First week coming to a close

It has been a very busy and exciting first week in China. We have been busy getting shown around town and learning Chinese from the Chinese English teachers. Tomorrow is the first day of classes so we are pretty nervous about that! Jen will be teaching grades 3 and 5, and I will be teaching grades 4 and 6.

Earlier in the week we got a phone call from one of the Chinese English teachers (Pike) asking us to come to a teachers meeting. It was 8am and we weren't quite ready yet. After we rushed to get ready and met Pike at 8:15 he told us that they would like us to make a speech in front of all the teachers at the school. All 200 of them! So in a few minutes we quickly prepared a few words. During each of our speeches we had Pike translate for us. We even got them to laugh when Jen joked about how hot it is here and I joked about how much green tea everybody drinks in China.

This coming Monday the school has asked us to make a speech in front of the whole school (3000 students and 200 teachers). This time Jen will be making the speech in English and I will be the one (trying) to make the speech in Chinese. That will be very interesting!

Today Jen and I joined some of the teachers for some basketball. I have never played basketball in so much heat. It was a lot of fun though.

Tonight we eat our last free meal in the restaurant across the street from the school. After this we can either start cooking for ourselves or eating in the canteen with the other teachers. Eating in the canteen will only cost us about $1 a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Guess it is time to get going. Time to go eat and then plan for our first lessons tomorrow!

Zai Jian!

A few pictures

Jen is standing on the balcony of our apartment, one of the school buildings is in the background.

Another school building. Behind the building is a soccer field with a track. You can see the basketball court and in the bottom left around the shrubs are some ping pong tables.

The building where Jen and I are staying. Our apartment is on the top floor.

Lunch! This is one of the lunches we had in our first few days here.

Okay, so we haven't had that many chances to take some pictures. We have been so busy getting settled in here. These are just a few pictures of the school to give a little idea of where we are. Once we get settled in we will definitely be taking a lot more pictures and posting them...

Two days later

Well, we have been here in Liyang for two days now. What a place! It is going to be so different living here for the next ten months. We are being treated very well and feel very welcome. For our first week the school is paying for our meals at a restaurant across the street. The food is really good. We have been eating many different dishes with chicken, beef, fish, tofu, rice, potatoes, soup, pumpkin vines, and some things that I have no idea what they are. We have been drinking so much green tea! Everywhere we go we are offered at least 3 glasses.

Our apartment is great and it is right on the schools property. There are over 200 teachers here and almost 3000 students. The school is a primary school divided into two parts. The first part is a normal school for kids who don't take English and the other is the bilingual part where Jen and I will be working. There are about 20 English teachers here who are Chinese. As native English speakers, Jen and I are here to help the Chinese teachers teach English. So far Jen and I are the only foreign teachers, but the school is looking to hire one more for this year. Classes start on Friday, so we are both nervous and excited for that.

Yesterday one of the Chinese English teachers took us out for our first shopping experience. Even though we are living in a relatively small Chinese city of 700 thousand the streets are still packed with people. We have yet to come across any other foreigners here in Liyang, but we hear that they are out there somewhere. Needless to say Jen and I really stick out. Only some of the people blatantly stare as we walk by, and there are several people who make eye contact and smile. Sometimes when we are speaking English there are people who walk up and listen in on our conversation. It is really funny. The supermarket that we went into was huge and has everything that Jen and I could ever need. There are many smaller shops though where the prices are better. The picture above is some of the food and drinks we bought at the grocery store. Luckily some of the products have some English words on them!

At 6 in the morning the school yard fills up with people playing basketball, running the track and doing other activities. By 8 they all go inside to escape the heat. We hope to be taking part in the activities soon.

That's about all for now. Later!

We have arrived!!!

Hey Everyone,

Wow we are finally here!!! That 18.5 hours plane ride felt as though it would never come to an end. As soon as we came out of the Pudong Airport in Shanghai the first thing we noticed was the heat and of course the massive amount of people. Pike and Jenny (english teachers) were there with signs when we arrived and we headed on another 3 hour journey to Liyang City. Honeslty we have been in awww since we came here. We met Donaldsong (the person who hired us) and he took us out to dinner to a restaurant with Pike, Jenny and the superintendent. At first we were a little akward because they were mainly speaking Mandarin because the superintendent didn't speak any english. But that was only for a short time and we were laughing and even making fun of Americans (I was thinking about you Tony during the jokes).

The picture above is us in our apartment. The linens were made for us that morning :). The bed is very firm and comparable to a box sping. There was a foam matress pad, which has made the bed comfortable enough to get a good night sleep.

This place is absolutely amazing and once we get the whole Jet lag thing out of our systems and get used to the food this is going to be an adventure to remember. Too tired to write more details, but we will keep you posted!!!

Take care,

Jen

3 weeks to go

Okay, so we are on our way to China in 3 weeks. We think this will be a great way to keep everybody posted on how things are going with us. Hopefully we can get some good use out of this so that we can share this amazing experience with everyone. Enjoy!