dinner at Green's, a gourmet veggie restaurant. They're my favorite out of all the places I've ever eaten at :-D.
Saturday, 7/14:
Decided to take surfing lessons in Santa Cruz, but we spent half the day doing laundry instead at the Googleplex. When we tried going down there, the traffic was soooooo bad that it took us 3 hrs to get there :-(. The lessons were done for the day, so we ended up renting boogie-boards and wetsuits again. The waves were kind of small, so we ended up just playing at the beach. :-D Later we went for some mediocre seafood and had some kickass caramel apples.
Sunday, 7/15:
Woke up at 6:45 AM for 8 AM surf lessons. There was no traffic so it took us only 40 minutes to get tehre. It was great watching Santa Cruz wake up to the morning fog. They gave us giant, pepto-bismol pink foam surfboards as rentals--it looked like we were floating around all day on giant tongues. I ended up getting the hang of it... sort of... but Rob caught on quickly and by the end of the day he was ballin'. It was a perfect day by the sea. The sky was blue and the water crystal clear, and the sand sparkled with little specks of gold with every lulling wave. We spent about 9 hrs in the water, and then found a great little taqueria across from the boardwalk. They had the Moscow Circus playing for free at the boardwalk so we caught that show, which was awesome. We headed back before the sun set, and all in all had the perfect day.
Well perfect, except for the fact that Rob didn't put on sunscreen and he's white, so his face exploded.
Anyway, I love the beach. I love the ocean. I love the fact that even though when I was growing up, going to the seashore was one of those big, once-a-year vacations where you'd stay for a couple days at a hotel, in California we can go to the beach every weekend if we wanted to. I love hiking. I love California. I love how there's so many outdoors things you can do there. Most of all, I love Rob. When I come back, we can become surfers (or maybe he'll just become one, cause I suck) and by then he'll actually let me ride on the back of his bike. California is making Rob so supercool, at this rate he'll be a rock star by the time I come back from China.
3:26 PM
Leaving California; heading off to Durango, CO for a few days to see some old friends, then back to Michigan for a few days more. Will return to Cali in about 10 days--after which Rob and I will roadtrip down the coast to LA and see me off for my year in China. Coupled with our roadtrip across the country from Michigan(Rocky Mountains, Arches National Park, and salt flats), this has been a summer of pretty hardcore traveling, even for me.
7:05 PM
The flight from SFO to Las Vegas can best be described as "hurtling". The pilot's idea of "descent" was a 20 minute nosedive. When I saw that my current flight had "No Services", I had no idea they meant a 19-seat (21 with pilots) mini-plane with no restroom. The pilots are young--maybe about my age, and talk like Nebraskan farm boys.
I'm now on a tiny, Beechcraft heading towards Farmington, NM, getting thrown through a storm cloud over the Nevada desert. I feel like a character in a WWII movie. The view is terrifyingly, apocalyptically gorgeous--The skycap is black, the horizon blood-orange. I can see lightning strike from sky to ground and a funnel cloud form. The plane circles steeply. 50 or 55 degrees to the left. I can see the blue-grey clouds stroking the ground. The landing is swift; a sound like a disaster, and then surprisingly smooth as it coasts. Some raindrops streak diagonally upwards against my window. The must be less need for an airstrip for these little planes. I wonder at terrifying freedom the pilots must feel to pilot small planes through the births of desert storms.
7:46 PM (8:56 Mountain time, now)
The plane landed in Cedar City to drop off half the passengers. The pilots announced that we could take a pit stop since it would be 10 or 15 minutes before we took off again. It's turning into a layover as they're waiting for the weather to clear. The horizon looks like a postcard--blood orange and bright yellow (sunset) with streaks of grey and pale pink rubbed down from the the indigo grey sky, the color stopping abruptly against navy mountains the shade of night. Every so often (more rarely now), I can see a stream of lighting strike vertically down.
9:14 PM
Back on the plane. We're now flying through the rain. the reason I can tell is because every time the winglight strobs, I can see raindrops flash frozen-illuminated by the light. It is noisy like hell outside-literally, like hell. It feels and sounds like we're flying straight through hell. A million bats and demon-lets flying straight into the side of our plane shaking us off our course. Sounds and feels like we're in a blender. Turbulence feels like we're about to die.
Anyway, a recap of the past week:
Saturday, 7/7:
Arrived after 9 hours of traveling; totally exhaused. Went out for seafood. The food was great, except that they forgot my order.
Sunday, 7/8:
Went boogie-boarding in Santa Cruz. It was cloudy and cold (wetsuits are awesome) but there were 6 foot waves. It was Rob's first time in the ocean, and a pretty impressive outing too considering the fact that he can't swim. Walked along the boardwalk afterwards, which was super-nice.
Monday, 7/9:
Checked out the Kwik-E-Mart in Mountainview (a couple blocks from the Googleplex); will post pictures up soon. They were out of Buzz Cola and Krusty-O's, so we got a "Simpsons" donut and a Squishee instead. Brilliant bit of marketing there--it cost 7-Eleven less than 1 million bucks to outfit the dozen or so Kwik-E-Marts across the country, and normally I would never make a pilgrimage to a 7-Eleven or buy a donut or Slurpee. I don't even like donuts.
We also went hiking at Santa Clara State Park, I think, and we nearly got lost. Well we got lost a little bit, but we hiked back to the main road and made our way back. It was awesome. We also saw the world's lamest waterfall.
Tuesday, 7/10
I had the stomach flu. It sucked. Stayed in bed all day, could barely move because stomach flues make you so weak.
Wednesday, 7/11
Chilled out all day because I was still sickly and weak. Had lunch (like I did every day, except for Tuesday) at Google. Saw Ratatouille that night (with Rob, of course!). It was a cute movie :-) and the rats looked squishy.
Thursday, 7/12
Went to a special Google dinner that Rob had gotten tickets for. They had a 4 course dinner paired with 4 different wines that were based off of recipes from a master fishmonger/sustainable fishing pioneer. I was pretty lukewarm about the food (flavor pairings blah blah blah... thought I could do better, personally) except for the dessert. I was quite right that all the recipes were by the fishmonger himself except for the dessert, which was devised by the Google chef. A good fishmonger does not a good chef make, IMHO.
Friday, 7/13:
Raced down to San Francisco to check out Jeffrey's Toy Store. Had dinner at Green's, a gourmet veggie restaurant. They're my favorite out of all the places I've ever eaten at :-D.
Saturday, 7/14:
Decided to take surfing lessons in Santa Cruz, but we spent half the day doing laundry instead at the Googleplex. When we tried going down there, the traffic was soooooo bad that it took us 3 hrs to get there :-(. The lessons were done for the day, so we ended up renting boogie-boards and wetsuits again. The waves were kind of small, so we ended up just playing at the beach. :-D Later we went for some mediocre seafood and had some kickass caramel apples.
Sunday, 7/15:
Woke up at 6:45 AM for 8 AM surf lessons. There was no traffic so it took us only 40 minutes to get tehre. It was great watching Santa Cruz wake up to the morning fog. They gave us giant, pepto-bismol pink foam surfboards as rentals--it looked like we were floating around all day on giant tongues. I ended up getting the hang of it... sort of... but Rob caught on quickly and by the end of the day he was ballin'. It was a perfect day by the sea. The sky was blue and the water crystal clear, and the sand sparkled with little specks of gold with every lulling wave. We spent about 9 hrs in the water, and then found a great little taqueria across from the boardwalk. They had the Moscow Circus playing for free at the boardwalk so we caught that show, which was awesome. We headed back before the sun set, and all in all had the perfect day.
Well perfect, except for the fact that Rob didn't put on sunscreen and he's white, so his face exploded.
Anyway, I love the beach. I love the ocean. I love the fact that even though when I was growing up, going to the seashore was one of those big, once-a-year vacations where you'd stay for a couple days at a hotel, in California we can go to the beach every weekend if we wanted to. I love hiking. I love California. I love how there's so many outdoors things you can do there. Most of all, I love Rob. When I come back, we can become surfers (or maybe he'll just become one, cause I suck) and by then he'll actually let me ride on the back of his bike. California is making Rob so supercool, at this rate he'll be a rock star by the time I come back from China.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Frontier is awesome.
I arrived in Cali two days ago. The flight was eventful in the sense that it was one of the first times I've flown since 9/11 that everything went completely and utterly smoothly:
- Security was actually a breeze. Did not see ethnic minorities pulled aside for additional inspection. Did not get additionally inspected myself. Did not get my carry-ons searched. Did not set off the metal detector with my belt (or my ankle (??) as happened shortly after 9/11) and was not told to remove additional items of clothing like socks.
- Both my flights were on time. Both my flights arrived half an hour early.
- My baggage arrived intact and on time.
I flew Frontier, and if judging from this one flight, I recommend them highly as a budget airline. We actually got the tix because it was the cheapest, but this trip was by far the most pleasant budget flying experience I've had since pretty much 9/11:
- The seats were actually roomy (for economy) and semi-comfortable. They had bendy adjustable headrests that you could mold into a head-pillow. Apparently they only use new planes--the inside was actually sanitary and clean. Last time I flew, the plane was dirty and ragged on the inside.
- Super-friendly, helpful, and pleasant captains and crew. They gave you a choice between normal-sized bags of Sunchips or Dorritos (I think) rather than the usual .2 ounce bags of pretzels. When we landed the captain pretty much gave us a happy pep-talk about what to do with our time now that we came in half an hour early.
- In-flight entertainment-- 24-channel live DirectTV on a clear, quality LCD screen in front of your seat for only 5 bucks. Choice of 4 or 5 recent-release movies for 8 bucks. Easy payment by built-in credit card swipe on seat in front of you. And they practically threw free headphones at you.
For comparison, last time I flew they had grainy, drop-down screens every few rows. Unless you brought your own headphones, you had to buy a pair for 5 bucks. This bought you the right to the audio of the acclaimed film, "Codename: The Cleaner", starring Cedric the Entertainer as a crime-fighting janitor.
Oh yeah, and I brought a milk-crate full of houseplants as my carry-on. Rob wanted me to take those because all except one of the plants he had transplanted into a GUFF container for the roadtrip to Cali last month either killed each other on the way here or fell off his porch. It turns out you CAN take houseplants on a plane (they count as "Perishables"), although I was really worried about it. The first employee I talked to at the airport told me that I would probably have to check them in because plants have dirt, and dirt can be used as a weapon ("throwing them in people's eyes"... ???) but nobody else took it as a big deal at all. Most people were just surprised that I brought plants. It turns out it actually was more convenient because a milk-crate is easier to manage than a heavy suitcase on a plane.
- Security was actually a breeze. Did not see ethnic minorities pulled aside for additional inspection. Did not get additionally inspected myself. Did not get my carry-ons searched. Did not set off the metal detector with my belt (or my ankle (??) as happened shortly after 9/11) and was not told to remove additional items of clothing like socks.
- Both my flights were on time. Both my flights arrived half an hour early.
- My baggage arrived intact and on time.
I flew Frontier, and if judging from this one flight, I recommend them highly as a budget airline. We actually got the tix because it was the cheapest, but this trip was by far the most pleasant budget flying experience I've had since pretty much 9/11:
- The seats were actually roomy (for economy) and semi-comfortable. They had bendy adjustable headrests that you could mold into a head-pillow. Apparently they only use new planes--the inside was actually sanitary and clean. Last time I flew, the plane was dirty and ragged on the inside.
- Super-friendly, helpful, and pleasant captains and crew. They gave you a choice between normal-sized bags of Sunchips or Dorritos (I think) rather than the usual .2 ounce bags of pretzels. When we landed the captain pretty much gave us a happy pep-talk about what to do with our time now that we came in half an hour early.
- In-flight entertainment-- 24-channel live DirectTV on a clear, quality LCD screen in front of your seat for only 5 bucks. Choice of 4 or 5 recent-release movies for 8 bucks. Easy payment by built-in credit card swipe on seat in front of you. And they practically threw free headphones at you.
For comparison, last time I flew they had grainy, drop-down screens every few rows. Unless you brought your own headphones, you had to buy a pair for 5 bucks. This bought you the right to the audio of the acclaimed film, "Codename: The Cleaner", starring Cedric the Entertainer as a crime-fighting janitor.
Oh yeah, and I brought a milk-crate full of houseplants as my carry-on. Rob wanted me to take those because all except one of the plants he had transplanted into a GUFF container for the roadtrip to Cali last month either killed each other on the way here or fell off his porch. It turns out you CAN take houseplants on a plane (they count as "Perishables"), although I was really worried about it. The first employee I talked to at the airport told me that I would probably have to check them in because plants have dirt, and dirt can be used as a weapon ("throwing them in people's eyes"... ???) but nobody else took it as a big deal at all. Most people were just surprised that I brought plants. It turns out it actually was more convenient because a milk-crate is easier to manage than a heavy suitcase on a plane.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Welcome!
I've accepted my acceptance to teach English for a year in Shenzhen last week. I'll be out of the country from August '07 until at least June of next year. I don't know when the Olympics start, but I hear that my family is planning a trip so I think I might stay for that. I figured I'd start a China blog so I can update my peeps on my experiences there. I also figured that it's never too early to squat on the blog title, so here I am. "Anarchy in the P.R.C." It's taken from a Brain Failure song, which I thought was awfully clever, despite the fact that I've never been an anarchist and I'm not so into punk anymore.
So anyways, that's about it. A whole blog dedicated to Monica in the Motherland. Maybe I should make that the title? Whatev... I might start posting ealier about my (intended) travels throughout the summer. I just have to graduate first.
So anyways, that's about it. A whole blog dedicated to Monica in the Motherland. Maybe I should make that the title? Whatev... I might start posting ealier about my (intended) travels throughout the summer. I just have to graduate first.
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