Thursday, April 30th
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| Off-topic, my arm is really yucky and swollen from yesterday. |
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| Five people??? |
The big event of the day, the most wonderful thing to happen today, is I HAVE INTERNET ACCESS. It’s not very steady and I randomly just lose access to Facebook/Google…, but I have internet. My school sent over the foreign teacher supervision, Yoko (the school psychologist who speaks great English), two guys from the school’s computer staff, and another guy who I am not sure what he was doing here to set up my internet. Mac, apparently, isn’t really a thing here despite everyone and their 1-child-per-family kid has an iPhone, so everyone had a difficult time trying to get my computer to work. I, for whatever reason, actually knew what to do but had to awkwardly navigate through people to get stuff done. My computer saw the WiFi signal. I’ve seen my brother find the password on the router before. There was a great moment where I looked at the password, let’s just say it was something like fracturedwindow773 (it’s not, but you get the idea), and was able to type it in without looking a second time. “OMG!!! HOW DID YOU DO THAT??? HOW DID YOU LOOK ONCE AND REMEMBER????” “Um, it’s just two English words and a number. It’s…It’s okay.” “OMG, that’s AMAZING. We will make you a new password. That’s WAY too difficult to remember.” “No, it’s… it’s okay. Just.. two words… and a number. And it’s on the box…”
There were no classes today, I don’t know why, and there is no school tomorrow. May Day! Today all the classes (?) in grades 1 and 2 put on skits of classic stories or fairy tales. I think. I dunno. My Chinese hasn’t really improved yet. Okay, yeah, let’s take a minute and talk about the school I am at. It's pretty amazing. First of all, the main campus was built last year. They have a custodial/janitorial staff of at least 20 people who spend all day mopping, sweeping, scrubbing, and gardening. Every classroom is incredibly cheerful and colorful. Every classroom has a large, touchscreen digital screen the size of a chalkboard, at least 30% larger than a SmartBoard, AND they have THREE massive digital screens outside which they can use to show art the kids are doing or as instant set changes for school plays. Also, every light pole on the field has a huge speaker, so the play was in clear surround-sound. Three guards stand outside the school and only teachers, staff, students, and INVITED parents (for a specific time and date) can enter. For the school assembly today, some parents were allowed in, but most had to stay on the other side of the fence. Pretty cool.
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| Lunch break. |
Anyway, I'll talk more about school later after I've taught a class. I still don't have my teaching schedule for next week, and while I was supposed to go to a new school on Monday, everyone was too busy to deal with me, so I report back to the main campus on Monday. Which is FINE by me since Main Campus is a six minute walk and the other two are, like, 30 min bus rides plus 20-30 min of walking.
After getting the internet squared away (and the drinking water delivery started. No washing machine yet, though. Next week.), I sat down to my computer for about fifteen minutes before deciding, no, wait. Stop. Being on the computer for the next few hours, while totally do-able, is shockingly lame. My first scrap of free time in China!!! Let's adventure! My original plan was to go to Tiananmen Square 'cause I've heard of it, but it was a 2 hour commute, ish, and I know Monica does a lot of stuff in the afternoons. This happened, that happened, and we ended up splitting up for a few hours in Shangdui (Or something like that) after getting a drink at McDonald's. Dude. Starfruit juice with chunks of CRUNCHY fruit jelly. My heart soared like a python.
I didn't do much in the area, sorry to disappoint. It was pretty much just a mall and a bunch of restaurants. Malls are, for the most part, all the same. I did see a UNIQLO and get super excited. It was a nice, chill day. It is, however, after midnight now and I am tired. Yay, me. I got up on time this morning and went for a jog/run before work. Need to add that to the routine. According to my pedometer, I walked 10.1 miles/24,637 steps today. Nap time. Enjoy the photo dump.
Peace.
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