Vacation is over - time to go to work.

It's Saturday afternoon here and all morning folks have been coming into our apartment to hook up our internet. First our host, Mr. Chen (the Director of Foreign Affairs), escorted the local school network administrator to help hook us up but they didn't have everything they needed so they had to call the local provider, China Telecom.

It's very much like in the states, the first person comes and they can't do it so they have to call the cable guy.

In our case, a rep from China Telecom said he would be here sometime (just like the states - no appointments!) but he actually did show up (looked nothing like Jim Carrey), along with two more reps from my school, and eventually they all hooked us up not just with internet - but they ordered a router from a neighboring city, Nanjing (an hour and a half away by train), just for us so we could have wireless! Unbelievable!

So we are back to convenient online access, the bathroom doesn't leak anymore thanks to Jenn's amazing caulking abilities, we are getting used to the five flights of stairs we hit at least four times everyday (80 stairs!) and last night we made our first meal at home (Chinese of course!) and our stir-fry turned out to be delicious!

I dare say we are getting quite comfortable in our new surroundings, except last night I couldn't even find black pepper in a grocery store even with my Mandarin book in hand, so I'm not getting too cocky yet. I did learn the word for salt (yan) though, so the hike to the market wasn't a total write-off.

We both begin teaching our classes on Monday, although the kids came back from Spring Festival last week (they also go to school on Saturdays here too), so now we are busy scrambling trying to get ready to meet our first classes. Jenn is teaching at the #2 Middle School that is located about ten minutes from my school, I'm here at #1 Middle School where our apartment is located. We each have the same amount of kids though - 2,000 students, about 240 per day, four different classes per day per week...these kids go to school from 7am until 10pm at night...they even give them 5 and 10 minutes breaks during the day just so they can rub their eyes (they call them eye relaxation breaks).

And our two schools are not typical high schools like in the states either - these students pay good money to come to these schools because of their difficult curriculum and to increase their chances of being accepted into university later.

They are expecting a lot from us, and I've seen the College Entrance Exams they have to pass and they are tough (harder than I expected). We are excited about helping these kids speak better English, and also about helping them get into college too.

Cheers!

Another wall, this one we could ride on...

From Xian_CityWall009

Jenn and I are back from our Beijing trip but while we were there we took a train over to Xi'an, which is considered the capital of modern China. Called the eternal city, Xi'an is one of the birthplaces of the ancient civilization in the Yellow River Basin of China. Thirteen dynasties placed their capitals here and Xi'an is as equally famous as Athens, Cairo, and Rome as one of the four major ancient civilization capitals.

Click to watch the video China Videos

Our favorite part of the city, other than the really cool hotel we stayed at, HQ Guesthouse, (Thanks so much, Mai and Todd!) was exploring the 40 ft. high wall that completely surrounds the city. It is about 60 ft. wide, seems to be made from the same sort of everlasting stones as the Great Wall, and Jenn did some research and found out that you can rent a bicycle and bike the whole nine miles around the city - so that's what we did!

The bikes were classic Chinese - they rattled and squeaked but the tires were in good shape although it would have been better if they had more than one gear. It was cold so we had to stay bundled up but once we got warm it was comfortable. We took a video of it, just click on the pic above. It took a total of about two hours and the scenery was fantastic.

It was one of the best tourist attractions we've experienced since we left the states, almost as good as the cable car going over the Yangtze river where Jenn was scared out of her mind...hahaha

Click here for pics from our bike ride on the wall of Xi'an

Reality is seeping in...

Hello, again! This is Jenn and we are back from all of our travels and are settling into our apartment here at the High School in Dan Yang. It is time to get down to business and get ready to start teaching oral English to 2000 students a week. When I say it like that it scares me to death but I know that all will be fine. Sean and I have been doing a great deal of research and together I think that we will put together a great curriculum for our students. At this point we still do not know our students skill level so our first week will really be an assessment and then we will have to plan from there. The school does not provide any books or materials so we will have to improvise as we go along. From what we have read it is actually better to be able to plan your own curriculum versus having some outdated book to follow. Time will tell.

Settling into our apartment has been an adventure in itself. We have cleaned until our fingers are raw and it is finally coming together. We discovered that both the shower and the toilet leak. An easy fix for me in the U.S. but trying to find caulk in China was difficult to say the least. Our hot water is heated by a propane tank that sits under the kitchen sink so in order to take a shower there is a process. First you have to turn on the propane, then run the kitchen sink hot water which ignites the propane and then turn on the shower in the bathroom. If that was it, I would not be mentioning it but then once you get into the shower… the adventure begins. There is no sweet spot to keep the water from scolding you or freezing you. My first shower ended with 3rd degree burns, frostbite and shampoo still left in my hair. We also just found out that we do not have running water. Twice, we thought, they had “turned off” our water. After calling about it, we were told that they had to pump some water into our tank. Again, I had no idea how great I had it back home. We still do not have internet capability in the apartment but we have found some cafés that offer wireless if you are willing to pay the 40RMB for the cup of coffee. We only get the one English channel CCTV9, but the box is broken so now we don’t even get that anymore. We do have a washer machine in the apartment. I think I have finally figured out how to work it from the symbols (no English). Only problem is that one load, a very small load, takes about 2 hours. But hey, 2 weeks ago I was washing everything in the sink so I am golden with this.

If it seems as though I am complaining, I am not. I am just letting you know of some of the obstacles that we face. For the most part, I think Sean and I are really doing great. We went yesterday to this “flea market” type store to buy rugs for our cold floors and plastic to wrap our drafty windows. Sean haggled with the sales lady (a skill I need to work on) and as we walked through town carrying our supplies, I thought to myself that we are really living in China! To think that we just came over here, found ourselves jobs and an apartment and then did all of the traveling that we just did… I think that is pretty daring and can’t believe we are actually doing it!