East Lake, sickness and mosquito hunt

So its 12:30am and I should definitely be sleeping considering I have to get up at 7. But I am awake for three reasons:
1. I had to mark 45 two page tests.
2. The nightly mosquito hunt has gone on longer than usual.
3. I'm becoming unhealthily addicted to Starcraft 2 (this is mostly the reason)

Blog instead? My thoughts exactly. Let me update you on the last few days.
On Saturday I did my first real touristy type thing since being in Wuhan. Me and another teacher decided to go to East Lake, which is the biggest lake within a city in all of China. It was about a 30 minute cab ride away so I went to meet the other teacher up at Xudong and then we set off with my trusty Ipod map guiding the way. I've gotten into the recent habit of getting around by pointing to my destination on my Ipod. Which sometimes works and sometimes ,like the last time i took a cab home, fails miserably. But it is a hell of alot better than trying to pronounce "Wo xiang yao qu Nan Hu Hua Yuen Xie Xie, Hao ma?" which i usually have to say to get myself home.
When we pulled up the main gate I was excited to see the amount of trees and how quiet it seemed to be in this part of the city. We walked around the lake for about 3 hours. There are many paths and walkways to go down as well as a bunch of random amusement rides and restaurants on the water. It was beautiful. The picture above I took standing on a dock just before we took a boat ride. The man stopped us and wanted to take us for 50 kuai, so I laughed at him and kept walking. He lowered the price and I agreed. My first successful haggle in China. We got in the boat not knowing what to expect. This man turned out to think he was in some sort of Jackie Chan movie and decided to pull crazy stunts in the motor boat and scare the hell out of us. The ride lasted maybe 5 minutes and I was kind of upset about the fact that I just payed 40 kuai for a 5 minute boat ride. Here I was thinking I got a deal. Anyways we continued walking and saw huge ponds of lotus, alot of pagodas and on the other side of the lake we could even see Chairman Mao's private villa where he stayed in the summer. Next time I go to East Lake i'm going to for sure check it out.
In our 3 hours of walking we barely saw half the stuff there is to see on the lake. You can take a boat across and go to a zoo where they have Pandas apparently. On a side note I taught a kid named Panda on the weekend. I really couldn't contain my excitement upon learning his name. Off topic. I posted a few pictures of East lake as well as the massive mall we visited after on my flickr site. www.flickr.com/photos/coreyinchina
When I say massive, this is in Chinese terms I'm talking. They build everything massive. Perhaps trying to compensate for..... yes.. So this thing had 6 floors, an arcade, a Ferris wheel, bumper cars, a movie theatre, basketball nets and tons of things i can't read. The food we got in said shopping mall was the cause of the second title of this blog, sickness.

After eating saturday night I woke up Sunday with a bad fever and a terrible stomach ache. I was yet to get sick so I was wondering when that would happen. It seems inevitable when getting used to new food, air and an incredible lack of cleanliness in China. Oh I forgot to mention I also was supposed to teach on Sunday. We have a holiday on Wednesday so you'd think, well thats nice the kids and teachers get a 4 day week. But China doesn't lose education over silly holidays. They work there kids straight into the ground. In protest and in sickness I decided to take the day off. My grade 4's were just reviewing for a test anyways and It would do my grade 5's good to just go over what I taught them last week. Which was about Boy scouts and Cub scouts, by the way, for some strange reason they think that it is an important part of learning english.
I lied around all day yesterday and finally recovered so today I went back to work feeling a little better.
Now let me explain my nightly ritual to you all. The great mosquito hunt. I had no idea China would have so many at night time.
The first few nights here I would just sleep with the blanket over my head and hide but I apparently have an annoying need to breathe oxygen (if you could call chinese air that.) I keep all my doors and windows closed all day so I know there is only a set amount of mosquitoes present each night. If I get all of them before bed I will have a peaceful sleep. If not, then one little bastard will bite me constantly all night while I flail helplessly in the dark.
So i turn on all my lights and stand in the middle of my room, usually half naked, and I wait. I stand perfectly still and see If i can see any flying around or lure any towards me. If that doesn't draw them out I go and shake all my clothes on the floor and my blankets. I can't explain to you how smart chinese mosquitoes are. I've seen them hide behind things when i turn the light on, land and disguise themselves against dark things, or hide under my bed until I am not looking. Mosquitoes back home seem to hover around you aimlessly but these things hit and run. Maybe they are tiny robots controlled by the government. Who knows but I need to do something about them. My hunts aren't usually 100% successful. I bought some sort of mosquito repellant thing that plugs but because I can't read chinese I failed to realize I needed to buy the fluid for It also. So annoying.
Since I started writing this blog, Corey: 2 kills Mosquitoes: 8 bites

Anyways, tomorrow I don't have to go to work but I still have to get up early. Me and some of the other teachers who arrived late are going to the police station to get our residency permits. Actually I don't have to work for the next two days because like I said Wednesday is a holiday. Awesome. So goodnight everybody, hope all is well on the other side of the world.

Life in Wuhan

I finally got into my blog! I've been having problems logging on for the last few days or so. I have to go through a website that blocks my IP so i can get onto blogger.com because blogger is blocked by China. So i hope people have not lost interest and will continue to check up on me and my crazy adventures. Let me fill you in on my last week or so.
but first!
The top 5 weird shit i've seen while in China so far.

5. People smoking in a Hospital
4. Having a man grab a live chicken out of a cage break its neck, drain its blood and boil it beside me while I was eating a meal.
3. In the middle of the morning the entire school goes into the field and does a synchronized dance (picture 2000 asian kids dancing to techno) and then after lunch, everyone in China has "nap-time," even government workers.
2. Students will give ME a present on their birthdays.
1. Parents will whistle to their children to get them to pee/shit on sidewalks (some strange form of auditory potty training)

I am almost positive I will have a new list at least each month, as each day i'm learning and seeing strange things.

So i'm sitting here at about 9pm putting off marking my grade 5's workbooks. They learnt about writing letters the other day and I got them to write a letter to their grandparents telling them about their teacher Corey. Not actually, just a pretend letter. Last week they had learnt how to vaguely describe people so to describe me I also taught them the words; tattoo, beard and earrings along with extremely handsome and very strong. To be fair they had the option wether to include those words or not but let me read you an example of one of them:

Dear Grandma and Grandpa,
My teachers name is, Cary. He is very clever and cuet! I'm very like his english class, and he teacher very well! OK. I'm very good! Bye Bye
Love,
Eive

I think I will see past the misspelling of my name, the obvious spelling errors and lack of using "extremely handsome" because you can't read that and not think it's adorable. I am learning more and more how to be a better teacher everyday and i'm glad I am "teacher very well!"
I've been taking extra jobs at different schools also and its been giving me the opportunity to see how things are run elsewhere. I'll have to say the kids at this school are geniuses compared to the other two schools i've been to. First, to help clarify the stories and future stories, let me explain a bit about the geography of Wuhan.
Wuhan is divided into 3 huge parts: Hankou (the biggest), Hanyang (the most scenic) and Wuchang (where i live). They used to be three distinct towns a long time ago until the two hans joined the wu and became Wuhan. Wuchang is seperated from Hankou and Hanyang by the Yangtze river, the most famous river in China. My school has three branches in Wuchang. The one we live above is where I work and is known as the Nanhu branch in southern Wuchang. The Main branch is in eastern Wuchang and the Mae ling branch (which I just call Xudong) is to the north near the bridge to Hankou. Everyone follow? haha
Today I worked at a school up near Xudong (pronounced shoo-dong.) It is a primary school much like the one here except for one fact; The students there either don't care about english at all, or have terrible teachers. Judging by today I assume it is a mix of both. I went in there and taught three classes of 3's, 4's and 5's. At my school I can almost openly communicate with alot of my grade 5's and they more or less understand what i'm saying but there, simple questions I asked like "how old are you?" or "where are you from?" blew right over their heads. I tried to play simon says with one of the classes but it failed because they didn't know what legs were. One of the teachers told me after that they do not really practice speaking out loud or writing english. They just kind of listen to the teacher read some stuff and repeat what they hear, not really learning the meaning along the way. When I asked them individual questions they looked terrified.
When I went to teach the grade 4 class their teacher stayed and decided to help out.
Oh ok well heres the problem, I thought.
The girl who I had seen outside the school and assumed was a hooker walked in with a microphone strapped to her head, a very tight dress just barely covering her ass, a rediculous amount of makeup and high-heels. "I am their english teacher!" the hooker/teacher said "My name is Minnie!" how perfect. My dogs name.
She saw that I was asking them "where are you from?" and trying to get them to respond "I come from China" and walked to the board and decided to try to help out. In big letters she wrote "What do you come from?" and started asking the students.
I looked at her sideways and didn't quite know how to tell her that it was clearly a WHERE kind of question. Unless of course the answer was the womb of my mother and judging by the students current performance I assumed this was not the case. For the first time I actually realized the value of having us foreign teachers here to teach english. It is generation after generation of bad chenglish speakers teaching each other until a native speaker steps in and breaks the chain. I see now why they pay for everything, put us up in nice apartments and treat us to expensive buffet dinners.
I came home and really looked forward to teaching my students here tomorrow. They are miles ahead of those students and its a great feeling knowing that our kids here will have a better chance out in the world because of us. That's really what teaching is all about I suppose.

I have so many other stories I wish I had time to write about. Like Sunday, how i got lost on my way to the other job in Hankou and some random man took me for a drive on his scooter to help me (which was terrifying.) Or how I walked out of class yesterday to see a little boy during recess with a microphone singing poker face by lady Gaga. It seems during recess they have a little talent show in the field with a different person each day.
I'll also have you know that I went to the club again last weekend and DID NOT get picked up by a gay guy. But we strolled in there and didn't spend a cent on drinks like before. I've gotten over the feeling of being a monkey in a cage whenever I go out and started to embrace it as kind of a celebrity status here. Everyone just looking at you, they all think you have lots of money or are someone famous from the west. Little do they know I'm a poor musician from a boring city in Canada.
Anyways I have to go mark the rest of the letters about me. I have been meaning to spend a day taking more pictures from around my school and Wuhan, I will do that as soon as I remember too!
Goodbye while I go flatter myself,

Corey

Settling into a schedule

So it's been awhile since i've written a blog on here. Mostly because i've begun to settle in to a daily schedule of teaching and planning lessons. Let me update you on the last few days.
On the weekend some of the foreign teachers decided to go to a big chinese club called Soho. Beforehand, we taxied over to another teachers apartment for a good ole fashioned pre-drink. Because I am so intelligent and lose things every 5 minutes, I decided it would be a grand idea to leave my cell phone in the taxi on the way over there. I've had the thing for two days. Go team me. I thought I would never see the thing again but Sean with his limited chinese skills somehow managed to call my phone, get the driver to pick up and direct him to meet us to give it back. I offered the driver a smoke and 10 kuai and after he looked at me like i was a cheap a-hole I went merrily on my way, happy to have my cell phone back. Since being in china I have already lost one of my teaching books, broke my sunglasses and left my cell phone in a taxi. Not bad for a week and those who know me well, understand this is normal life for me.
Anywho, so after purchasing a bottle of bai jiu (this stuff is nuts!) and its less potent friend jin jiu, we wandered our way into the club. Apparently, they don't ID here or wait in lines, you can drink your own booze on the street outside the club and also smoke inside. Awesome.
Almost immediately I noticed that we were the only foreigners in the entire place and was also quick to notice the blond haired, metrosexual asian man dancing on the stage singing a crazy chinese pop song and yelling at the audience something completely unintelligible to me. I guess he was like the MC/pump the crowd up guy/fashion statement guy that we sometimes see at our clubs. The place was huge. I was also happy to notice that almost every one at the bar wanted us to come drink with them at their tables. One man gathered us all around his table and bought a 1000 kuai bottle of hennessey and started handing it out to us. He pretty much just kept yelling "I'm sooo crazzyyy" and dancing around handing us shots and drinks. What a hilarious man.
Later on said man was dancing on a riser and pulled me up to dance with him. I thought alright, this guys just the most friendly wild asian man here and loves foreigners. He yelled lots of things in my ear that I could not make out and somehow in all this I ended up giving him my phone number. God people are friendly in Asia. After leaving the riser I noticed all the other teachers laughing at me. Apparently this man was gay and had tried to pick some of the other teachers up also, which is why they weren't drinking with him anymore. Well then.
Between the hilariousness/awkwardness of that, the bai jiu and the triumphant return of my cell phone i'd say it was an overall good night. None of us payed a cent. It seems it is somewhat of a social status thing to be the one in the club partying with the "wei guo rens" in China. At least in an area with very little foreigners.

When monday strolled along it was time to get back to work and start my first full week of teaching. Every monday they have a big ceremony in courtyard/soccer field thing, much like last week. I strolled down there and to my surprise I noticed I was the only foreign teacher present. The others had all opted to sleep in. I soon learnt why.
Nemo walked up to me and said I was going to speak in front of the whole school again. They have a thing called the "sentence of the week" in which one of the foreign teachers gets on the mic and teaches a phrase to the entire school of 1500 children. I was really not prepared for this and had not thought of a "sentence of the week" and "fuzzy panda kill robot good" was out of the question today. I begged him to let me go next week in order to have something actually prepared and thankfully I got off the hook. Anyone with any suggestions for the sentence of the week for next monday i'd be happy to consider them.

I currently just finished marking 135 workbooks and making 5 lesson plans for tomorrow. Slowly I am learning some of my students names, personalities, strengths and weaknesses and also how to be a good teacher. My grade 5's are learning how to fill in information like first name, last name and addresses. The chinese don't have the same concept of names as we do and you would usually refer to a person here by their title first and then family name. Only close friends or family would call them by their given name. Explaining to them that I have three different names and that my family name was at the end actually took a whole lesson. I gave them their full names for the first times by explaining they would use their english names first and their chinese family names last. This also gave me an opportunity to learn some more of their names and I have a few more interesting ones for you. I have a kid named Dragon, Butterfly, Angel, Grace, Hope and one kid named Bob! who insists that the ! is and essential part of his name. In Lloyds class it seems they are even more rediculous. He told me he has two kids named Banana and one named Milk. What crackhead english teacher or parent named these children? Or perhaps they named themselves. I think if i was young and had the opportunity to name myself I would've definitely gone the route of my grade 4 and named myself Dragon. So badass. I expect great things from him.

I'm learning more everyday how to plan lessons properly, how to make sure each kid understands what I am teaching and how to control my classroom. Some things make them go bonkers while others bore the hell out of them. Its all a balance being a teacher and I find it stimulating, challenging and creative. Tomorrow the school is taking all 21 teachers out for big dinner. They really take care of us here and are very happy to have us. I will try to keep my blog updated and also take more pictures of stuff!
all is well,

Corey

P.S I will also be filming a video of the kids doing the MJ routine again soon. Be prepared. It's a magnificent achievement in cinematography

First Day of Teaching

So i woke up yet again after a restless sleep, excited to start my first day. I was unsure of when first class even started so I went down to the English office where they told me I was pretty early and that first class was not until 8:40.
I prepared all the stuff I wanted to show my kids for the first lesson. Before I left I bought a whole bunch of pictures of Canada: a Canada goose, a beaver, a mountie, a picture of the parliament buildings, some people playing hockey and a mini-stick and ball.
I walked into my first class, which was a grade 5 class with Nemo as my co-teacher. "Good morning everyone!" they responded in unison, "Good morning teacher!" I couldn't help but smile. I wrote on the board my name and first got them to pronounce it properly. Originally, I thought they would have trouble with the R in it but they all seemed to say it well enough. I then got them to guess my age and what country I was from. They guessed right within 15 seconds (besides one kid in every class who yelled out 100!)
I started pulling out pictures. First the goose. "What animal is this?"
"A Chicken?" "A Duck?" "A Goose?" apparently they do have geese in China.
The next one ought to freak them out. I pulled out the picture of the beaver and everyone had no idea what it was. The best I got was a "fat mouse!"I taught them the name and told them that it ate trees. They are so receptive and excited about everything.
I then pulled out the mini-stick and the class went bananas! They might have thought it was a beating stick of some sort and I was about to go chairman Mao on their ass but I explained and took the ball and shot it against the wall.
"Hockey!"
"Oooooohh!"
hilarious.
After I introduced myself I started asking them to stand up and say their names and what they like to play. Some of their names were great. I have about 3 Coco's between all my classes, 3 Leelees, a girl named Cori (they had a laugh at that) and one girl named Poetry. Incidentally, Cori sits beside Cindy, which is my moms name and in my second class I have two girls in the front row named Alexis and Carley. Its funny when they are named after my friends and i'm looking forward to yelling "NO, Cindy that is wrong!" sorry mom.
Next, I decided to have some fun and taught all my classes three things. First was high-five. I had tried out high-five on one of the children in the hall before class and he looked terrified and thought I was going to slap him across the face. As much as I enjoy slapping small folk, this lack of high-five was not going to fly.
The next thing I taught them was props. I wrote on the board P-R-O-P-S and they looked at the word very confusingly. They actually caught on really quick, and soon enough I had a class full of gangsters eager to props me and give me high-five. great success.
The last thing I taught them was a throwback to my elementary school days. Hands on top! That means stop! I thought hey, might as well bring this to china. Maybe I will start a trend. They seemed to love it and after I let them talk for a little bit I yelled "HANDS ON TOP!" and bang: instant response. instant class attention. I am going to enjoy this.
By far the best part of my day was teaching my last class, 5D. This is the class with Cindy and Cori in it. I was asking them all If they played music and If they liked to sing, then I asked If they knew how to sing any english songs. Two boys in the back eagerly raised their hands and jumped up and down wanting to show me. I was not prepared for what ensued. The two boys went to the front of the class and started singing Beat it by Michael Jackson in perfect unison. They knew all the words. I was laughing my ass off. To top it off at the end one of the boys started dancing, he did the kick and the hand thing and all that crazy stuff MJ does. I asked him If he could do the moonwalk and he did it perfectly. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Did that actually just happen?
They bell rang and they all swarmed me. Some asked for my signature, or my e-mail address, or phone number. Apparently, its common for a teacher to give their personal information to students here. It was all so cute. One little girl even came up and handed me a little candy.
I finished the day smiling and headed back to my room. I'm going to enjoy this job.

fuzzy panda kill robot good

Let me update you on the last three days.
On Tuesday I woke up early and got picked up to go to the hospital. In the van I met 3 teachers from the other branch. Shane, Darla and Lyndley. They were all Canadian and all very nice. I sat down and prepared myself for another bout with death, which is the driving standard in China. On that note, I haven't even seen a seatbelt yet. Oh so safe.
After five mild heart attacks we finally made it to the hospital which was packed full of people. The first thing I noticed was people smoking in the hospital. I neglected to light one up. Something seemed rather wrong about it. We were handed sheets with a list of tests that we had to go around doing all over the hospital. I don't know if the translations were wrong or not, but some of them sounded rather terrifying. Like "Internal Examination" for example. It turns out that was just a blood pressure test, Although the room it was in was deceivingly named "Department Of Surgery." I think they are trying to purposely scare the hell out of me.
For one of the tests I lay on a table and they stuck little ball suction cup things all over me. When i lifted up my shirt the nurse began giggling to the other nurse about it. I asked Shane and he said that the Chinese don't have chest hair so they are amazed to see it. Then came the eye exam. First a colour test. Oh goodie. I'm colour blind.
They pulled out some cards that were a bunch of colours and had numbers hidden in them. I couldn't see any of them and the woman thought I was retarded. She gave me the most confused look as I tried to explain to her that I couldn't see any of the numbers because I could not distinguish the colours. I asked one of the chinese teachers that brought us to translate but he had no idea what I was talking about either. Okay then. She scribbled down some notes on my sheet (no doubt saying, "very stupid, cannot understand colours") and I went on my merry way. After my favourite part of the adventure, needle time, we got back on the bus and went home.

Now I had previously thought that my first day was on wednesday so I stayed up most of the night tuesday after the hospital tossing and turning, quite excited and nervous for the next day. I woke up at 6am and planned my first lesson, got everything ready and headed downstairs. Nemo was there informing us that the students will be watching a movie from 9-11 and that i will not have to teach until tomorrow. But we would still have to be present for the opening ceremony. Which was one of the most amazing sights i've seen since i've been to china.
I looked outside and saw the children all walking in pairs to the soccer field and main courtyard of our school. Boys and girls, and boys and boys even, all hold hands when they walk which is kind of strange at first but really cute. They all lined up in rows by grade and wow, their was alot of them. By estimate I would say about 1500 children in uniforms and about another 100 parents and teachers walking around. It was quite the sight to see. They all started marching on the spot along with some welcome song that was playing and then sang the national anthem and raised the flag. That many little voices singing at once was incredible to hear.
Nemo then decided to let us know that we would be invited up on the podium to introduce ourselves in front of the whole school. Well that would have been nice to prepare myself for. Thank you nemo. I started to get really nervous. What the hell was I going to say? I've never spoken in front of that many people, not without a guitar to hide behind at least. I let all the other teachers go in front of me and when they handed me the mic, I still don't know what i said. I may have said "me Corey, fuzzy panda kill robot good" who knows. But it was a blur and I was shaking after.
I then got shown around the school, got my schedule and met my co-teachers. I would be teaching two grade 5 classes with Nemo, another grade 5 with Christina and a grade 4 class with Ruby. I walked by the classrooms and waved in at all the kids. I would see them Thursday.
I had the whole day off so I decided to sit in on one of the other teachers lessons in the afternoon. Joe offered to let me see his grade 4 class, which was with my co-teacher Ruby. It was really helpful to see how classes were run.
At the beginning of the class, this song came on the P.A. Their was a really high-pitched woman's voice saying numbers and following a music track. All the students begin in unison rubbing their temples and around their eyes. I was very confused as to why the kids suddenly broke out into this synchronized behaviour, but I sat back and just watched. I learnt after that all kids here do something called "eye exercises", once in the morning and again after lunch. It is hard to explain but It seems to involve massaging different parts of your head. All I know is that the song for it is REALLY annoying. I found a link for you to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPeMLeBvMEo.

After a long confusing two days of needles, heart-attack transportation (driving), gigantic crowds of marching children and strange eye exercises, I went to bed thinking I was better prepared for what to expect Thursday on my first day teaching. Which I will write about in my next post!