China has the cleanest street gutters in the world!

Well, my first week of teaching in China is over, and I’ve got to tell you it has been a BLAST teaching these kids! I don’t think I need to go into detail about each class, but just know that in my more basic classes, we just throw a ball around and play games about who they are, animals, and colors. In the more advanced classes, we do more interactive activities that ensure they think and figure things out by themselves. Teaching the younger groups is fun, but not as rewarding as teaching the more advanced groups, who learn every class. My schedule is as follows:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
No classes	No classes	Morning	No classes	Morning	Classes start	Classes start
		Primary		Primary	At 9 am	At 9 am
		Class		Class	And	And
					Finish	Finish
				6pm	At	At
				Classes until	7:30 pm	7:30 pm
				9:30

After the weeks classes were finished a few of us foreign teachers went to a massage parlor (NOT THAT KIND WITH “SPECIAL SERVICES”!) for a foot massage. It was 40 RMB, which is about 5 U.S. dollars. They put everyone in our group into one room where we had HUGE chairs, tea, and cookies waiting for us. Then, they put out feet into a special herb bath and pressure massaged our arms, neck and back. Then they massaged our feet. The whole thing lasted AT LEAST an hour!! It was great, we all plan on going back.

I suppose it’s time to tell you a bit about the people I’m here with. I won’t go too deep because they probably don’t want their whole world on the internet, even if I don’t have a problem with it.

I will start with my roommate, Jim. Jim sounds like a fairly normal American name, but this Jim isn’t just a regular American guy! His mother is Chinese, and his father is of Scottish lineage, so he’s a bit funny from that, I think. We get along VERY GOOD, and are planning our first get-a-way for Monday! Jim is from north California (He calls it Sac-town), and is a very conservative guy that shares many of my political views. Which is nice and not something I will see very often out here. When I first arrived, Jim was in Shanghai visiting his mother so I didn’t meet him until Wednesday of this last week. I was told by some of the Chinese teachers that he spoke very good Chinese, but when I met him, he said he didn’t speak much Chinese (even though he has an Asian accent when speaking English). I slowly got it out of him that he is somewhat afraid of the parents complaining of a non-foreign teacher in a foreign teaching role, so at school he speaks only a little more Chinese than I do. He also refuses to be a translator for all of us English speakers, which, I think is good because he would be bombarded with questions from both sides, and it would get annoying very quickly. Plus, it is great comedy when he hears people say things in Chinese thinking we had no clue about us. One more thing is that it will help me to work on my Chinese more, which is nice.

Regarding the cleanest street gutters in the world title, in China (at least in this area) there are individuals who walk around with essentially big brooms and sweep the street gutters. Every day, there are tons of them, and they always sweep the same areas. People need jobs here, and they get them! Hehe.

My next blog will be about my trip to Lanzhou, China. It should be fun.

CIC