Alright. I know. This goes against everything and anything I learned while working at Bermex. I am supposed to hate dogs, and a part of my soul always will – Bermex Honor – but this puppy was so cute that I could eat him. I better not say that too loud or he may end up on my plate. Heh.

For the most part, I haven’t seen any big dogs here – ie Pitt Bulls and what not. I don’t think people can afford to feed them. Dog and cat food is expensive – even for a little bag. I have noticed that there are no leash laws here either. Dogs just run around where ever they please. They are pretty smart, though. They look both ways before they cross the street. They usually travel in twos for some strange reason as well.

But anyway, back to the cutest puppy ever.

He was sitting on the curb right out side his owner’s shop watching me as though he knew I was a foreigner. I know that look all to well because I get it all the freaking time. Most animals run when I try to approach them maybe because they think that I am coming to eat them, but he sat very still. When I sat down next to him his little tail started wagging. His little eyes glistened with glee as I reached out and patted his head. He seemed so very happy. Behind him his owner was smiling ear to ear probably thinking, “Oh, my dog is being petted by a foreigner – how lucky am I?” I snapped his picture, waved to the lady as thank you and patted his head one last time. As I walked away, I turned and saw the little dog running back to his owner like a primary school student runs back to his parents after saying hello to a Whitey. It made me smile. I walked a little further, hopped on my bus, and went home for the day.

It is days like this one that make me happy. The little things have always been the most important. If I saw this little guy every day, I would be able to forgive my evil students and live happily in Fuyang for the rest of my life. Heh. I still think he is the cutest puppy dog ever. I may just have to kidnap him.

My lovely classroom.

This is where I teach all my precious little devils how to speak and understand English. The room in the picutre is neat only because I had just straighted it back up. I try very hard to keep the desk in pairs. I like to walk around the classroom and it helps keep them from talking more than they already do. Besides the chalk board that is behind me – there is nothing in the room but the student’s desks and chairs. It is a rather dirty, dull room. At least I have a “view” being on the 5th floor.

This is the view from my classroom window. That massive building you see on the other side of the track is the Primary School. It is about 7 floors and they have an elevator. Lucky bastards.

I like to watch all the little kids running around outside. They look like little ants and have so much energy. I don’t know how I would handle teaching them. Although my kids are devils, I think I have the easiest platform. Note the blue sky. Blue skies here are rare.

This is the courtyard or the center of the school. The picture only shows half of it, but the other side is identical. One day I saw a kid get pushed into the bushes. The bushes swallowed him and I laughed. The kids here are either A) very affectionate or B) ultra-violent. There is no in-between.

I got bored going home one day and decided to take a picture of myself in the stairwell. I thought I was the only one there, but as I went to go snap the picture – the kid took off running down the hall. It is a weird picture, but I thought it was sorta cool.

Ah. Look at them. Preparing for battle . . . Heh, that would be funny if they were, but no such luck. Every morning the kids have to participate in excerises. It is a pretty long routine, but they remember every little movement they have to do. They don’t like it at all and it is all done half-heartidly. The sad part is that my camera could only capture half of the student body. The population of the school could easily beat that of any school back in the States. It is amazing how many people there are here.

Fu yang Yong Xing School(Foo Young Yong Shing) – A private school filled to the brim with pesky little devils. That is what it should translate into, but no school would admit to such a thing. And if anyone ever asks me what Yong Xing means – that is exactly what I am going to tell them because the world deserves to know the truth.

The day before I taught, I imagined eager, but shy students to stand up and say “Good Morning Good Teacher” along with all the other niceties one would come to expect from such a so-called strict nation. I pictured a quiet class, one that would listen to me and raise their hands to answer questions. I thought that they might know some basic English, if not a little more. I imagined a lot of things. I wanted to believe that Chinese students were what every American teacher dreamed of teaching.

I could not have been more wrong.

I expected a lot a things to happen here in China, but I did not expect to find insane, rude, pesky, loud, annoying, fighting, little devil students in my classroom. More or less, everything I have ever been told or read went out the window the very first day I taught. I had a very serious O.M.G moment. But I kept my cool and tried to teach the helpless buggers anyway.

During my first week, I taught each of my 20 classes(I only teach each student one time a week) about me. I wrote the word introduction up on the board and then proceeded to tell them all the things about yours truly. I told them where I was from and all that jazz. I talked about things I liked to do – where I took a small moment to scare the crap out of them by acting out what kind of books Stephen King wrote. I would sneak quietly up to their desks and say, “Stephen King writes SCARY(insert slapping my hands down on their desk very, very loudly) books!” I almost made them all faint. The girls took it the worse, but I saw some boys trying to catch their breath as well. It is little pleasures like this that will help me get through the next 9 months. I know, I know, I’m evil – but you have to have some kind of fun into the classroom. I did a similar thing with the word crazy. When they couldn’t tell me what it meant – I would promptly throw my hands in the air and start screaming, “CRAZY, CRAZY, I’M CRAZY!!” That made them all want to faint again. At least I kept them on the edge of their seat that one day.

Anyways, I told them about my family and how many brothers and sisters I have. They couldn’t believe I had 5 siblings. Here in China, they practice the one child policy. I understand why they are doing it, but it is still a little sad. In the end, I had them get up and introduce themselves to me. All they had to do was read what I wrote on the board and fill in the blanks. The read very well, although all the answers were very similar. Copy cats.

This all in all sounds wonderful to you and it almost sounds wonderful to me the way I wrote it, but the painful truth is that they just didn’t care. I had to beg people to answer me. No one had questions . They were loud. Sometimes they refused to stand up. I heard “I don’t know” 100 different times. I don’t know is their way of getting out of not answering and they know that. They don’t listen. If I was their Chinese teacher they would have stood and greeted me. That did not happen. The do their homework for other classes on the front row right in front of me. It is truly insane. They fight, they talk, they pass notes, throw money and about a dozen other things as though I am not there. A lot of them don’t even bring paper or pencils. I think they think that my class is a free period where they are not required to learn. The worst part about it – is that I think the school knows this and they don’t care. It is simply amazing. That is all I can really say.

This week was on Friendship and Best Friends and all that neat stuff. They were so completely uninterested. I am at a loss on how to get them to want to learn English. I have only been here two weeks, and I am about to give up on the aspect. Maybe I should stand in front of class and just say random stuff and see what happens.

They can’t even remember my Chinese name for goodness sake. Even Phil’s students know my name and they have seen me like once here and there. My students don’t remember anything either. I can make them repeat something and make them tell me what it is – but if you ask them the same question 5 minutes later – they have no idea what you are talking about.

I’ve told some of the bad students that I would eat their souls for breakfast and that I throw bad students out the window and that I even burn homework from another class that is done and my class. I think I may burn the next homework I see someone doing while I am teaching.

Sorry for such the down post – but I hadn’t had the chance to talk about it much on the blog. I have more pictures of the school, but like normal – I can only post one at a time here at school for some strange reason.

Phil and I are going to Hangzhou this weekend to get a train ticket to Shanghai during the first week of October – National Day it is called. It is a holiday for just about everyone. I will be looking forward to going. There is a lot to see in Shanghai. One of the first places I am going to will be a Subway(the restaurant) and eat be a sub sandwich. It has been so long since I have had one.

Who ever it was that told me that Chinese food is good and filling lied. I hate you. And I mean that it the most loving way possible.

Happy Moments . . .

I never thought eating a watermelon would make me so happy. This was taken in Hangzhou. I was starving, and since there was a fruit stand right beside where we were staying – we bought one. Finding a knife was fun. We ran around trying to mime cutting things. After going to a few stores we finally found one. It was one of the tastiest watermelons I have ever had – of course I was very thirsty and hungry. Can you see the joy on my face? I was also happy because I had enjoyed a very nice warm shower.

Walking around and finding crazy translations like this one make us laugh. I have seen worse though. I find myself asking how there can be so many English speaking people here, but then there are things like this. You would think someone some where would tell someone of their mistakes, but maybe the Chinese want to save face and don’t want to correct them. Who knows. All I know is that I find myself laughing a lot seeing all their crazy misspellings and weird use of words. Cafe Diary is only one of the funny ones. I will have to take more pictures like this one as I come across them.

Phil laughed when he found a Pabst Blue Ribbon in the store. He bought it to take a picture of it, and didn’t ever drink it. It is probably still sitting in the refrigerator where we stayed in Hangzhou. Who thought China would have Pabst?

And Pretty Pictures . . .

Here is a picture of West Lake in Hangzhou from atop a little mountain. Pretty isn’t it? We need to go back and spend more time there. We were so tired and hot when we were there last. It was hard to enjoy ourselves. We are going this weekend to get train tickets to Shanghai. Maybe we can see it then.

Bamboo! We went to a place called Yellow Dragon Cave. I don’t remember really seeing a cave – I just remember sweating like a pig and climbing endless stairs. Endless stairs that went on and on forever. I thought I might die. Not even my Bermex training was enough for those stairs. There was this one section completely covered in bamboo. It was very pretty and tranquil. We ran into a nice cop there and tried conversing in our broken Chinese. He ended up taking us back to this little building in the woods and giving us water – God only knows if it was boiled or not. I haven’t died yet – so I guess I am ok . . . I hope.

Well, like always, I have ZERO energy and must go. Sorry if these blogs seem lack luster. But teaching is kicking my booty. I will post more tomorrow. I have so many pictures.

It is the closest thing to a Ace Hardware Store that we could find.

Phil and I were walking the streets of Fuyang one day trying to find a place to eat. We were starving. We were tired. And we were hot. (This is before we started teaching by the way.)

I would have never imagined it would be hard to find food in a city that houses 600,000, but apparently it is. In Hangzhou, all you had to do was walk down an alley way and see a tasty and interesting shop you might feel brave enough eating at. Here in Fuyang it is a little bit different. If you can’t read the signs – you probably won’t know it is a restaurant – unless of course there is a window and you see people eating. A lot of places are upstairs, and unless you know that it is there, you probably won’t be a paying customer. Finding a restaurant can be hard, but it is even more difficult finding food that you can eat – or rather food you know you want to eat. If you find a picture menu – you have found heaven. If you find a restaurant that understands your broken Chinese and doesn’t rip you off because you are foreign, you better thank your Guardian Angel. A part of me feels I am back in Portugal – meaning that there are about 100 billion more shoes, clothes, cell phones, and snack shops than there are actually restaurants. But anyway, that is beyond the point. Onto the key master. . .

In the very beginning, Mr. Zhou,the Foreign Affairs Director of the school, gave us one key to our apartment. One key. There are two of us. Two. And one key. Which means that either we had to go everywhere together or chance leaving the one or the other stranded on the door step. Quite by chance, while trying to put food in our tummies, we came across a key making street vendor. We had asked for another key prior to this, but in China, things are never certain, so we decided to take a chance and get one made ourselves.

I took the key out of my pocket and walked over to the man. I pointed at it, hoping he would understand, and then said how much in Chinese. He held up his fingers in a cross shape which means 10 yuan. Seemed like a good deal to me, so I said sure, why not?

The Chinese Key Master proceeded to make a key more or less by hand right in front of us. It wasn’t like anything you would see at Wal-Mart or a Hardware store. He had to measure and gauge every little notch and then reproduce it on the new key. If this computer wasn’t being such a retard, I would post more pictures, but it will only let me upload the one. Grr. But anyway, about 5 or so minutes later he handed us the key back – we looked at it, thought it seemed ok and handed over the 10 yuan. We had a key. The question was whether it was going to work or not.

We got back to the apartment after trying a noodle shop – where we ate noodles and avoided the intestines. Gross. Phil put the key in the door and it wouldn’t turn. Well, I thought, at least it wasn’t Y100. Phil twisted it a bit more. Still nothing. I went to give him my key, but he told me to wait. He jiggled it a little more and the door opened. The key isn’t perfect, but hey, we both have a key now. And now we have a key that Mr. Zhou and company don’t know exists. Maybe in a few years, we can come back to Fuyang, and take a nap or come in to watch TV or something crazy like that, although I doubt the new people living there would like that very much. Heh.

I’ll post again soon. Maybe tonight. But the school computer hates me and won’t let me do much.

I have not gone into much of our flight over here, so I guess I will take the opportunity to do that now.

The flight was about 14.5 hours long. I don’t care what anyone says. 14.5 hours is a long time to spend on a plane – too long. I was doing ok for the first 6 or so hours, but then I just started going crazy. Crazy is a word I introduced to my students this past week. The way I describe it to them is how I felt for the last long leg of our journey.

Picture someone standing silent and very still and looking very happy right in front of your face. Imagine yourself standing right in front of this person and thinking he or she appears to be the most sane person you have ever seen. Ok? Do you have a good image stuck there behind your eyes? Alright, good. KWAMABMO!!! The person now starts screaming and running around like a mad monkey, throwing his or her arms in the air and then finally puts his or her hands on your shoulder and starts shaking you. ~ Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty. ~

That is exactly how I felt, except I also had an urge to puke on the pretty attendant that would walk by offering me random stupid things that I really didn’t need. Toward the very end I went pretty nuts and came really close to using the barf bag that I have always seen but never needed. I couldn’t even bring myself to eat my last meal. The thought of it made my tummy turn.

When I act out crazy, my student’s flip out and nearly have a heart attack – especially the girls, but I get the boys sometimes, too. I love scaring the crap out of them. It brings much joy to my life. It helps me sleep at night knowing I have forever scarred them. Insert evil laughter. Hehe.

Here are a few more pictures of our flight over. The screen on the seat in front of me really helped me through the 14.5 hours of insanity. I never fell asleep. When we go home, I am so taking some sleeping pills, damnit.

Just seeing the word Shanghai got me excited. Although, it also made this part of the trip drag, and drag, and drag. I thought after 3 hours that our plane had maybe gone 2 inches. I was probably just delirious. I probably was. All in all I was up for about 30 some hours. And we all know that a tired Gabe is not a happy Gabe. I have been nicknamed Grumpy on occasion for a reason. I think I would have been happy landing in Beijing at one point and living there. Anything just to off that damn plane.

After sitting in the airport for 30 minutes waiting for more teachers to arrive we got on bus that took us to a bus station where we got on another bus that took us Hangzhou. I remember at least 3 things vividly. 1 – I wanted to die because I felt like crap. 2 – I thought I was going to die because we had the craziest bus driver in the entire world. It was like we were in a game of Crazy Taxi, but worse. 3 – Are we there, YET?! I didn’t think we would ever get to Hangzhou. It was the longest 70 KM I had ever driven.

We stayed at a place called the Babel Language Center for a few days. Besides the beds being harder then the floor (no I am not lying – it truly was like sleeping on the floor) it wasn’t all that bad. After getting some sleep, though, and some food and water, I was much happier. The picture to the left shows the excitement of my first day in China. The heat of China soon came, though, and wiped that happy smile off my face. As you can see from the picture below, the heat did not make me happy. I should have paid more attention to this day, though. It was one of the last days that I saw a blue sky. I miss my blue skies.

These pictures were taken at West Lake, as was the one taken of me above. West Lake was beautiful. Beautiful and hot. I need to go back when it is cooler. I would enjoy it more that way.

West Lake was covered in Lotus flowers in bloom.

Here are some Chinese tourists enjoying West Lake, the view, and the heat that could of fried an egg on the pavement. I would pay someone to send me a piece of a South Carolina sky or any western sky for that matter. I didn’t know how important a blue sky was until I didn’t have one anymore. I guess that is how things work.

And that means pictures!! Lots of pictures.

Well, where do I begin? There is so much to talk about. So much has happened since we have been here.

Phil has now taught 2 weeks and I just finished my first week. It is hard to believe that I am in China, but it is even harder to believe that I am a teacher in charge of about 680 students(total). In Phil’s classes, he has about 50 students. I am a bit more lucky. At the the middle school they divide the class into two. So, instead of having 50 – 70 students, I have about 30-40 students and sometimes less than that – depending on the class itself. Teaching in China is very, very interesting, and I have a lot to say on that matter, but I want to talk about a few other things first.

I didn’t think that we were ever going to get internet, especially after we found out that the last people that lived here never got it, but I guess our nonstop, “We want internet!” finally sunk in. So, at 9:30am(Saturday the 16th) our doorbell rang. I was half tempted to stay in bed for I was very tired, but decided that who ever was ringing our bell that early in the morning had climbed our 90 steps for a good reason. And that he did. Peter said that he had come with some people to fix our internet. Peter is a teacher at the high school. His English is ok, not perfect, but we can understand each other pretty well. A few minutes later, two geeky looking China Telecom computer techs walked in. They plugged us into the wall, gave us our user name and password.  The password is so retardedly easy that we laughed. Watch Space Balls, and you will understand. After that, they left. It took them maybe 3 minutes to give us the internet we had been asking for something like 2 and half weeks. Grr. And so now, hopefully, unless China decides that they hate me, I can now post pictures and comments to this blog. That will make me happy and give someone something to do when they are bored out of their freaking minds.

Pictures. I was only able to post a few pictures of our apartment. Here are a few more. Remember that there is another floor below us, but I haven’t gone down there to take pictures yet. And thinking it not that important, I may not.

This our dinning room table. The door leads to our balcony. The entire wall is made of windows. This in turn will probably make it very cool in our apartment come winter. I am not looking forward to winter. Not at all.

This is our living room. The sofa and chairs are very comfortable. That is Tim standing in the picture. He lives across town. He is jealous of our living room furniture because he does not have any. I don’t know why he was not provided any. The flowers were a gift to us from the school. I got some more flowers when they took us to the banquet. They laughed at me because I am not a drinker. I mean it. They laughed at me. Grr.

There is a little room dividing our bathroom and our kitchen. Our refrigerator is in this room.  The freezer is on the bottom and the refrigerator is on the top. I keep out of habit, opening the bottom. Hehe. You can see in the picture that there are two types of toilets. I told Phil he no longer has an excuse to leave the toilet seat up ever again. So far, he has been good.

Here is a picture of the walk way on the way to our apartment or to the high school depending on which way you are facing. I really like the trees. They remind me of Charleston in the way that they are all wavy and stuff. It sucks that we have to walk all the way around the wall in order to get to the school. There is no way to get there unless you walk all the way around to the front gates. I’ve been tempted to swim through the lotus pond.

I am going to go ahead and post these and then write a new blog. I don’t like it when my blogs get too long. I hope you enjoy them. And remember – post comments. They keep me alive!!

Hello to all.

Right now I am sitting in the kitchen because this is the only place that we can pick up on a wireless internet connection. It took forever to find. We’ve been walking all over our apartment trying to pick up on a signal. As long as the connection holds, and we don’t move the computer, I should be able to call you soon and blog more frequently than I have been.

Fuyang. . .lets see. We really haven’t seen that much of it. We went to KFC last night for dinner. The Chinese love their fried chicken. I sorta get tired of trying to figure out what Chinese characters on a menu will be good or not, sSo to make up for that I have been trying to eat some western food every once in awhile. Pizza Hut, KFC, and McDonald’s will be my savior these next 10 months. Fuyang does not have a Pizza Hut ora  McDonald’s  We have to go to Hangzhou for that.  It’s about 45 minutes away

Our apartment. It is on the sixth floor and there is no elevator. It sucks, but at least we will get in shape. Our apartment is more than I could have imagined. It is two floors. You first walk into a foyer or big hall way. And right as you enter there is a spiral staircase. On that first floor, on the right side, there are 3 doors. The first room is more or less empty – except for a piano. I wish I knew how to play it. There is also an ironing board and a washing machine. The next two rooms are bedrooms. I think that that is where the two Australians will be staying whenever they get here. On the other side of the hallway are two more doors. One goes to a bathroom and I can’t figure out what the other room is because it is locked. Upstairs is the living room and mine and Phil’s bedroom. Yes, it appears that we are sharing a room. Oh well. At least the bed is nice and soft. It is so much softer than the last bed we slept on. There is also an office, another bathroom, a kitchen, and another little space for our refrigerator. The apartment is more or less dirty, and we have to clean it. Icky.

When we first got here Mr. Zhou(Joe) and our “helpers” took us to lunch. Oh my goodness – there was so much food. It was just never ending. I don’t know what half of it was. But I liked the dumplings that I asked for. I had been craving them since we got here.It seems that I will be teaching middle school and Phil will be at the High School. Lucky for him, we live right by the high school. Me on the other hand, I have to walk, get a cab, ride the bus, or a bike 3-4 miles to the middle school. That should be oh so much fun. I’ve seen the high school and it seems small – smaller than I imagined, but they have track and a inside pool with workout stations.It is very beautiful here. We are surrounded by large mountains, and the river runs right beside the school. We can see it from our window. It is really hot here, though. Oh so hot. Hotter than anything I can remember. If you walk outside, you start sweating – everywhere.

I’ll post some pictures and write more about Fuyang. There is so much to talk about. Until then I guess . . . Zaijian – goodbye in Chinese.

For all of you who have a hard time believing that the Chinese have humor . . . Behold! I have found the proof.

Some time ago I was driving around the Clemson area because that is really all you can do up there besides drink. And we all know that I am by no means a drinker. You can thank not living on a college campus for that. (Thanks, mom. Thanks USC for being so freaking expensive.) But anyway, yeah, I was driving around Clemson when I pulled off in some shopping strip mall parking lot for whatever crazy reason. And that is when I saw it.

Oh, boy, did I laugh. I have eaten at my fair share of Chinese restaurants – all with their respectful names, but I don’t think I have ever seen one as original and humorous as this one. Thank the purple heavens I had my camera at my side. I wish I had gone in to eat, but I guess either I wasn’t hungry that day or I figured out where I needed to be.

But I thought someone else may need a chuckle for the day.

Laughing is supposed to make you live longer.

So laugh because it’s kexiao!