David's Big Adventure in China

I’m in Zhuhai now (near Macau and Honk Kong) learning to teach English. I can’t believe I’m diagramming sentences. I didn’t enjoy it when I did it 38 years ago and I’m not enjoying it now! Overall, the class is good but the grammar and diagramming stuff is difficult for me. I know how to write and speak properly but I can’t enunciate the rules very well. There are only 5 students in our class; 2 younger guys from America, a guy about my age from Malaysia and a lady about my age from Siberia. The lady’s heritage is Chinese but she was born and raised in Russia. We have 2 teachers; a guy about my age from Australia and a 34 year old Chinese lady. The facilities at the school are quite good and they feed us there 3 times a day. The school is primarily an English total immersion program for Chinese students so we will use them to practice our teaching as well as some local primary schools.
The accommodations that they have provided for us are not up to western standards. A Holiday Inn would seem like a 4 star hotel compared to where I’m staying. I’m in a 3 bedroom apartment with a married couple (teachers from Australia) and one of the young guys from my class. The bedrooms have a/c but the living room, kitchen and bathroom does not. The weather here now is like Florida in July so it’s quite hot and muggy. I’m sharing a bathroom with the young guy (Patrick) and it’s traditional Chinese style with the toilet being a hole in the floor. The shower is just a section of the bathroom so when you shower water goes everywhere in the room. I’ve been taking cold showers because it’s too hot to have a hot one. I don’t use the mirror in the bathroom except for shaving since it’s not comfortable in there. I open up my laptop and use the screen for a mirror when combing my hair and putting on my sunscreen. My bedroom is about 8’ x 10’ with small bunkbeds, a small clothes cabinet and a small desk.
I haven’t gone venturing much in the city yet as we’ve been quite busy with school. This weekend I should have time for some exploring. I’ll try to post some new pictures soon.
I enjoy getting updates from anyone reading this about what’s going on with you personally and what’s going on in the U.S. as I don’t really get much news here and what I do get is sometimes filtered. Let me know if there are any questions that you have that I’m not answering in my blog or just general feedback about the blog content.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 7:15 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.