Week 1 Complete

I’ve now been here about 9 days… a seasoned vet, right? Okay… not so much. But, I’ve officially started teaching, but I really can’t complain about my schedule. I have 6 blocks of kids that I’m taking, and I teach each block three times a week (and only 40 minutes at a time!). So even with my prepping and marking, it’s a really light teaching load. That just means I’ll have to be active with my running and I’ll probably watch a HUGE amount of tv on the internet.

After spending last weekend here with D&M, I went out to Darren’s school (where I hope to get on teaching either this year or for sure next year) to meet some of the other teachers and meet the admin. He’s in a brand new school at the Jinshitan campus, and it’s quite the place. The admin seems awesome and the teachers were extremely friendly. For the timebeing I’m happy where I am, but when you can work at a school with 5 other foreign language teachers, or a school that has over 120 BC teachers, it seems easy to have a preference for the latter. We made a stop at the supermarket before he had his driver make the made dash across the entire city to get me home with my 5 bags of foodstuffs in the trunk.

D&M and I spent the late morning and early afternoon of yesterday (Saturday) hiking a beautiful mountain that has the same name as the town I’m in: Daheishi, which literally translates into “Big Black Mountain”. We were out on a great trail that was scattered with temples and shrines of Buddha, and the trees shone red with strips of red prayer cloth that could be purchased at the bottom of the route. Many of the more traditional Chinese people who climb the trail will buy the cloth at the bottom (the red symbolizes good luck), and either tie the cloth to a tree on the way up, or wait until the top where they can also burn incense and say a prayer at the shrine itself. The trail featured a tonne of stairs, as the Chinese seem to make the hikes as accessible as possible for as many people as possible, especially if there are shrines en route. And the stairs were extremely steep in some areas. But old and young both were braving the calf-burning experience of being able to overlook the entire surrounding landscape. Daheishi (the mountain, not the town I’m in) is actually the highest mountain in the Liaoling province, so it’s pretty awesome that I’m only a short trip away.

This weekend has also been a pretty epic food weekend as well. Some friends of D&M (Damon and Shannon) had a huge number of people at their place here in Kaifaqu for Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. There was turkey, stuffing, and all the traditional fixings you could imagine (including lots of beer). I then had a follow-up turkey dinner at “The Real Eddie’s”, a western-style restaurant here in Kaifaqu with the foreign language teachers from my school. Both dinners were delicious and it was great to get to know both the teachers that I’m working with and ones that I will hopefully work with in the future.

Well, it’s after 8am now, so it’s time to try to access some Hockey Night in Canada back home! I’ll be in touch soon.

T

Oh… and my Mandarin is still terrible, and I can still only say about 3 words. But I’m heading to the Chinese Language Centre at my school this week. Wish me luck!