Yaycation

I'm not going to post at all for the next few days because I'm going on vacation! China is 7 times more awesome than then US because instead of getting one day off for their nation's birthday, they get a whole week. This means I got two weekends free from little kids crying, sneezing on me, and not speaking English, and one week free from adults doing the same (ha, just kidding, they speak English in class). Dan and I just got our residence permits finalized so one thing we're hoping to do is go to Macao or Hong Kong, now that we can leave the country and get back in.

But before that, we're taking a three day trip to a beautiful tropical island! We leave in a couple of hours to take a 2 hour ferry to Wanshan Island. It's out in the ocean and you can go swimming from the beach (something you definitely can't do in the Pearl River Delta). According to the travel agent, we can also eat anything we can catch from the ocean, for free. I'll let you all know how that goes.

Not speaking Chinese sucks

So I've been planning to start my China blog (and shamelessly steal pictures from Dan's) but lately, I haven't been in that good of a mood. I thought maybe I would wait until I had something more to say than "Not speaking Chinese sucks" and "It's really hot here."

But wait! Not speaking Chinese really does suck! I only go to restaurants with pictures or English on the menu, or places where the food is all in hot trays in front of me and I point at what I want to eat. Sometimes when people get tired of trying to tell me something, they write it down. This doesn't help at all because the only characters I know are "people", "mountain", "middle", "kingdom", and the name of our city. Surprisingly these don't come up very often when people write things down for me, so I just stare at it for a while and think "hmm, that one looks kindof like a house. And it's next to a squiggly!"

Thursday Dan and I went to Qi Ao island, and after hiking around we found a restaurant on the beach. We were sitting in the shade and had a nice view of the Pearl River, old men fishing, and young brides getting wedding photos taken on the beach. Everything was going well, until the waiter brought our menu - which was all in Chinese. I stared at it, looking for "people" or "mountain" or maybe even "middle" until the waiter started recommending dishes to us. He started with the most expensive so we didn't say yes until he hit something in the 30 RMB area. This is what we got:



a duck and celery dish



and fried tofu and skinny mushrooms.

The duck and celery was good, but the fried tofu dish was amazing. When we paid for our meal I tried to ask the waiter what it was called, so maybe I could order it again. Unfortunately he only said "jige"* which even I know means "this one."

For my job, I'm teaching kindergarten and first year children's classes. Every child I teach is between the ages of 4 and 8. Their English is actually a lot better than my Chinese, but they frequently say Chinese words that I know, and that's exciting!
1 - they always call me "laoshi" (teacher)
2 - when I ask for volunteers they get really excited, raise their hands, and say "wo" (me)
3 - today I was teaching numbers to my youngest class and they kept using the Chinese numbers, which is about all the Chinese I know!

Anyway, soon I will be taking Mandarin classes from my school, and I have a number for a private tutor. One of the reasons I came to China is to learn Mandarin, so I'm going to be really serious about it. And I know it's my problem: I'm not one of those obnoxious westerners who says "why don't they speak English?" I'm in their country, I'm the one who needs to speak their language. I just find the combination of tones and characters ridiculously hard to pick up.


* - Note: I totally can't spell in pinyin but it's better than my Chinese characters!

The requisite first impressions post

Yes, it's a few weeks late, but I know everyone's going to ask all the same questions, namely:

How's the air?
Totally fine. It gets really hazy sometimes but that's mostly the humidity, I think.

How's the weather?
Very very hot and humid, though everyone claims fall is right around the corner and soon it will be cool. I still don't know how cold it's going to be in the winter, because most people I know who have been here for more than a year are Aussies. They use the metric system, which I think is code for "not really that cold." Supposedly it stays at a frigid 10 degrees all day long, but if you do the math that's actually 50. Last winter I would have stabbed my landlord in order for it to be 50 degrees in my apartment, so I'm really not concerned. Also, supposedly flowers bloom here year round.

How's your apartment?
Pretty nice! They gave us a run-around at first and sent Dan and me to separate apartments until our new one was ready. Even though the wait sucked, it was worth it. We live on the 18th floor and we can see the water and an island from our window. Both bedrooms are air-conditioned and so is the living room. We have a washing machine, a nice little balcony/breezeway for hanging up our laundry, and a tiny kitchen without an oven. But the previous tenants left the toaster oven, which is nice.

How's the water?
Chinese people don't drink it, and neither do I. We have bottled water in our apartment - we call a woman from our school when it's time to get a new bottle, and she's shocked at how much water we drink.

How's the traffic?
Completely insane. I may not be getting a bicycle after all.

How's the spitting/staring/other things I hear Chinese people do?
Though I have nothing to compare it with, I think this city is much more Westernized than most Chinese cities. It's one of the special economic zones, shares a border with Macao, and is an hour from Hong Kong, so they've seen a lot of white people before. Most of the staring is from little kids (adorable) and old men (not adorable). The streets are dirty compared to home, but again I think it could be a lot worse. I wash my feet a lot and I'm trying to get Dan to look down when he's walking.

How's the food?
Delicious, but not as spicy as I thought. Food is one of the big reasons I started this blog and I will definitely tell you more about it in the future.


Did I miss a question? Leave it in the comments.