Sino-psis

I have been told that i should ffffflay out this blog a bit and provide some description and orientation for the readers, if you do not think as much, that is too bad:

I have now been in Shanghai for ... a week? almost, that'll be tomorrow night. anyhoo, i've been here a little bit and already it is starting to feel homeish. i'm living in the sw part of shanghai on shangzhong lu at shanghai zhongxue aka shanghai high school. the high school is renowned for its history and prestige and always gets a wow from the locals when i tell them where i teach. many a politician and media star came out of this puppy and hopefully i won't do much to hurt the chances of the students throwing nine grand into the institution this year. my pay is exceptional for a teaching english in china job and i make probably six times the salary that the chinese teachers at this school make. if it sows emnity, i have yet to sense it.

Just today i got my class schedule for the upcoming semester beginning sept 1. i am first to be teaching sixth grade english to native speakers of said language. due to the regrettable fact that this school is an international hs, a lot of kids are here from america, australia, hong kong, etc and speak passable if not better than mine english. ok, hopefully not better than my own, but that remains to be seen. One of the books i'll be teaching is tuck everlasting if that helps narrow down the english spectrum for ya.

second, i will teach ninth grade non-native english. this does not necessarily mean an all chinese class, as there are japanese and singapore kids that have english as their second language and are struggling so are put into the non native classes. mebbe i'll even get a chance to try out my outmoded jap yap, keshi... wo yingai shuo yingwen primarily. i am thinking that this will be the most challenging class for me to teach.

third comes seventh grade history to non natives. history up until 1800 basically and i have to teach it by speaking very slowly so that the kids will understand it. there will be a high emphasis here on vocab and just me telling a lot of stories i guess. history was certainly not my major and never claimed to be my forte, but it is what i was entrusted with and there is not much leeway in switching around courses here. so. yeah. i'll be a history teacher. weird.

last and hopefully all comes a different sorta thang, qita de dongxi, i will be one of the few and the proud to go teach at a nearby middle school affiliated with shanghai zhongxue called shang bao zhong xue. one afternoon a week, tuesday i think, i'm gonna have to cart my ass with this other girl who was here last year over to this school and then (possibly) tackle a class of about 45 kids, all whom are shanghai chinese, and converse. it'll just be a bunch of me talking and trying to get them to do the same as much as possible. i'm hela looking forward to this. scary tho it may be to have a bunch of rowdy middle schoolers to deal with, i think i can handle and even enjoy the assignment. not exactly sure why i was picked, but yeah, i'm syked about that.

we still have a couple more days of orientation and preparation along with taking the requisite blood exam and chest xray or some shibuya so that we can then be declared safe and allowed temporary resident status so we can then get our foreign expert badge and our i'm here legally badge that we have to carry around with us at all times along with our passport so that if we are ever randomly searched we won't be instantly deported or face fines or whatever hellish circumstances that you or that consulate diplomat that came to talk to us that one day can imagine. that man was a trip. all he sees of expats in china is the ones who end up in jail or dead, so it's no wonder he's a cynic and pessimist.

i have eaten now twice at the school cafeteria and have managed to convey my interest in not eating meat successfully, however i feel sheepish when they roll their eyes a bit or leng yixia when i say i chi su (eat veggies) only. hopefully they'll get used to it and i won't have to tell them after a while. everyone who works here seem nice, so i'm not worried about workplace dissonance. the students are the harbingers of doom, i look to them to make my life hell or possibly send me straight to the elysian fields. what are the odds tho.

just took a cab tonight to get a couple of us back from the bund area, by the way which is beautiful at night and there is an almost full moon out which lights up the huangpu river and adds shimmering waves to the wakes of the many lighted watercraft traversing the flowing landscape capped by a horizon of jutting masterpieces each built for a grand purpose not more than thirty years ago and each set on making the skyline its own, and so for some reason we couldn't all five of us get into the cab, guiding maybe, so i gave directions to the first cabbie, but the second one did not understand a word i was saying, the punk, so what happened was he just ended up following the first cab. as it turned out, he understood me fine, just didn't know our high school. now he knows i guess, but that's only helpful if i pick him out of ten million cabs the next time i need to get home. i'll teach em all, one at a time, and maybe a couple of em will spread the word. that was my most expensive cab ride yet, 45 kuai, around 5 bucks, tai gui le! i'm used to everything costing less than two bucks at the most. already spoiled and not yet a week's time.

i'm gonna have office hours every week day from 810 to 410, cuts into the day, yeah, but it'll help me definitely make sure that i'm a good teacher for these kids. got nothing better to do i guess, just me in china, no big whoop. i have to say that the only bad thing i have found so far about shanghai is its water, undrinkable that it is, so all you can drink is bottled water, soda, or beer. most choose beer i'm finding. actually the drink for lunch at the cafeteria is a kind of soup with egg in it and maybe potatoes, i think she called it baotang but not sure mebbe she said dantang that making more sense, but that is intristing for sure. its really good soup, and i like using it as my drink, it just messed with my eating conventions subtly so i'm not sure what to think now when i sit down to eat. is the doufu supposed to be my napkin? asparagus chopsticks? naaah.

ok, mebbe i'll write a part two of this tomorrow, i don't think i quite gave an accurate depiction, but we're getting there. now, lesse if i can sleep past six tomorrow, datd be sumpin. hope everyone's having a good lunch in the ol EST.

e

been cavorting around shanghai orienting myself to his new situation, trying to be all that i can be and not destroy young minds with my lack of teaching skill, assessing my Chinese language skills and searching for appropriate tutelage to mend said skills. i am in shangrila and its all that i imagined it would be. everyone here is enthusiastic and amiable, i haven't yet met one of the so called rude shanghaiese. today a couple of us were walking and some stopped to look at cheap cds. a pengyou of the stall owner came up and began to talk to us in perfect americanese which he picked up by listening on the radio to voice of america since the sixties for at least two hours a day, teaching himself what everything means and learning amazing pronunciation. he also was a diving instructor and taught someone who taught someone who got a gold in the 80 something olympics. it seems as if he'll be around a lot, so he'll prolly be trying out his english a lot more on me and other americans. i just thot that was ridiculous, learning a language from a radio program. but it seems familiar, as if i read a book in my chinese anthro class where the protagonist did something to that effect. it's too bad that class wasn't more engaging or i might even remember the name of that book. ah well.

ate the best korean food tonight, spicy, colorful, filling. this i must learn how to cook. first day of class will be the first and i hope to be ready for it by then. tomorrow i get my class schedule so i'll finally know what i'm teaching, be it most likely english, possibly geography?, and who the aitch knows what else. signed the contract today and so am stuck here until the end of june ostensibly. unless i skip outta town like buddy did last semester, grabbed a girl and snuck down to malaysia. contracts are for the birds says the chrissie in me.

lunch at the cafeteria today was less than satisfying. free, but about as far away from the gratified feeling that a free lunch provides that a free lunch can get. but i figure i can eat it, if i were picky i never would have left the us.

i've said this a bunch to myself lately, but would like to reiterate to the vast internet, i am so in china. this. is amazing.

god bless not america.

e

who can read this

about to go to china, habituating some strange anti jet lag eating and sleeping rituals, getting nervous, staving off nervousness by plugging in to other people's nervoses anxieties etc. totally ready for this to begin. let it