Confessions of a girl with too many options.

I have now been living in Shenzhen for just over one week. School starts tomorrow, so today I have been lesson planning like a serious adult but for the other 8 days I have been running around and exploring everything I possibly could. If you would like to see how large Shenzhen is visit GoogleEarth and searth CTLC Shenzhen Map. You will be able to find my name in the left-hand column to show you where I am respective to the other teachers and the rest of the city.

So far we have visited the western bars and clubs in an area called SeaWorld. This bears no resemblance to Sea World but is rather named for the fact that it is build over the Sea between China and Hong Kong. There are many restaurants serving non-chinese food, if you are interested, a whore-house, Subway, some small stands with pirated DVD’s (already picked up Eclipse) and a couple clubs which we have already frequented. One is named X-Ta-Sea (creative, no?), which has an out-of-this-world Philippino cover band. Lots of Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Hendrix, Lady Gaga thrown in once in a while. The first time we went, my British friend Al, was air-guitaring it up in the middle of a song and the bass player comes up to the table and throws the shoulder strap around Al and gives him control of the thing. After Al realized it was in fact playing music he managed to pull off a pretty good strap of music to end the song with.

We always finish the night with a charming little club called “dclub”. There are some conjectures about the meaning of that ‘d’, most people seem to agree that it means ‘death’ because the person who leaves is definitely not the same as the one who entered. The alternative is ‘d for dignity’ because no one leaves the place with their dignity intact. Either way you look at it, this place is always a bad idea, but people still love it. We have been twice so far and I really cannot recreate the stories with words for you so here are a few key words to get your imagination going: topless men, 10 for $100 Kuai tequilla shots, top of the tallest building in sight, sleeping on sidewalks, hungry at 4am=buying pig feet. I don’t want anyone to get scared, everyone made it home just fine after all that.

I have experienced the Chinese Walmart (terrifying), going to out with a small group in Futian (taking over of bars), New York style pizza (huge chunks of pineapple make me so happy), first birthday of the group (horrible massage experience from 1:45am-6am), catching up on sleep during the day (haven’t done THAT since college), touring Jenna’s school and giving her a tour of mine (both have interesting amenities), watching Tai Chi in the park by my house (thinking of just standing at the back and seeing whether they ask me to join or leave), hiking the Shan (mountain) twice, visiting Boa’an to see where our guys friends live (they had an itinerary all planned out…adorable), bowling in Boa’an and getting competitive (Steve and I have suspended our friendship during all competitive activities), Lunch with girlfriends (lots of things to learn), nice nights out for conversations over dinner (I love the people we are with), discovering new clubs (places close and reopen faster than you can learn them), wandering off on my own and finding great food (maybe unsanitary), sitting through 2 hour teacher meetings in Chinese (which I still do not understand very well), and getting prepared for meeting my students (excited and nervous).

Next weekend we are going to the district Yantian, which has the beach and supposedly hosts a new moon festival during the full moon that is a lot of fun. But until then I am Jessy lao shur (teacher). I will let you know how that goes!

Really we have been here about 1.5 weeks now! Whoa! We have done so much in that amount of time but I still do not feel prepared to be a teacher.

My favorite part of this week was meeting a new friend. Her name is Wang Le and she goes to school at Peking University with us. She is studying Chemistry. Jenna and I were just eating breakfast on campus one day before our language class started and Wang Le walked up to us and asked us some questions about home and what we were doing. we had a quick conversation but decided to meet again the next day to talk some more. So the next day we meet again and talk a little bit before class about her home and she had some more questions about American life. For example, she didn’t know what cereal was. And we had a hard time explaining what the difference between a microwave and an oven was. Think about that. they don’t have ovens here and the only way I really know how to describe it is by saying ‘An oven is a large box that heats up the air and cooks food.’ sounds like a microwave to me (especially since I am neither a scientist nor ann electronics expert). Just funny differences in culture make talking to her fun.

Anyway, we only get to talk for about 20 minutes each morning before class so she emailed me and asked if maybe she could show us part of old Beijing after school one day. Jenna and I were so excited! she knows how to speak the language and she has favorite parts of town. We went to and area called ShiChaHai. It was an area with lots of shops and restaurants around theses three lakes. Very beautiful and popular with tourists. We saw the famous Peking Duck Restaurant and lots of the old style Chinese boats with people riding around.

The we went to an area with Hutongs, which are little allyways in Old Beijing that show what the communal lifestyle was like in the past. Hutong is a word from the Yuan Dynasty meaning ‘well’ which was the central point of the community. We went to a restaurant the Wang Le really likes with Chinese pizza. It was delicious but our stomachs have shrunk so much that we were full in about three bites. Then we walked around the shops and rode the bus and subway home. Very exciting and tiring day.

I was also evaluated in my classroom this week. It went alright, but I was so nervous that I really over-thought and prepared and psyched myself out. I had some good ideas and classroom management but I needed to show the kids exactly what I want them to do and say in more simple terms. I think that is something I can quickly improve upon. It’s just so overwhelming. to be learning and teaching.

Yesterday we also went to the Great Wall. It was incredible. Jenna and I were very excited and we ran ahead of everyone else to make it up to the top. To get up to the Wall you pretty much walk up a vertical stairway. So we were running up like 3 flights at a time and then taking a little break. The guys behind us were just making so much fun of us for being crazy Marines, but it felt good to work that hard. It took about 20 minutes of climbing to get onto the wall.

Once we were up there. you could climb along to the different watchtowers. And you could spend days and days up there just climbing along to new watchtowers. We climbed along to 4 or 5 more towers and then back along the wall toward the slide you can take down. We climbed on top of towers and ran around looking at different parts of the construction, some places had really thin tiny steps and others had steps where the next step was as tell as my waist. Jenna and I were having such a great time and we made the boys taking jumping pictures and sing the Mulan soundtrack with us while we climbed the stairs. It was a fantastic time!

Since then we have just been preparing for lessons and going to happy hour with the group to share stories about our kids and talk about all the things people are planning to do while they are here.