Day 1 (Thursday): At 7:45 a.m.. we meet in the hotel lobby to walk en masse to Changsha Number One Middle School (Yi Zhong) where most of orientation will be held. It is about a 5 minute walk from the hotel but it's very warm and humid already. We have breakfast in the (not-air-conditioned) school cafeteria. All the food is hot (though not too spicy) but it's good. There are actually fried eggs, along with noodles and other things. I realize that I'm going to be eating a lot of food in China without knowing exactly what it is! For our first session, we are in the Library building in the "Media Room", a small (150-200 people) auditorium that is marginally air-conditioned. We introduce ourselves and continue with discussions around daily life in China, expectations, being professional etc. A lot of what is said was in our orientation materials but I'm assuming this is for the benefit of the people who didn't read them. After lunch in same cafeteria, I walk back to the hotel by myself, which seems like a HUGE accomplishment since I can't read anything or communicate with anyone! I'm desperate to get back to a/c for awhile. On my way back to hotel, I see a little boy on the back of a motorbike. I say "ni hao" and he says "ni hao" back! My first independent "conversation" in Chinese! Afternoon sessions go from 2 to about 5: staying healthy and sane in China, being a "wei guo ren" (foreigner) in China and so on. Group dinner at another restaurant, then crash.
Day 2 (Friday). Breakfast at YiZhong. Then from 8:30 until 11:45 a.m. we are sent out on a scavenger hunt. It's hot, it's raining, I'm tired, and I'm trying to keep up with five very young people who think this is fun! In other words, I'm not being a real good sport. :) However, we do end up exploring the city and collecting a lot of the items. We actually get off the main streets and wander up a small alley that is lined with lots of little food stalls, including one making a Changsha specialty: "stinky tofu." This is tofu that has mold growing all over it, then is fried and eaten. Before it is cooked, it is definitely stinky, stinkier in fact that any moldy French cheese I've encountered! But it's one of our scavenger hunt items so we get it. After we hand in all our stuff at 11: 45, we have lunch, then are supposed to prepare some sort of "presentation" to go along with our scavenger hunt items. Fortunately, I have a great, enthusiastic and talented team: Quincy (who speaks Chinese and without whom we would have been up sh--'s creek without a paddle), Cristina, Joe, Karen and Taryn , who will work on this during lunch while I rest and then will hand me my part shortly before 2 p.m. when we are due back! I can only say that what they come up with is amazing: a rap poem in Chinese (the two guys) accompanied by a dance choreographed to go along with the words of the poem (the three girls). Following that, I jump up from behind and shout "Ai-ya" while striking a Kung Fu pose, Quincy does a back flip and then something else happens that I don't even remember. Let's just say the house came down, so I got to look really good without doing much of anything! Sean filmed part of it on his phone so it's been immortalized. Other skits were good too but ours was the best (sez I). However, one of the other teams managed to find ALL of the scavenger hunt items so we didn't win (prize was Olympic pins!). After all this excitement, we talk about more World Teach and China stuff, then meet in hotel lobby at 6:15 to go to dinner at a small restaurant near the school serving typical Hunan food (very spicy). After, there's an optional massage at a place that employs blind masseurs (apparently wonderful) which I decide to skip (1) I'm very tired (2) it's hot (3) it's in a common room so everyone leaves their clothes on for the massage. I can't believe I'm actually passing up a massage! That's what fatigue will do.
Day 3 (Saturday): Breakfast at YiZhong. More sessions about safety, insurance and Chinese history. Our first TEFL class. For most of orientation, we are in the regular school classrooms (not the marginally-air-conditioned Media Room) with wooden desks and chairs, and the classrooms are HOT. Somedays it is so hot that sweat is simply running down my legs. The heat and humidity here are indescribable. After lunch, we have a free afternoon; I stay in hotel room and rest. I haven't been feeling well (cold symptoms) so I decide to skip dinner tonight (apparently a wonderful restaurant called QuanDeLi serving Northern Chinese food). My computer hasn't been working with the hotel ethernet cord so that, along with not feeling well, has been disheartening. Last night, I slept hardly at all, was hot and cold by turns all night, and if someone had handed me a return ticket, I would have been gone in a heartbeat. :)
Day 4 (Sunday): Breakfast at YiZhong. We meet our Chinese teachers and have our first Chinese lesson. I'm in a class with Cullen, Melissa, David, Tiffany, Bridget, Vinny and Kelly M. (There's also Kelly A. in our group.) Our teacher's English name is Maggie and she is positively adorable. And very, very sweet. The Chinese language is daunting, particularly the four tones, but I'm going to do my best. After lunch, we have a speaker, Josh Hill, who is a former WT teacher and now lives in China. He talks about "Forbidden Topics" (Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square, and Falun Gong) that we should never bring up in conversation, either in or out of the classroom. If someone asks us what we think, the best response is "I don't know enough about it; what do YOU think?" Anyway, Josh is absolutely fantastic and presents each topic first from the standpoint of the Western view and then from the Chinese view. I will write more about this later. We have another TEFL class and a forum on culture shock. Our last group dinner is at FanHeYu. Tonight we get stipends (20 rmb per day, about $3) to cover our breakfasts (5 rmb/day) and dinners(15rmb/day) for the remainder of the time we're here. Amazingly, this is sufficient. The best thing about Orientation so far is that, little by little, Chris and Diana are weaning us away from the group, making us become more and more independent in this foreign environment. But at a pace that doesn't seem scary. Although we have had some wonderful dinners in local restaurants, I'm ready to give up the group breakfasts and dinners, have a little more free time, and have some control over what I'm eating. And now the prospect of getting out and about in the city and getting my own food seems manageable!
Day 5 (Monday). TEFL class and Chinese class in the morning. We will continue to have lunch at YiZhong for the rest of Orientation. The food there is perfectly fine. Hunan food is cooked in a lot of oil so that's the biggest "problem" and I'm trying to eat a lot of plain rice and vegetables. In the afternoon, we do our Cultural Observation Activity. We have once again been put into groups, and each group is assigned a particular location to "observe" e.g. train station, Martyr's Park in the morning, Martyr's Park at night, etc etc. My group's assignment is to go to the mall in the center of town. So we hop into cabs to meet at the big statue on Walking Street (more on this later) where we encounter the first (and as it turns out, the only) beggar that I see in Changsha. We walk up the main street to the "mall" which turns out to be more like a department store in layout. There are ten floors in all; the top floor is a multi-screen movie theatre! The most amazing thing is that, when we walk in, we are in the middle of the cosmetics area, and all we can see are: Chanel, Dior, Clinique, Guerlain, all Western brands, not a single Chinese character in sight. We could be anywhere in the world. This continues all through the store: Swatch, Timex, Guess, Etan, Esprit, Columbia, Adidas, Jockey, Cardin, Jeep luggage, Balenciagia and on and on. Later, we put together a power point presentation with photos from our "tour" accompanied by rhyming couplets. For dinner, Allison shows me a little "burrito" stand across from the school where you can get a sort of Chinese crepe, first spread with some kind of spicy sauce and then filled with tofu, cucumber, thinly sliced potato, peanuts and ______ . It's great. Cost is 3 rmb (about $.45). This, along with a bottle of cold green tea (also 3 rmb), will become my standard dinner for the remainder of orientation! That and a few Oreos! Yes, you can actually buy a small stack of Oreos here - they've become our comfort food of choice! We get them at the strangely-named Whacko Market near the hotel. It's also where I buy larger bottles of water and the occasional banana which, because of its thick skin, is one of the few fruits you can eat without washing thoroughly and peeling or blanching/cooking first. Also in this group are oranges and any kind of melon. But you still wash oranges before peeling and melons before cutting into them. It appears that, in the summer, watermelon is a popular fruit here.
Day 6 (Tuesday): My standard breakfast is (1) half of a (very small) loaf of raisin bread from Rosa's Bakery and (2) a yogurt purchased on the way to school from my favorite little shop. The yogurt here is more a liquid than in the US; I generally just drink it! But it tastes fine. Most of it appears to be sweetened already. Today, we have TEFL class and Chinese class, then in the afternoon, we do the presentations of our Cultural Observation Activity.
Day 7 (Wednesday): TEFL class, Chinese class and sessions on (1) making friends in the community and (2) prejudices, gender and race in China. We cannot eat or drink anything after midnight tonight (except water) because having health exams in the morning. I cannot believe we have been in China only a week. I'm amazing at our comfort level after such a short time.
Day 8 (Thursday): We meet in the lobby at 7:45 a.m. to go, in a fleet of taxis, to a "Travel Clinic" to apply for health certificate. This turns out to be quite an adventure. First, we congregate in one room, a madhouse, mostly because there are 50 of us milling around. I'm sure the Chinese who are here are wishing they had chosen another day to come! Then we have to go to the Visa room where someone reviews our application for health certificate, looks at the results of any tests/x-rays we have brought and decides what tests we need here. As it turns out, I need them all as I haven't brought anything with me other than the health forms that had been filled out by my PCP. So I have blood test, chest x-ray, sonogram, height & weight, and urine test. During this whole time, Diana is acting as our official interpreter, and Chris is running around dispensing reassurance!
Giving a urine specimen here is an experience: First, there is someone in the ladies room who has locked the outer door. A Chinese woman ahead of me knocks on the door and the woman inside says something. The Chinese woman goes away. I continue standing outside the door. About 5 minutes later, the Chinese woman comes back, knocks on the door again, and has some sort of exchange with the woman inside, none of which I understand, of course. The Chinese woman goes away again. I continue standing. All this time, there has been no one in the men's room. So finally, I go into the men's room, lock the outer door, and go into one of the stalls which has a squat toilet (all public and most private toilets in China are the squat variety). Need I say it is not the cleanest place in the world (and this is a health clinic). However, I pull down my pants (and roll up the legs of my pants), squat and then try to hold the urine cup underneath me! This is not easy. Thank god there is a good-sized pipe running down the front of the stall that I can grab onto; otherwise, I hate to think what might have happened. The big problem, however, is that I really don't need to pee at that particular moment, despite the fact that I have been drinking water all morning for this very reason. (Problem is compounded by the fact that it is very, very hot here so everything we drink leaves our body in the form of perspiration; I can go for hours without having to pee despite drinking lots of water.) So I have to stay in this ridiculous position for a long time, waiting for the pee to finally trickle out! After all this excitement, we go back to YiZhong for lunch. Afternoon session is on studying Chinese.
Day 9 (Friday): TEFL classes, Chinese class and discussion about our upcoming Practicum (practice teaching). Tonight we meet in the lobby at 7:15 to walk to a small karaoke bar which we are taking over for the evening for the purpose of watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics on what passes for a "big" screen TV in China. All 50 of us fill up the place but there are plenty of chairs, some nuts and dried fruit passed around for snacking and lots of beer and water available! A good time was had by all. :) The opening ceremony is truly amazing. Lots of cheering for both USA and China teams when they came in (also Great Britain, France, Canada and a few other crowd favorites). Some people leave early but I stay to the bitter end. Don't get to bed until 1:00 a.m.
Day 10 (Saturday): Chinese class in the morning. Feel like I'm getting another cold - that'll teach me to stay out carousing with all these young people! We have a free afternoon, so Chris takes me to the "computer" section of town to try to figure out what is wrong with my computer since it won't connect to the internet in the hotel. Well, we find the Dell store and, of course, it connects perfectly to the ethernet cable there! So I decide to buy a wireless router (about $40); they have a D-Link brand which Chris says is good. Later today, Sean helps me install it (let me rephrase that, Sean installs it and I watch). Of course, all of the instructions in the booklet and everything on the installation CD is in Chinese so it is quite an accomplishment. But my computer works! (and people whose rooms are near mine in the hotel will enjoy having wireless too!)
Today was very hot but some adventurous souls decided to go across the river to climb a "mountain" that has path leading to a Buddhist temple. Apparently quite lovely, but I think I'll wait until the weather is cooler!
Day 11 (Sunday): Chinese test this morning (I get a "63" which I consider a miracle of the highest order!) and then our practicum groups spend most of the rest of they day doing our lesson plans. My group is my roommate, Brooke, Kelly M., Vinny and Luke. We decide to do our first set of lessons on the Olympics since all the Chinese are very caught up in it right now. I decide to do a listening exercise with an excerpt from a Time magazine article called "Let the Games Begin." The "kids" show me how to do a power point presentation so I spend a long time putting that together, along with clip art for the vocabulary words! Very exciting.
Day 12 (Monday): Chinese class in the morning; teaching in the afternoon. More on teaching later but for the next few days this is our schedule.
Day 13 (Tuesday): Chinese class and practice teaching. Tonight, my Chinese class takes our teacher Maggie out to dinner. We ride the bus and then walk a little ways to a wonderful Chinese restaurant. As soon as we sit down, the servers bring over two carts just loaded with maybe 50 little plates. Each one looks divine, and I want them all! We settle on a few (these are the appetizers!). Later we order the main dishes. It's an amazing meal. I wish I had photographed all of the carts but I only got one and it doesn't really give a good idea of how fabulous everything looked.
Day 14 (Wednesday): Only one week left until we go to our schools! I'm looking forward to having my own space and not living out of a suitcase. We've been washing clothes in the sink in our hotel rooms and then hanging them in the shower or elsewhere to dry. Again, a day of Chinese class and practice teaching.
Day 15 (Thursday): Chinese class and teaching.
Day 16 (Friday): Chinese class and free afternoon. Melissa, Cullen and I have lunch with Maggie and then go shopping. We go to Carrefour (the big French chain supermarket/store) which I had been to once before (briefly) on our Scavenger Hunt. It's fun having Maggie with us since she can actually read the labels on things! There is a section that has imported food; I'm excited because I see Meusli but then notice that it has pieces of chocolate in it. Don't think I could face that in the morning! So I get Quaker oats (from the Chinese cereal aisle). There's are sections for bicycles, clothing, small electric kitchen and other household appliances, vacuum cleaners, personal care items and so forth and so on. There are many Western brands but as one would expect, they are generally quite expensive. After Carrefour, we go to an indoor Book Market: there are seemingly hundreds of "stalls" each one a complete bookstore. Apparently, this is a discount book market. I would be going crazy in here if only I could read Chinese! We do find a section that has a few "classics" of English Literature so I buy a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame which I've never read. (OK, I know, I should be reading it in French, but I'll do that later!) We can't find the Chinese-English dictionaries we're looking for so we go across the street to XinHua (pronounced something like "Chinois" the French word for "Chinese") which is sort of the Chinese Barnes & Noble, a big chain store, but we find the right dictionaries. We leave Maggie who will take a bus home, and Melissa, Cullen and I hop in a taxi: it's hot and we're tired!
Day 17 (Saturday): Chinese class and practice teaching.
Day 18 (Sunday): Our last Chinese class and last practice teaching. Today, I don't have to teach as it is my "day off." And we have another Chinese test. This time I get an 88 but only because I got an extra 10 points for singing a song in Chinese! So I really got a 78 on the basic test - still a miracle!
Tonight we do KTV at a fabulous place.
Day 19 (Monday): We have a "mock" class all in Chinese - so we will understand how our students feel when we speak only in English. My eyes glaze over after about 5 minutes and I'm wishing I had a book to read. Now I understand all those blank stares in the back of our classes! In the afternoon, we have sessions on Service Projects (in our communities or at our schools), Traveling, and Dealing with your School.
Day 20 (Tuesday): Our last day of orientation. We get together with our Chinese classes to prepare a presentation for the whole group. Our presentation is to sing the Chinese National Anthem! This is not a simple undertaking. Never mind the words, the tune is like the US National Anthem: complex rhythm and melody. But we buy little Chinese flags to wave with the hope that will distract from our singing! Other groups do poems, skits etc. After lunch, Chris and Diana discuss the terms of our contracts with the schools, setting up a bank account, keeping in touch, etc.
This afternoon, as an early birthday gift, Rebecca, Daniel and Quincy come to my room to sing "If I Had a Hammer," Quincy playing the guitar. They are just the nicest young people.
Tonight, Farewell Banquet at lovely restaurant with all of us and principal of YiZhong and representation from Hunan Board of Education. Lots of toasting to Hunan Board of Education, YiZhong principal, Chris & Diana, and ME! Tara gives a lovely toast to my "youthful spirit and adventurous grace" - so very sweet - and everyone stands to toast me. Then, of course, I have to say a few words! Before, during and after dinner, much picture taking by all of all!
There are more details to fill in about this time but, for the moment, I need to move on.
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