Life in Zhongshan

Well, I have been living in Zhongshan for about 4 days and I don’t think it has really set in that I’m living in China. I heard it might take a month for that to happen though. We’ll see.

MY APARTMENT

It set up dorm style. You walk in and the bathroom is immediately to your right. It has a sink, toilet (western style-thank goodness! I have not had to use a squatter yet and I am fine with that, I know the time will come) and a shower head. The shower curtain runs between the toilet and the sink with the shower head on the toilet side. So imagine taking a shower with your toilet just chillin over there in your shower with you. It’s weird. But nice for shaving legs purposes. I think I’ll get used to it. The whole bathroom floor gets wet when you take a shower though because it’s just not separated.

The room has 2 beds, Darci is my roommate. She’s great! We have so much fun together! Random dance parties, pity parties, freak out moments, “late” nights out on the town, food adventures, and just all kinds of fun stuff. We have a mini fridge which is super nice because it means we can make our water nice and cold! There is actually a 3^rd bed but it doesn’t have a mattress. But by mattress, I mean box spring. That’s what it is. We sleep on box springs. Not the most comfortable things ever but it’s all part of the experience, right?

At the end of the room is the door to our balcony where our washers is. No dryer, you just hang your clothes up. We haven’t done laundry yet though. That’s an adventure for another day. But another day soon. Just off the balcony is a small room that is our kitchen. We have a water container with purified water, a microwave, a toaster oven (I used for the first time last night to prepare muffins for my 1^st lesson today) a sanitation thing (like a dishwasher maybe?) and a little skillet thing.

Overall our apartments are pretty nice. We have air conditioning and everything (I don’t know how I would survive without it!)

FOOD

I don’t even know where to start. The first night we arrived our coordinators had brought us food for dinner and breakfast. The fried rice was alright but it tasted a little funny. The rolls they brought us for breakfast were so good! For lunch we ate at the cafeteria. Cafeteria food…is…interesting. Ok, I’ll admit. The food is hard to eat. I didn’t think I would struggle because I’ve never really been a picky eater. But this food is so completely different! Rice is the most constant thing in my life. I’ve had some super spicy food here too. My recent encounter with a jalapeño helped a little bit (in my summer job back home after work one day we all decided to eat a whole jalapeno, seeds and everything and you had to chew it too-my mouth was on FIRE). So the food was spicy but not THAT spicy. Some of it is delicious; you’ll get lucky and just love what you picked. Some of it is…less than delicious and it’s hard to finish.

We ate there Friday and Saturday. But by Saturday night I just really didn’t want to go, I would almost rather just not eat. And anyone who knows be and knows how much I love food should have a pretty good idea of how much I didn’t want to go. So we were talking to the foreign coordinators and they told us about this Muslim noodle place that a lot of past ILP students have loved (I’m not sure if this is the one Wendy told me about). It was just down the street from where we lived. I do not think words can express how amazingly delicious that food was. They were the best homemade noodles (we literally watched him make them) with this meat, not sure if it was lamb or beef and it had cumin and some delicious sauce. It was a huge plate of noodles but I was so hungry and it was so good…long story short, I ate all of it. I think that was the first time I felt full since I’ve been here. I think the meal cost me about 2 American dollars but it was so worth it!

I ended up starting my fast on that meal. However, we were suppose to tell the cafeteria when we weren’t going to eat there because they didn’t want to waste food. Wasting food here is a big no-no. But we forgot. So breakfast and lunch roll around and we haven’t gone to eat because we were fasting. But I guess on Sundays none of the other teachers are there so they only cook for us, at least I think, the schedule is not really sure yet because weekends are different that weekdays with meals. But no one showed up and I guess the kitchen staff was upset. So even though we wanted to keep fasting they had set out plates of food for us so we went and ate it. I feel like they had put huge mountains of food on our plates. And it was the less than delicious kind. But they were sitting there not watching us eat…but kinda. It was so hard. But we wanted to please them so we ate as much as we could. Our motto for that moment was “we can do hard things.”

Breakfast this morning was really good though. They had these pastry things. China can make some pretty good bread. I ate dinner at a pastry shop and it was delicious and cheap. I love, love, love bread. AND I love that its cheap.

Cafeteria food is just hit or miss. Like I said, sometimes it’s delicious, sometimes it’s less delicious. But it’s getting better and I’m learning what I do and don’t like. So that’s good. Muslim noodles are AMAZING. And I’m super excited to try dumplings. I hear they are pretty good.

WEATHER

It is so hot and humid here. Well, pretty hot…mostly HUMID. Its hits you every time you go outside, literally. I’ve always been a shower in the morning kind of person….my whole life. But since I’ve been here I love taking a shower at night because it gives me a few hours to actually feel clean. I’ll feel gross once I go outside. And it seems especially worse if my hair is still wet. So, imma showering at night now. It’s been pretty hot these few days too. I think its suppose to be really nice next month though. I can’t wait!

TEACHING

Today was my first day of teaching and it was pretty crazy! We start with all the kids in opening and sing some songs and talk about the weather and stuff before we divide up into classes. We have the younger kids (6 of us teach Kindergarten ages 4-5-the other people have 8 people teaching primary ages 6-8/9) some of which have never done ILP. So they don’t know any English. It’s hard to communicate but the challenge makes for some fun times. Of the kingergarten group, my group (3 of us) got the 4 year olds. So we pretty much got to name most of ours. Darci and Jace (the people in my group) and a few that already had names but NONE of mine (my homeroom) had names so I got to name all of them. There are 6 kids, 2 girls and 4 boys. There is Wendy (Kinda after Wendy Smith, but mostly because I just love that name). She is adorable, she was crying when we was first dropped off but was pretty happy by the time I had her to teach again. Ella is cute little girl who is really smart. The first boy is Marcus. He was the first one I met, he is a talkative little fellow who likes to make the other kids laugh. I have to keep reminding him not to speak Chinese. Ben is a little sweetheart who doesn’t talk much but likes to participate. Joey is just a little guy who just sits there. It’s hard to get him to participate but I think once he gets more comfortable he will talk more. Tim is a little boy full of energy, kind of destructive energy he kinda likes to hit things. The other teachers playfully call him the ‘devil child’ but his energy just needs to be channeled better. He will be a fun little challenge. The kids are adorable though! I love them so much already!!

GENERAL

It’s so interesting being the minority. Everywhere I go I see Asians (big surprise, huh?). All around me, in advertisements, just everywhere. I can’t understand Chinese at all. I remember listening to conversations in Spanish and having at least a clue of what was going on. But here, even when I kinda know what they are talking about, there is just no way to understand. I love people watching. When I’m on the bus, walking on the street, waiting for the bus. You just learn so much!

The people in my group are great we have so much fun. I just spent a couple hours practicing a choreographed dance to “My Heart Will Go On” because we’re in some talent show that they told us about when we got here and we perform on Friday. It’s gonna be awesome! We just have so much fun with everything we do. I think we’re gonna be a pretty close group. We’ll at least I hope so.

I can’t really think of much else right now, plus I really want to go to bed…so goodnight!