As you can see, we’ve found a way to upload pictures again. At least for the time being. For those of you keeping track, Phil and I are still in Beijing. Our next attempt to get the heck out of this city will be on Saturday the 10th at 11:00 pm by overnight train. So far the weather looks clear so we shouldn’t have a problem in that regard, but at this point I won’t be holding my breath or getting my hopes up. After everything that has happened, nothing can shock me anymore. As long as I get there in one piece, I don’t care how or when I get there.

Because the Internet cafe we use on a daily basis doesn’t have any working ports, we’ve had to upload them via WECL’s computers to our emails and then run across the street and download them to the Internet cafe’s computer desktop where we can then upload them to Blogger. It’s all a crazy mess really, but hey, I get to post pretty pictures again. That makes me happy! : )

So without much further ado, let me introduce you to the lucky five contestants that were chosen for today’s post.

Some elderly people playing Majong at Longmen Village.

I’m not sure who’s driving: the boy or the crazy cat. Located on a wall at Longmen Village.

“Here Piggy, Piggy, Piggy, I’ve got a jiao for you.” One man is about to make all is dreams come true by chucking the equivalent of a penny in this pig’s mouth. It’s the year of the pig, by the way.

I wish this was my front door back home. Everyone would envy me. My memory fails me, but I think this picture was taken at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

One of the 7 dragons on a wall in Hong Kong.

Ah, Internet.

After much searching and aching to feel these little keys at my finger tips while ones and zeros clammer through the world wide web, I have at last located an Internet cafe. I never knew how reliant I was on the Internet until just now. I’m sitting next to two Chinese men. The one on my left is busy blowing up bad guys in World of War Craft and the other is downloading and searching for things I’m not quiet sure of. I do see some weird scantily clad Chinese cartoon characters on his screen . . .

Well, I guess you may want to know how our train ride went. I won’t keep you waiting any longer.

At about 4 pm on Tuesday, we began taking our luggage down the 40 some odd steps that led to our hostel room. Phil was nice and took down the bulk of it. I played the weak and dainty girl and carried down our back packs. They weren’t light, though. Each had a lap top computer and some other odds and ends that we deemed important enough to bring with us. We stood out like the white Americans that we are as we rolled our bright purple, orange and turquoise bags down the streets of Hangzhou. Thankfully, the train station was just a few streets away, but it felt like miles with all that weight. I’ve made a promise to myself to never bring so much junk with me if I ever go to another country for an extended amount of time again.

Our train was due to leave at 6:03pm, so we made it to the train station in plenty of time. It’s always better to be early than to be late, you know, and it can’t be more true than it is in China. As we rolled our bags into the soft seat waiting room, I crossed my fingers and prayed that the ticket takers wouldn’t forbid us to bring all our crap in. They didn’t say a word and I was very much relieved. We plopped a squat and waited the hour an half for our train. The time passed quickly, and soon we heard the call for our ride – train number Z10. I was very pleased to find out our platform was on level ground and that there were no more stairs to drag our crap up. We hopped on the train and found our seat without too much of a hassle. Again our bags caused chaos. The aisle was small, and everyone else wanted to get to their seat, too. We got a lot of stares as we tried picking up our bags one at a time and placing them on the racks above our heads. I am sure that they were wondering why we had so much stuff and where in the world we taking it. Of course, they had no idea that we weren’t tourist, but instead residents like themselves and that everything we had with us were our worldly possessions.

Tired and hot, we finally got everything settled and took our seats. It wasn’t long before two Chinese people came to their seats(directly across from us – like looking into a mirror). They took one look at us and said, giggling of course – “Foreigners” – in English like we weren’t there to hear them. They then looked at the rack above us and saw there was no room for their two little bags and had to find a place to put them. Come to find out, they were on their way to Beijing to study English(they knew some English already). I think that we couldn’t have sat by better people. Talking to them made the trip go so much smoother. The 14 hours was tough, though. 14 hours on any form on transportation is hard. I managed to get about 2 hours of shut eye towards the very end, but it wasn’t enough, really. I wish that we could have traveled during the day because the only thing that I could see out the window the entire time was the light of the buildings and cities that we past. I can’t imagine the scenery would have been spectacular. I rode on a train to Shanghai once, and the scenery didn’t change at all. It was just farms and run down houses for 2 hours and some change.

We arrived in Beijing at about 7:30, just like we were supposed to. Our two new friends asked if they could have a picture of us and we obliged. We said our goodbyes and waited for the train to empty before exiting ourselves. Before we could do this, four Chinese men appeared and asked us if they could help us take down our luggage. We said no, that we could do it, but they insisted. They took down the four suitcases and started rolling in down the aisle. I thought they may try to run off with it, so I kept up with them as best as we could. As soon as we got off the train and started walking a little bit, they stopped and asked for 200 RMB. Phil and I both laughed hysterically and demanded our luggage back. They dropped the price to 100 RMB and we still laughed saying we didn’t even want them to take it in the first place. The price got dropped again to 40 and that is when we decided to take our luggage back into our possession and head for the exit. They weren’t happy with us, but I didn’t care.

We got to the exit with no problems, and met the people that were supposed to pick us up. In the world wind of everything, I forgot to take our tickets back from the ticket taker, and as a result, lost our ability to be refunded, but hey, it could have been worse. It was cold outside, but I had expected worse. Our greeters didn’t say much to us. All I heard way Morning, Cook, and Phillip. I thought maybe they didn’t speak English. They took the majority of our luggage, so I was happy. The trip to our next destination was a bit of a weird one. We seemed to be going the backward ass way, and through the worse part of town. Once or twice I was sure that the person driving was lost. The thought crossed my mind that these weren’t the people that were supposed to pick us up and that we had been kidnapped in Beijing, but that was my imagination running away with me as it normally does. Heh.

We arrived at a sketchy looking gated community that reminded me of a military base. It was actually a college campus. Beijing International Studies University. WECL, the company we will be working for in Shenyang has a sister-school here. They dropped us off at the dorm building that would become our home for the next several days and made us happy by helping us take our luggage up another 40 stairs to the third floor. Let me remind you that up to this point no one had said squat to us in English, so we didn’t have a clue what was going on. We were starving and tired, and couldn’t decide what to do first. There was a place at the front desk to buy drinks, so I got some liquids in me to hopefully quench my hunger. When Phil and I stepped out front to see where exactly we were staying a Chinese woman came out with our room number 310A and started speaking Chinese that we couldn’t understand, but we knew that she wanted us back in our room. My first thought was that we were under house arrest or something like that. Yeah, my imagination running off with me again. Heh.

We went back to the room thinking that maybe we had a telephone call, but the phone never rang. I laid down on the bed trying to figure what in the world was going on and why our room was so cold. This is the point in which I started to panic – but just a little. When I am hungry, cold, and tired, I am just not a happy person. I was all three of these, so you can imagine what I was like. Soon there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find two Chinese men holding a sink. Apparently, our sink was faulty, and they were there to fix it. A few minutes later, we had a new sink, and they left. I was too tired to care what was going to happen – whether the room would start warming itself up or how we would get food – so I did the only thing that seemed like a good idea. I slept. We both slept.

We slept for several hours and awoke to our bellies threatening to start eating anything our eyes saw. It was time to get out and find something of substance before we died. I didn’t care if the guards at the gate refused to let us out – I was going anyway. It wasn’t a problem, thankfully, and the guards let us out without even a word. And what did we see right outside the gate? The most beautiful site to a starving person . . . a McDonald’s.

More or less, we ate, we walked around a few blocks and came back home. And that was a first day in Beijing. Today is our third, and nothing that spectacular has happened. We went to the Beijing Zoo. All most all of the animals were put up because it was freezing outside. On the up side, we only spent 30 RMB to get in, so I didn’t feel ripped off or anything. Also, we went to a pedestrian street and had some yummy street food. I had some fried banana that tasted like a funnel cake. And my favorite – fruit on a stick with sugar drizzled over top.

And what is in store for us now? We will be in Beijing until the the 8th or 9th of February. Then we have to go to Hong Kong to get ourselves legal. That’s a long story; not as long as this one . . . but I’ll leave it to another day.

We’ve made it to Hangzhou in one piece, but it wasn’t easy. Of course, nothing in China is easy. And I mean nothing.

Our trip began by carrying 6 pieces of rather heavy luggage down six flights of stairs. We each took a piece down one flight at a time. Even though it was cold enough to see my breath, by the time we were done I was hot enough to take off all of my winter clothes. After catching our breathes at the foot of the stairs and waving goodbye to our lovely abode, we began dragging all of our suitcases to the front gates of the school. We ran into some Chinese folk on the way. In Chinese, they asked us where we were going. I think they were a bit surprised by how much crap we had with us. We left our stuff at the gate so that we could go give our key and gym pass(which we never used – hence why I am a fatty now) to Mr. Zhou. He wasn’t there and the entire English office was asleep. We had to poke Peter, Mr. Zhou’s man servant, and give him our stuff. He looked completely out of it and I think that he may have forgotten how to speak English there for a moment.

Once that was done, we pulled our suitcases up the only hill in Fuyang and down the other side. We didn’t have to wait long for a taxi. It was a bit of a chore getting all of our stuff in the taxi, but we somehow managed. Two in the trunk. Two in the back seat. And our backpacks on our lap. We’ve both gotten pretty good at saying how to get to the bus station that takes us to Hangzhou, so that wasn’t a problem. There is almost always a bus there. It is a popular route, so we more or less jumped right on. At first Phil thought that he had left all of his money at home, and that gave me a heart attack, but he found it. Thankfully.

The hard part began when we actually got to Hangzhou.

It didn’t take us too long to find a taxi. We flagged one down and he asked where we were going. I showed him the address, but he didn’t seem to know where it was. He called a few people, but still didn’t seem to know. I tried telling him that I knew where it was and that I could direct him. He understood a little of what I said, but it didn’t look like we were getting anywhere. Phil tried putting two of our suitcases in the trunk, but only one would fit. The taxi driver already had something back there. So, we then tried putting it in the back seat. That didn’t make him happy. Phil threw one of mine back there anyway and shut the door. For some reason, the guy didn’t want to take us both even though we could have fit everything in like we did in our last taxi. I let the taxi driver look at the card one last time and gave it to Phil. It seemed that we were going to have to separate to get to where we needed to be. I got in the front seat, closed the door, and off we were. A part of me thought that the taxi driver was trying to kidnap me and had been playing dumb the entire time just to get me alone. Thankfully, that was not the case. He did manage to get me to the PSB. When I got all of my stuff out of the taxi, I made sure to look at my watch. If Phil wasn’t there in the next 15 mintues – I was going to flip out. It wasn’t too long before another taxi showed up and Phil appeared. Whew.

I grabbed the receipts that we had gotten a week before and ran up to the second floor of the PSB while Phil watched the luggage. I got in line at one place, but was soon directed to another line. I went to that line, and was told something in Chinese I didn’t understand. The girl in line next to me said that she told me to wait for a minute. So I did. A few minutes passed, but nothing happened. I waved my receipts again to get someones attention, and was told to take a seat – that someone would call my name. My first thought was, ” These people don’t even know my name!!” I sat down anyway. A few minutes passed, and then a few more, and finally I couldn’t take the fact that 50 other Chinese people had gotten in line and received their documents. I marched back up to the counter and demanded that I get our passports. The lady didn’t say a whole bunch, but when she got done stapling some weird papers together – she ripped the papers out of my hand and stalked off. Not even 5 seconds later she had both passports in hand, told me how much they cost, I paid and out the door I went. It was so frustrating that it took that long to get something that simple.

We had to get another taxi to get to our hostel for the night. I flagged down maybe 5 or 6 taxis and they each told me “no” they wouldn’t take me. There was no way we could roll our stuff there. By this point, I just wanted to scream. It was cold, drizzling, and I was hungry. More taxis went by, and none would agree to take us. Phil flagged one down, and even though the guy was confused on where we wanted to go – he let us put all of our stuff in his taxi. We made it to the hostel, as you can tell since you are reading this. We were so happy that we tipped the taxi driver and said thank you about 100 times.

If only that was the end of the story, but it isn’t. We got a room on the 3rd floor and there was no elevator. We were lucky, though. There was this little Chinese girl that insisted on helping us take it up stairs. We told her we could do it, but she still insisted. With all of our powers combined, we got everything to our room. I gave the gril10 RMB even though she probably deserved more. I just didn’t have any other small bills on me. She said thank you, and off she went.

For dinner we went to Pizza Hut and had dessert at TCBY. It was yummy. Ever so yummy. After that we came home(hostel) and crashed.

The real humdinger will be later today when we go to the train station. As long as they let us take all of our stuff on board, it shouldn’t be a problem. But like I said before. Nothing in China is easy. Nothing. At least if all goes semi-well, I will have 13 hours to calm down before we hit the next leg of our journey . . . Beijing.

– G

Well, it seems we’re moving and leaving that which is wonderful Fuyang. I didn’t mean that to come off so negative, but I’ve just been frustrated lately with the school, its administration, the students, and the whole kitten caboodle. Even though I have voiced my opinions about how wrong some things are – ie – no heat in my room, even though it is 40 degrees in it, mice living in the heaps of trash the students constantly leave behind, even though I threaten to eat their souls, and the student’s never ending assault of “I forgota to-a bringa” paper, pencil, and attentive minds to class, nothing has changed and I now know 8 weeks before I have to leave this place that it never will. To think that I could have made it any different makes me such a donkey’s ass. As our Aussie roommate would say, “Have you noticed that all the wheels have been falling off lately?” Oh, yes. I started taking notice about our second week here. So as much as I will miss the small things of Fuyang – ie – the view from our balcony(it’s quiet picturesque), the surrounding mountains(we’re cradled by them), the quaint town of only 600,000 people(compared to where we’re going, that is a very itty bitty number), and the mild weather in both summer and winter(once again, where we are going things will much different) – it will be nice to go else where in this wonderful, sprawling country that is China. I mean, after this is all said and done with – who is to say when and if I will ever come back. It’s best to see as much as China as I can before I have to leave and say goodbye.

We are leaving Fuyang because our American company and our Chinese company had a little falling out of sorts. One said one thing and the other said another. What it all boiled down to was that our Chinese company was not going to pay for our return ticket home even though the contract said they were supposed to. Contracts don’t mean diddly here. Since Phil and I are poor individuals. our American company decided to cut ties with the Chinese company and send us to a place where someone would pay for our return plane ticket. And that place(drum roll please) is no other than . . . Shenyang, China.

Where in the lollipop is Shenyang you ask? It is about 27 train hours north from where we are now. If you look at the provincial map that you saw at the beginning of this post you’ll see the word Zhejiang. That is where we are currently living. Shenyang is the capital of the Liaoning province and is located about 8 or so hours from Beijing. The only thing I really know about the place is that is currently really cold, there are about 7 million people camped out there, and it’s pretty darn cold. If you want to get the full scoop on it you can go here.

Above is the map of Liaoning. You can see how close we are to North Korea and that makes me a bit nervous. Not only are we going to freeze our butts off this winter, but it seems we run the risk of being blown to bits as well. At least there will never be a dull day. : ) There is a city called Dandong where I can go and look over the border and into N. Korea. I’ll have to make a visit there just so I can say that I did it. How many people can say that they’ve seen N. Korea? I’m not sure when we have be at our school – which presently I know nothing about. All I know is that is an English Training School, but that could mean anything. The only thing I do know is that my last full day of teaching is on January 19th. After that Phil and I will have a 3 week long Spring Festival holiday. On Thursday, we are supposed to get a call from Richard Guo, a man who will be able to answer all of our questions.

The only thing I want in my new school and city is an actual feeling that I matter and that I’ve done something meaningful for my new students. It is a lot to ask – I know, but one can hope – right?

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.