beijing

ok, I can't seem to figure out how to post stupid pictures on here. I upload them and they say it's okay, but they don't show up. beijing was a blur. I never remember details. You know me. I'll try though. and maybe add random details in later posts. I met a whole lot of people in beijing, some very cool, some cool, some okay, and some boring, and some annoying. but with 100 americans, you're always sure to get a good mix. For three 6-day weeks, we had just about no time off. It was 5 days of school/teaching then one day off for obligatory visits to the great wall and the forbidden city. Each day we had to be at Beijing University ("BeiDa") at 8:30am until 11:30, then we got a nice 1.5 hour lunch break, then work again from 1-4. Each week was a combination of 2 of these 3 things: Chinese class every week in the morning or afternoon; teaching english to kids who attended the summer english camp for 2 of the weeks, morning one week and afternoon the other week; and TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) class in the afternoon for one week. Doesn't sound that bad, but 3 hours straight of each of these things is really tiring. Add the Chinese summer's humidity, heat, and Beijing's horrible air pollution. And showering twice a day, and lesson planning for the next day, and that leaves just a little bit of time to go out. We stayed at the Furama Xpress hotel in Beijing. It was Japanesey and pretty nice. Besides the great wall (super exhausting just to get up to the actual wall) and the forbidden city/tiananmen square, I saw a chinese acrobat show and the summer palace. Besides that, I saw just about nothing of beijing. pretty sad.

The kids that I taught in Beijing were really smart and very competent in english. This is expected since their familes are probably wealthy because this was a summer camp they had to register and pay for. My kids were about older middle school age and I absolutely loved them. The class was only about 17 kids but we taught them for 3 hours a day. Here in Shenzhen, our classes will be near 50-60 kids for 40 minute periods.

Almost every morning, my roommate Grace (who I met in berkeley before we left) and I got these yummy egg crepe thingies for breakfast from a man who had a cart on the street across from our hotel. They were only 2 kuai (25 cents). I miss those already. His wife would work with him most days and I think she liked me. I have video of him making my breakfast one morning which I'll put up on YouTube sometime.

chinese traffic is really crazy but I've gotten used to crossing the street.

My biggest problem so far is the language barrier. Especially since I "look chinese." I so very much hate the feeling of stupidity and inferiority every time I have to make contact with a chinese person, which, as you can imagine, is all the time. Yes, I can walk down the street and not get stares like my non-asian companions. But whenever I have to try to speak, I have to explain that I can't say/understand anything more complicated than "no, I do not want that dish spicy" and "where is the bathroom" and "how much does this cost".

I can't think of anything else right now. feel free to ask me questions and jog my memory.