The Apartment/Training at Jazz

8/30/09
The Apartment

Our apartment is located in Southwest Shanghai. It’s not too far away from the hotel/university we were at for orientation. Our school came and picked us up from the hotel in a van and we drove about 10 minutes on the highway to our new place. Hallie and I got really lucky because everyone lives by herself, but since we signed up together, we were put in the same room. As we approached our stoop, we were a little nervous about what was inside.

Stephanie, our New Beat facilitator, showed us in and of course commented on the ridiculous amount of luggage that we brought for 6 months. Thank goodness we were on the first floor. Stephanie opened the door and bright red cabinets blinded me. The kitchen is super cute and equipped with a tiny stove, refrigerator, microwave, and wooden table with chairs. The bathroom is to the right of the kitchen and it is much nicer than I anticipated. We even have the option to “make it rain” with our showerhead. The most hilarious part of the apartment is the layout of the bedrooms.

Immediately to the right is a fairly small room with a full bed. While the bedding is not terribly tacky, the closet doors are plastered with pictures of Dalmatians with French writing under them. Hm? The other bedroom is bigger and has a huge, flat screen, HD TV hanging on the wall. It also has a couple of desks (with bright orange doors) and a lot of room for storage. It must sound like the go to room right? Well, the bed is definitely smaller than a standard twin bed. Not only is the bed small and insanely hard, but it also has a headboard that has two cartoon mice playing and is wrapped in plastic. Yep, I got the kid’s room.

Hallie and I’s luggage happened to be in opposite rooms, so that’s how we decided. Each room has pros and cons. Our laundry area is right outside my room. There is a tiny washing machine and lots of hangers and clips dispersed throughout our little shed for drying. The tiles along the back wall have images of strawberries, hamburgers, and the most notable is the McDonald’s French fries that say “loving it” under them. Yeah….. We definitely lucked out with have a closed in area, rather than being on a higher floor and having the possibility of our clothes flying around anywhere.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “this can’t get any better,” but it does. China is home to “Chinglish,” Chinese take on English phrases. We’ve already come across some great ones like, “My life is like a diamonds,” and some more basic signs like, “thanks for your coming.” But our welcome letter to the apartment takes the cake. If I had the patience, I would type out the whole thing, but the last two lines really say it all. “You will leave extraordinary footmarks on our school and will gain precious friendship. Let’s join together to work miracles!” Hahaha.

Kuaizi: Chopsticks

8/31/09
Training at Jazz

We’ve now had two days of training at Shanghai Jazz “New Beat” English Institute. It has a lot of names. We found out it’s basically a place that dishes out teachers to about 10 kindergartens. So that means we’re on the go everyday as we travel to our schools. There are three girls from CIEE who are still teaching here from last semester. (Two of them extended their contracts so they could stay an extra 6 months…good sign I guess?!) Everyone, both American and Chinese, at the school seem nice. **When I was overlooking a teacher roster on Touba’s computer, one of our waibans, she had spelled my name, “Barfin.” Even when I go international, I can’t catch a break with my name.

Our first excursions out with the Chinese waibans were to go get cell phones and bank accounts. Both tasks would have been virtually impossible without their help. Getting a cheap phone with a couple hundred minutes to start out with was around $40. Although Shanghai is really expensive compared to other parts of China, it’s seems pretty cheap to us Westerners. Opening a bank account was timely and required tons of stamps. I’m talking over 40 stamps. Lots and lots of red ink…

Maybe our funniest excursion yet has been to the Care Fore, China’s equivalent to Wal Mart. We went with our whole group to buy things for around the apartment. It had been a long day of training at the school and we were all pretty hungry and tired. Anyway, Hallie and I decided to buy comforters to sleep on because our beds are so hard and we also got some plastic drawers for our bathroom. Long story short, we had a lot of stuff. We opted to take a cab home until we found out we didn’t have our address card with us and well, it’s a lost cause trying to communicate with a cab driver. So the metro it is…we found our way to our stop and were exiting at the Shanghai South Railway Station metro stop when shit hit the fan. Hallie was going through the turnpike stall thing and got completely tangled with her leg caught behind her on the metal rod. If all the Chinese people weren’t staring before, now they really were. I was laughing so hard I could barely stand up straight. We eventually made it out but giggled all the way home. I haven’t laughed that hard all summer.

Training has been going well, but I think all of us feel lost. I’ve never taught anything formally before and feel pretty responsible if I become a terrible teacher. The school gave us textbooks, CDs, and “graphics” to use in the class so there is structure to the lesson plans. I found out my schedule today and it looks terrifying because I’m at 6 different schools. I teach Sunday through Thursday (although times change apparently very quickly here) and am mainly teaching “intermediate-senior” students. I think this means they’ll likely be 5-6. (On a recent stroll around the neighborhood, we found Zei Wei, a kindergarten that we’ll both work at. It looks very nice and filled with cute kids.)

New Beat’s strategy for learning is through virtues. Therefore, there is a lot of visual, audio, and hands on learning. Basically, I’ll be making a fool out of myself singing and dancing about fruit and numbers in front of the kids. (We practiced a song this morning, “How do you do? How do you do? Have a nice day! Thank you, you too!” Of course equipped with hand motions and dance moves). After getting our books and schedule, I have gotten really excited, but pretty nervous as well. I teach my first class to intermediate kids on Thursday at Xiang Yang. Hallie and I start class at the same time everyday except on Sunday. The schools I teach at are kind of a mouthful: Hong Hui, Gao An, Wu Yuan, Xiang Yang, Jian Guo, and Zei Wei.

Today Paige, one of the girls who taught for New Beat last year, told us about this cheap DVD store by the school. Since Hallie and I have been milking my one disc of “Friends,” we decided to check it out after training. OMG, so cool! We were overwhelmed going in there to find all these movies from 8 to 20 quai a piece! ($1-2.50) Even more impressively, there was a wall of TV series. We decided we’d start “Weeds” since neither of us had seen it. But we also stocked up on some other good movies. I got seasons 1-3 of “30 Rock,” “The Hangover,” and “Love Actually” for around $24ish. Gotta love China.

Hallie and I cooked our first meal tonight. We have this awesome outdoor market right beside our complex that has fruits and vegetables. There is also this fresh noodle shop right in the middle of the market. We bought noodles for two for a whopping one yuen. Yep, less than $0.16 for our delicious dinner. Really, gotta love China. We met up with Thomas later that night at a Western wine bar that was really nice. We had a good time and it was nice to see a familiar face so far away from home.

Our Internet is still not hooked up, so that’s pretty annoying. I’m going to post a bunch of blogs at once. Sorry if this is boring all at once, but once we get our Internet going, the posts will be shorter and more frequent!

Ting Bu Dong: Don’t understand