Olympic torch in Shenzhen! and Tiff!

Hey guys, the Olympic torch came through Shenzhen last Thursday and it was crazy and everyone was excited. I got a good spot with some of my friends where the torch passed about a block from my school. Since it was a Thursday, most of the central city schools got the day off. Class was moved from Thursday to Saturday, which sucked, but I'm glad they were nice enough to let the kids have the opportunity to see the event. The run was scheduled to start at 8am at the Citizens' Center, where the head of the local government is located. I of course did not wake up for that. Unfortunately for the masses of people who showed up for the opening ceremony, Thursday happened to be the day that the Mt. Everest team made it to the top. The torch had been split in 2, one going around the world and which is now traveling China, and another which was climbing Mt. Everest. I guess they reached the highest camp at dawn, and so the government delayed the main torch. Everest people reached the top around 9am. Our torch was rescheduled to start at noon. They said that they wouldn't change the route, but I hear later that some people ended up waiting in some places and the torch never came. So sad. Like San Francisco. But anyway, I was in the front row where I was, and we were excited. And then it came, and it lasted like 20 seconds, and that was all. Good experience though. I love the Olympics!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9feJL8vmKWg

In other news, Tiff is coming to visit me this week! She'll be here on May 16 evening for about 10 days! Yay!

My phone got stolen at the park about a month and a half ago. First thing ever stolen in China :( so now I have a cheap crappy phone again. Ugh.

They've opened a Cold Stone Creamery here, and that's been good fatty ice cream times.

Other than that, I've been well. Talk soon,

Jen

post vacation update

Ok I'm back in Shenzhen. Well, I got back like 2 weeks ago. Vietnam was pretty cool, I stayed in Saigon and saw some museums and hung out. I stayed with a friend of Tam's (my friend in Indonesia) so I had a free place to stay so that was good. There's some pretty good food there. I ate a lot of pho. The vietnamese sandwiches are better back home, but they were ok there. Didn't do a whole lot except for relax and eat but that's the best kind of vacation.

I'm not working at Wall Street anymore. That's the adult english training center that I was teaching at last semester. They have a new thing where part time has to be 20 hours. That's too much for me, especially since I would have to work saturday and sunday, so I would have no days off from work because I teach at school during the week. There was a possiblity of me teaching elementary school kids after school, but I made sure the lady knew I was chinese american first. and she said she would rather not have me because the parents would complain. which is true maybe, but if they actually talked to me I'm sure they wouldn't mind because no one else has so far. that's the crappy thing about being a foreigner but not looking like one. so much discrimination. I speak and write better english than more than half the white people in this world.

But anyway, I'm still doing the voice recording. and it's turning out pretty well. they gave me and my friend eric a raise because they really like our voices. they want to make us the standardized voices for all their products. this company is called bu bu gao (bbk if you want to look it up) and they're a big company in china that makes electronic dictionaries and lots of electronic learning products. so that's pretty cool. there's a new commercial for the machine that I'm making recordings for, and my voice is on the commercial, which will be shown all over china. haha.

I also just recently applied for a job as a copy editor for the Shenzhen Daily, which is the english language newspaper here. there wasn't a job posting, but my friend who works there told me I should email the editor because he thinks there's an opening for a copy editor. so hopefully that will work out because it's nice to have other jobs that aren't teaching.

Other than that, I joined a gym with my friend Grace, so we're doing hot yoga 5-6 times a week. that's been hard, but good so far. it's only been a week. so I guess I'm doing pretty well over here right now. I hope everything is fine back home. Love you guys.

jen

chinese new year

Hi Uncle Jimmy! Sorry I haven't updated in so long.

I am on my vacation time again, and I just got back from 3 weeks in Indonesia. My friend from college is living there this year, she's teaching too, so I went to visit her. It was fun, and very hot. Spent a lot of money on traveling around the country though. I'm back in Shenzhen for a couple days, then I'm going to Vietnam for one week. Man, I came from like 90 degree weather down there, and I got back to china and it's freezing! It's like into the 40's here. And our apartments don't have heat and the insulation is bad so it's freezing inside the house too! I went from wearing shorts and a t-shirt with a sheet for a blanket and still being hot, to last night when I wore long socks, pants, a tshirt, and a sweatshirt, and 3 blankets! Man it's so cold. I also got back to my place and the tiles in my kitchen back area are kind of raised and I broke one of them cuz I walked on it. I don't know how that happened but I guess I'll tell my school once school starts in a week and a half. it's so cold I don't even want to take a hot shower because I dread the minute I have to get out of the shower and freeze. haha.

Today is Chinese New Year and last night I went to a small cafe with 2 friends who are still in china. This is a cool little cafe where the owner is a cool lady and she speaks pretty good english and has foreigner friends so it's a friendly place. They have really good sandwiches too. one of the only places you can get a good real sandwich. but I guess it' s more european style because like baba would say, "it only has like 1 centimeter of meat and 2 inches of bread!" Anyway, her mom is in town for new years and she had a little dumpling making party/dinner so we went and helped make dumplings and her mom cooked Hunan food so it was kinda spicy. but she made good eggplant. Today went to walmart to buy oranges and went to the bank to get more money for the next part of my vacation and now I'm at starbucks because my internet at home isn't working. I"m going to my 10-year-0ld student from last year's house for new year dinner tonight so it should be good. Gong Hay Fat Choy!

National Day

National Day has arrived once more, pretty quickly this year. This means that I get to work this weekend. And luckily Saturday and Sunday are on a Thursday-Friday schedule. Which means I get to teach 10 extra classes this week. Hooray. That's more than the other teacher at my school works in a week.

Monday early morning I'm waking up to climb the tallest mountain in Shenzhen, Wutong Shan, with some students and foreign teachers from my other job, Wall Street English. Should be a good time, but I have to wake up super early on my day off! Then on Tuesday, I'm taking off for a 4-5 day trip to Yunnan Province. Southwest China, beautiful scenery. The real Shangri-La is here and I'm hoping to be able to visit it. We will see, our time is short. I'm going with Celeste, one of the Chinese English teachers at my old school last year.

That's all for now. I've been well. Busy, but well.

back in the zhongguo

Hey all, I'm in China. Again.

New school, new people, new experience. Maybe. I am now teaching middle school kids at Shenzhen Foreign Language School, the best middle school in the city. School's been in session for just over a week now, and these kids really are smart and mostly well behaved. They speak English very well and are very impressive. It's looking to be a good year of teaching, but unfortunate circumstances made my workload double from what I thought it would be. We were supposed to have another teacher at my school, but that didn't work out, so intead of about 8 classes a week, I now have 16. Which is okay, I guess, but I have other things that I want to do so it's just kind of annoying. Today is Teacher's Day, and we had our banquet on Saturday. Good food. Meaghan, the other teacher from my program at my school, and I won suitcases in the raffle. Not sure how big (there were 3 sizes, but they were unclear about which was being won at all the different times they were drawing numbers). Anyway, it was exciting, and it should be delivered to me sometime I don't know when. That's how China works.

My apartment (room, more like it) is very nice and clean, with nice tile floors, finally! I'm quite pleased with it. Disappointed of course about the number of classes I have (I think this is mostly due to the fact that meg, as assistant coordinator of the program, only has 8 classes). The school is friendly, but much more hands-off than my old school. The place is huge and maze-like, and the foreign teachers have our own office so I don't get to see the other english teachers on an everyday basis like last year. As a foreign language school, we have 2 foreign english teachers, and one each of French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. So that's pretty cool. None of us really hang out in the office of course, since we all live on campus, but we come down to use the internet. If I want internet in my room, I have to pay for it, which I think is ridiculous since I'm on campus! The teachers last year got it somehow, so we're trying to figure out how they did that.

I'm also starting work at Wall Street English, an adult training center. Part time 12 hours a week. I'll be busy this year, but busy is good for now I think. It's an international company, you can look it up if you'd like. I live near the Shenzhen stadium sports complex, complete with nice pools so I will be swimming again finally. It's a little pricy, US$3 per time with a 15-entry pass, but I think it'll be worth it.

That's all I can think of right now, email me with your own updates and stuff, and just to let me know who's reading. I might have to send a mass email out again since no one knows I'm here anymore. Take care, talk soon.

coming home

well the year in china is over. school ended on the 15th, and the last week was pretty much fun and parties with my classes. my last class was fittingly emotional, the best goodbye party I could ask for. they all wrote me cards, sang me a song, and showed me their slideshow of their own goodbye since they're 6th graders splitting up next year. sad for them since in china these kids stay with the same class the entire 6 years. got a bunch of junky trinkets from a lot of kids in all my classes, but they came with good intentions, so I'll keep them for a year and then figure out what to do with them when I really leave china next year. yeah I'm pretty much coming back here next year. different school though. since that, it was a bunch of goodbye get togethers with people as they left for home.

last week I went off on the last vacation of the year with one of my friends and their friend from home. we went to some villages in jiangxi province, then to Huangshan (yellow mountain, one of the most famous in china), and then to Hangzhou (with the famous West Lake), and then I split off from them to go to Shanghai early since I had to be back in shenzhen earlier. It was a really good trip, a great range of different environments in china. and I really had to use my chinese, which I am proud to say has greatly improved. it better be better after a year I guess. I'm still not past basic conversations, but I can get my point across when I need to.

got back to shenzhen late thursday night, and have been working on packing and cleaning up my apartment, in between running last minute errands and seeing more people for the last time. last dinner of the year tonight was with one of my favorite students, good homecooked chinese food. well, the packing's almost done, and I've got a ton of stuff, most of which I can leave here, packed up in my apartment. I'll have to move it when I get back in august, before the new teacher comes. I've got to fly out of guangzhou tomorrow, saturday the 30th, about and hour and some's drive away, and my school is luckily going to take me. it would really have sucked to have to take bus to train station, train to guangzhou and then to the airport with all my stuff. It's been a good year, lots of ups and downs, but I'm happy I got to do it.

thunderstorms

Ah, South China and it's springtime thunderstorms. Well, I guess they're summertime thunderstorms. Thunderstorms pretty much every day, pouring down rain, with so much lightning, and the most amazing thunder I've ever heard. Being from California and all. But really, I really like it.