Ah. Shanghai. Where do I begin?

Like usually there is so much to talk about, but I’m tired and can’t think of all of what I want to say. I didn’t take as many pictures as maybe I should have, but that just leaves me with more of a reason to go back to Shanghai one weekend. Heh. I could probably spend several weekends there and still not see everything there is to see. Shanghai is huge and spread out. Every street corner has something to behold. Well, I won’t keep you waiting. Here are some of the pictures that I took.

As luck seems to always have it – Phil was sick the day we departed Fuyang for Shanghai. Joy. He was hacking up all kinds of green goodness, but still managed to get all of his stuff together so we could make it to the train station in Hangzhou on time. This is a picture from the back of the bus we took on the way to Hangzhou from Fuyang. The bus, like every other bus, was bumpy for the entire hour we spent on it. I am beginning to think that buses here don’t have shocks because you feel even the tiniest bump.

We got to Hangzhou fine. That was the easy part of the trip. Getting to the train station was almost easier because all I had to do was hand the cabby the paper that Ruby(some random Chinese woman) had written on for us last week. It had the name of the station on it. He took off, and before long we were there. Then came the hard part. We had to try to buy return tickets by ourselves without a Chinese helper. With my phrase book I wrote down in the worst Chinese ever that I wanted 2 soft seat tickets from Shanghai to Hangzhou on the 7th of October in the afternoon. It went pretty smoothly, almost too smoothly, and I would find out later why. She handed me the tickets, I glanced them over, and deemed them correct. But they weren’t. And I didn’t figure it out until we were in the waiting room for our train. My eyes had been deceived! Everything that I wanted was on the train ticket except for one minute and very important detail. That little detail was that the ticket said from Hangzhou to Shanghai and not Shanghai to Hangzhou. 96Y down the tubes, but oh hell, at least it was only the equivalent to $12. It could have been worse. We got on the train anyway, hoping that we could fix the problem once we got to Shanghai. I can totally see why Eric, a guy who came to China the year before us, brought a Chinese friend along with him on his long distance travels.

Poor sick Philby. He didn’t enjoy his trip on the train to Shanghai. I wasn’t feeling all to great at this point either, but Phil was a lot worse off than I. Doesn’t he just look so sad in this pictures? He’s seen better days for sure.

Shanghai Train Station is a freaking maze to get out of. Or at least it was for us. I don’t remember seeing a single exit sign that actually led to an honest to God exit. We eventually had to go through an entrance door and that was fun because we had to push up stream through 100 anxious Chinese people who wanted to get IN the train station. It was a moment of LET US OUT LET US OUT vs LET US IN LET US IN(please see the movie Clue to understand this.) And then we had to try to find a taxi who could find Xikang Road where our hostel was. That was an adventure as well, one that got me all frustrated. All I wanted to do was get to the hostel so that we could go and find some food, but no taxi driver wanted to spend any time on us and when we finally got one to stop – it took a good while to finally get him to understand where we wanted to go. It took a bit longer for him figure out which end of the Xikang it was on. Did I mention that it was raining? No, I didn’t think so.

Here is one last picture of the train station before I head to bed. I will post more pictures and tell more stories of our week later, but I be a tired woman, and I need my beauty sleep. I was still sitting in my seat when I took this photo. I don’t know why I took it – it is just a man walking slowly down the platform. I wonder what he was thinking at that precise moment in time.

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.