Stand Around and Hurry

Wednesday, April 29, 6:36 am

See all the mountains?  No?  Oh, right.  

Day one, finished.  Just like other jobs, day one was a lot of standing around and waiting knowing that any second now a ton of work was going to be dropped in my lap. Mr. Yung picked me up and took me to one of the campuses I wouldn’t be teaching at for breakfast and to observe Monica.  Well, no, but I ended up watching two of her classes anyway.  I also went to the police station to get registered and everyone freaked out ‘cause, apparently, my visa is wrong and there were talks about me needing to leave the country that day. That was fun.  Eventually everyone decided to let me stay, although a good part of me was thinking, ‘hey, I’m willing to take one for the team and head to Japan for a few weeks,” and I headed back to Monica’s school for lunch (I am guaranteed two meals a day during the school week so no matter how poor I get, I won’t starve).  Observing Monica’s lessons, yeah, I can probably do that, but I am getting really mixed signals of what they want me to do. Okay, make my own lessons but follow the textbook but don’t match it and all your lessons can be the same for the week since you will only see a class once a week but the classes might be different.  Uh huh.  Also, while I was told that I would be teaching at one or two locations, it looks like I will be working at three locations, one of which is quite far and will need me to ride a scooter or bike to, which I am not really thrilled about since the streets of Beijing are a bit more extreme than I am used to.  I’ll be at School A on Monday with six classes, school B on Tuesday with six classes, and school C for three days and will have four classes a day there. Whatever.  

Did I mention that these are free, DELICIOUS meals?  School breakfast and lunch in the States just doesn't compare.

Spot all three pairs of slippers.

Wrapping this up quickly, I also got a phone yesterday since not one of the THREE I brought with me to China would accept a Chinese SIM card.  That’s fine.  I collect cell phones.  I was only 999 RBMs, which is like $170, and the phone plan for the year was 230 RBM, which is like $38.  I suppose I can afford that.  It was a bit of a struggle and I appreciated Oliver driving me to two different locations as we tried to secure a phone.  After that, and pulling money from an ATM so my phone was paid for in cash (they didn’t take my credit card), I said good bye to Oliver and made two trips to the grocery shop for food stuffs and cleaning supplies.  This apartment, I may have mentioned, was pretty damned dirty and moldy.  I spent three hours last night bleaching and scrubbing.  It’s still not great and I have a complex system of different shoes for different rooms (primary slippers for the living room and my bedroom, a bathroom set, and a pair I change into for the kitchen since the floor there is kinda dissolving and I don’t wanna track it all over my house.)

Ack!  Time to go!