Week 1.5

I couldn’t move 7,000 miles away and not start a blog, so here it is:

Seminar. I arrived in Shanghai Monday night for a three-day training seminar that brought all the WITT teachers together. We come from all over the English-speaking world – the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, Ireland, South Africa. Lots of New Zealanders. Aside from our geographical diversity, however, it’s just a diverse group overall. I expected it to be mostly recent college graduates teaching for the first time, but in fact that describes only a handful of us (including one who had never before been outside the U.S., so props to him). Some are new teachers who have been working and traveling for most of their twenties, others are in their late twenties or early thirties and have been teaching in China for a few years. Many are mid-career professionals, both new and returning, who simply sold everything off, packed up and left. This made for an interesting dichotomy between the tech-dependent younger set ("You found an Internet connection? Where? I haven't been online for, like, four hours") and the older crowd ("Where is Excel on my computer?"). What we mostly have in common are poor Chinese language skills.

The seminar was intensely busy from 8:30 in the morning to 8 at night, with a few breaks throughout the day. Program staff provided lots of information, but the greatest benefit was getting to know other teachers, learning from those with experience and establishing a network of people throughout China whom we can now visit.

On Friday we traveled to our respective schools across the country. With me in Beijing are Brian, 24, from California, and Shirley, a “relief” teacher whose husband works at the WITT head office. They’re from Vancouver. Brian and I were supposed to have a third, but there was some reshuffling during the seminar and he ended up in Chengdu. So Shirley is with us for a few weeks until, presumably, a replacement arrives.

Teaching. The workload is light – 16 hours a week, not including prep time, grading and office hours. The way my schedule works out, I finish at 10:15 a.m. one morning and 9 a.m. another. Plus, I only have one student. She was on exchange in Colorado last year; this year she’s working on U.S. college applications and preparing for the SAT/TOEFL. Not exactly what I was expecting, but at least it’s something I’ve done myself and can help her with.

The school itself has about 4,000 students – 1,000 of whom live on campus – and is the largest school in Beijing. Brian, Shirley and I are the only foreign teachers, however, and do we ever stand out. I’ve seen very few other foreigners in the area. I did run into three Western high school students here on exchange – they’re from Australia, Austria and Montreal (!). As difficult as this transition is at age 23, I can’t imagine what it would be like for a 15-year-old.

Housing. I’m living on campus in the foreign teachers’ dorm, each room being equipped with TV and Internet. All the channels are in Chinese, but some programs have English subtitles and there are even Mandarin lessons aired specifically for Westerners. I have to admit I was hoping for CNN, but I can live without it. Websites blocked in China, at least as far as I can tell: LiveJournal (plus Blogspot, Typepad, Xanga, etc.), Wikipedia and my BBC News homepage. All my Gawker sites work, though, so I’m happy.

We each have private rooms and bathrooms, while kitchen and laundry facilities are shared. (Doing laundry for the first time should be interesting, as everything on the machine is in Chinese.)

Food. Most people know this can be a problem area for me, but I’ve done all right. All meals during the seminar were at the hotel in Shanghai. Breakfast items included noodles, corn on the cob, rice porridge, fried eggs, eggs hard-boiled in tea, fries, something like sausage or ham, and watermelon. Lunch was generally rice, tofu, scrambled egg, several meat dishes, prawns or crab, followed by soup and watermelon. Similarly, dinner included rice, meat, vegetables, soup and watermelon. You may sense a theme with the watermelon.

I was surprised by how many teachers, even experienced ones, still have an aversion to Chinese food. Food is so important to me that if I couldn’t eat the local cuisine somewhere, I couldn’t live there. A few teachers skipped meals in favor of the McDonalds down the street, or bought their own food at the supermarket. One returning teacher had difficulty because she’s a vegetarian, so there were limited foods she could eat at the hotel. Vegetarianism in China is difficult but doable, she said, while vegans would find it impossible. Overall, there have been plenty of new foods to try. So far I’ve sampled chicken feet, chicken heart and prawn-flavored potato chips.

Monday through Friday we get breakfast and lunch free in the school dining hall. I haven’t made it to breakfast yet, but lunch has been fantastic – steamed rice, lots of vegetables, more watermelon, all very healthy. We’re mostly on our own for dinner and on weekends, although it seems we can purchase dinner cheaply in the dining hall using our swipe cards. There are numerous restaurants in the area – Chinese, Korean, Brazilian BBQ, McDonalds – but that could get expensive quickly. So I’ve spent some time scoping out produce markets and supermarkets near and far.

Western food is expensive (especially cheese) but easily accessible. Globalization is amazing. When it comes to fast food, I thought China would only have the Big Three (McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut), but in the past few days I’ve seen Subway, TCBY, Haagen-Dazs and, even more random, Schlotzsky’s. There are many supermarket options as well. In addition to Wal-Mart downtown, there’s a Carrefour about 15 minutes from my school. However, my trip there this evening was mostly unsuccessful. Expiration dates – not so important in China. Years of Western grocery shopping have trained me to look for them, and while I don’t consider expiration dates hard and fast rules, some had long since passed. I picked up a jar of peanut butter dated 10/6/2006 before I found one from July 2007. Perhaps they’re manufacturing dates instead? Either way, I’d like to check out my options before I commit to buying food at one particular place. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get to the supermarkets downtown that cater to expatriates (as in, they have entire aisles filled with biscuit tins). I may be wimping out a little bit, but until I become more comfortable and familiar with my surroundings I don’t really care.

My computer battery is fading fast, so I’ll wrap this up. Tomorrow we go for medical exams in order to process our visas. I’m told this may be an all-day affair due to the long wait times, so we’ll see how that goes.

China Fun Fact: Rather than trifling with different time zones, China -- which covers more than 9.3 million square km/3.6 million square miles -- just uses one.