Back In Business

            This all seems a little strange to me now, but I've had quite a few people ask about my blog recently, and so here I am, writing an email to my mother that will hopefully be successfully posted within the next day or two. It turns out that I can get onto blogger to look at blogs, but there is no way for me to actually post anything while I'm here - thus the use of the middle man. Well, as you can imagine, in the two weeks since I last wrote, a great deal has happened. I spent three wonderful days in Hong Kong seeing sites and eating food. Among those experiences were: seeing Big Buddha, having a Chinese vegetarian meal, getting my fortune at the Po Lin Monastery, walking the paths of the Nan Ling Gardens, watching the late night Symphony of Lights, getting a smoked salmon salad --which ended up being sushi of course - I should have known, going to the ladies market a few blocks from my hotel, and then going to see the beautiful temple.

        Since Hong Kong, things have really only gotten better. On our first day we took a two hour ferry to Zhongshan, and there we went through our first customs check. There was a very...sterile (for lack of a better word) feel there. One of the girls in my group took a picture not knowing that was taboo, and she got pretty scared when the guard in his maroon uniform came up to her yelling at her in Chinese. Luckily we had our Chinese coordinator that could understand what he was saying, and she very sternly turned around and asked "who took a picture." I laughed, having been through something similar in Peru, but the poor girl looked mortified. Now, when she tells the story she always says how the guard "told on her" to Celina our coordinator - it makes it sound like Celina is the top dog in Chinese discipline. From the harbor in Zhongshan we took a bus to get to Kaiyin where our apartment is. I was exhausted, but I kept my eyes wide open the whole time just soaking in the images on the side of the road. On the outskirts of Zhongshan there is extreme poverty. The trash and litter lines the roads. There are modern buildings which stand abandoned with broken windows, and additionally, most of the houses that line the roads have caved in tin ceilings. It was a very humbling sight. In some ways, I wish that I were actually having that version of the Chinese experience - it’s the more real experience, but instead, I am here in a resort style apartment in Kaiyin. We have indoor plumbing and a working western toilet. Aside from not having indoor heating, the place is practically perfect. The view from the balcony - yes, we have a balcony - is gorgeous. They take such good care of this place. The vegetation is more beautiful than I could imagine, and I love the trees here. As you look out you can see the hills covered with trees just folding over themselves. I wish it were less smoggy here because I can only imagine what it all would look like on a clear day.
         Tomorrow will mark my second week in Zhongshan and I have loved almost every minute of it. The only reason I say almost is because on the second day I got here, I happened to go to this amazing Cantonese restaurant, but while I was there I ate an EXTREMELY hot pepper thinking it was a tomato. That night and into the next day I started getting sick. The Chinese people tell me that it's because I ate spicy food when it's dry and cold - apparently I'm the stupid one lol. In the two weeks since then I've gotten over the fever and headaches, but I still have a pretty deep cough which isn't fun. Aside from that however, Zhongshan has been perfect. I teach 6 classes a day and the Bond English Language Kindergarten - four of those classes are kids ages 4-6 and two of those classes are 1 1/2- 3 years old. The little ones are adorable, but it's pretty hard to get them to say anything - let alone English - so I basically just play with them :) As far as behavior is concerned - I cannot believe how amazing they all are. I've taught in Nursery, and these kids are NOTHING like that. They have such a great routine, but the school is such that they are also very free to do as they like. Of all of the kids there is only one that gives anyone any trouble. His name is Kevin and he is in my homeroom class. Until this week, I didn't even know the other teachers had classified him as the trouble maker. He's generally really well behaved in my class as well. Anyway, this week early on, I found out that he lost store twice (this means that he had really bad behavior and got three strikes so he couldn't use his tokens to buy a toy at the end of the day). He came into the office crying because he had to see the principle and my heart melted. It was so hard to see him so upset. The next day he was still upset and even a little ornery - he started behaving really badly and lost store again. Today however he came into school and I was a little worried how things were going to go, but he ran up to me as fast as he could, grabbed my hand and said "I'm being good." The whole day he was a star student. He held my hand everywhere we went and just clung to me - giving me hugs and always looking for my smiles. I love this kid to death, and I'm so sad that Winter camp is almost over because that means that I wont be seeing him again unless he becomes a regular student at the school. The other kids are great too. We have such a wonderful time making each other laugh and I am going to miss them all tremendously.

        Once school finishes tomorrow, we are officially on vacation for two weeks for the Spring Festival - or Chinese New Year as most of you know it. In the south there aren't really any big celebrations like the north. The festival is mostly just a family thing down here, but that being said, the whole town is still decked out in lanterns and bunnies since it's the year of the rabbit. It's fun to see it all - it's very commercialized just like our Christmas. Speaking of Christmas ... I thought they couldn't celebrate it here, but they definitely do. Just so you know :) Well, this is waaay long than I anticipated - hopefully next time I won’t have to catch up on so much stuff and so I'll be able to keep my wordiness to a minimum! I love you all though and I hope you are staying safe.