I saw this walking home the other day, and had to stop to take a picture. He probably thought I was nuts, but oh well, I got the picture didn’t I?

Back home if you see anyone trying to fix a power line there is always a big truck with a man sitting in a bucket and that bucket is on an arm extending upwards toward the power line.

Not in China.

I don’t know how the Chinese man got onto the power lines. I didn’t see a truck, a latter, or a stool, but he was there – sitting as pretty as he pleased on a little strip of wood that was tied to the wires. As he sat there he kept tugging on another wire that I figure he was adding to the present wires, but heck, he could have been doing anything. I was a meter reader, not an electrician. I just thought it was interesting to see how another country fixes problems like these. You would never, and I mean ever, see a SCEG employee doing this. No sir. Not in a million years. Can you imagine the lawsuits that would arise? I can.

I won’t ever know how the man got down either because after I snapped my picture, I scurried off. I know that China is developed in a lot of ways, but when I see things like this, and I see them more often than you think I would, I wonder how far back China is – in the sense of becoming a developed country. I guess China has a way to go in cities like Fuyang. Shanghai has to be more developed than this, right? I would hope so.

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.

You can thank Phil for making the pretty panorama work. You can use your mouse, click and move it around…. Up, down, left, right, and dizzy! Have fun. This is our balcony in Fuyang, China.

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.

Here she is, folks. My school – well, at least some of her anyway. There was no real way to capture the school in its entirety. It is a rather big school and there are even more students.

The school might as well be my second home, or my first home rather, for I spend more time here than I do anywhere else. I am at the school Monday through Friday between 7 and 8 everyday and get home somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 or 5. I only teach 4 classes a day, but those 4 classes are spread throughout the day. When I am not teaching, I am sitting in my office and playing on the computer – much like I am now. There isn’t anything else to do, really. If I want to go off campus and go somewhere interesting – I have to walk 10 minutes to the RT Mart(Grocery store). It is a lot like a Wal-Mart, if not bigger. There are 3 floors. Top floor is snacks, electronics, clothes, and house items. The second floor is all things cold, fruit, bread, meat, and canned goods. The first floor is like a mall. There are several smaller stores there. There is a KFC and dumpling store on the first floor, too. I haven’t eaten KFC in a while. The place is expensive and steals all my money when I go there. But it hits the spot when I am craving food from home – so I try to not let the whole expensive thing keep me away from it.

I’ve been in China for one month and a day now. It is hard to believe. The time has gone by so quickly. Many of the days have blended together and I don’t know where they have gone. I find myself trying to grasp the idea of where I am even more so than when I first arrived. I see the Chinese people and I hear them talk, there are Chinese characters that I can’t read everywhere and most of the time no one understands the words that come out of mouth – but I still have a hard time understanding that I really am in China. It feels like a dream. Sometimes, I think that I am only just in Florida on vacation and the population of Asians has grown by leaps and bounds.

I think that is one of the hardest things . . . being able to understand that home is 7,000 plus miles away and that I can’t just get in car and drive there. So many things used to be familiar and now almost all things are foreign – except for the universal signs like KFC and the famous arches that have seemed to take over the world. I hear there is even a Dairy Queen in Hangzhou.

It is weird not having a car. Phil really misses driving, and I do too, sometimes. Carrying everything you buy home makes you watch what you buy. Anything too heavy gets left behind until another day.

I have 14 classes left this week and then it is the weekend. Then it is vacation time for me and all the rest of China. National Day is on October 1st, but for some reason we get a week off. I’m not going to complain. During this week we are going to Shanghai to sight-see and to meet up with some Phil’s friends from back home. I am going to enjoy every second of it. It is not everyday you get to go to largest city in the world.

If I am not too busy tonight, I will post more pictures of the school. I have some interesting ones. You’ll see what I mean.

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.

No, I am not dead, although I really did feel like it.

Phil was ever so kind to take this picture of me when I zonked out last Friday night after my first week of teaching. 20 classes at 40 minutes each doesn’t sound like a whole lot, and in a perfect world it isn’t, but when you are teaching little devils, those 20 classes feel like 2 years.

And the good news is . . . I get to begin those two years all over again tomorrow. Yea, for me, I guess.

This week I am teaching the little brats about friendship and best friends. Maybe they will be so into it that they will be hanging on every word that comes out of my mouth. Maybe they will actually ask me questions and want to participate and pay attention. Maybe they will actually stop talking in Chinese the entire class and become fluent in English. Ha. I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I? I’ll faint if just the boys behave themselves.

Guess this is enough for now. I will continue to post pictures over the next few days. I have a lot of them.

Until then.

Zaijian.

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!!

But still no internet in our apartment. Grr.

Doubting that the promises of the foreign affairs director will actually come into to being, I have finally relented and brought my camera to school. They have provided me with a computer and internet connection here, and that is good, but it would be nice to have it hooked up in our apartment. It would make calling home much easier.

Well, first things first. Pictures. I know you guys want to see some pictures. Let me introduce our apartment. I have not taken any pictures of the down stairs yet, but I will get around to that later.

The stairs to the second floor of our apartment adds an additional 17 steps on top of the 90 stairs that it takes to get to the 6th floor. It is a spiral stair case, if you can’t tell.

Our bedroom is right next to the stairs – the first door to the left in the picture. The other door to the right leads to the study that we have turned into a storage room for all the crap we found in the apartment that we didn’t want. We found an internet connection in the study, but we can’t get on with a password. And no one can tell us what it is.

That is the study, and it looks clean only in this picture because it was taken before we threw everything in it. The glass cabinets in the room are a nice touch, but we have no real reason to use them.

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.