Adventure is Out There!

That was my theme for the day and boy what an adventure it was!

The day started off with Mandarin in which we randomly got a new professor. Apparently our professor was gone at a conference or something last week so we had a substitute. Our sub was really sweet and a really good professor, but this new one today was even better. We learned a lot and finally got our books. 50 RNB for two books (our textbook and work book) which equals out to about $8.33 USD. It was fantastic minus the fact that our whole class was taught using pinyin - writing out the words in letters - and my homework is all in characters. That will be fun to figure out!

Then we went to our favorite dumpling place as always, they gave us extra dumplings today because we go there almost everyday and let them borrow our translation books so they can learn some English. It was super sweet and really tasty!

Then we had Contemporary Chinese Culture and Society in which today we talked about Chinese names for two hours and 45 minutes. Chinese names are interesting especially when you consider the that go last name first when addressing each other, but one can only stay interested in the subject for a limited amount of time before it just gets to be too much. Our professor told us some funny and interesting stories about people using different characters and how some people choose their names, but overall it was a tad bit tough to follow today.

In between lunch and culture class I had called a woman about teaching English, something many Americans do when they get to China. I spent half of my culture class frantically trying to figure out which bus it was to get there, asking my Chinese friends for help and the woman, but in the end we just Google Mapped it and I borrowed my roommates scooter to get there instead.

So let's review some things about driving in China:

1. Do you need a license to drive a scooter or moped in China? Of course not!
2. Do people wear helmets? Definitely not.. unless it's a motorcycle!
3. Are there bike lanes? EVERYWHERE!
4. Do cars sometimes drive in bike lanes to avoid traffic? YEPP! Especially Taxis.
5. Do people stick to the stay right except to pass? Oh noooooo.
6. Do scooters drive with their lights on at night? Half the time.
7. Can scooters drive on the street and the bike lane? Why of course.
8. Do people move when you honk at them? Half of the time.
9. Do people use blinkers? Usually. (Surprising I know!)
10. Even when people going straight have a green light do people turning left coming the other way have the right of way? Apparently... Learned that one tonight.

As you can probably guess, driving a scooter through rush hour traffic then home in the dark, all the while going off of memory of Google maps, was an interesting experience all around and this doesn't even include my awkward interview.

Once I got to where I needed to be I found out we were having dinner at the woman's apartment with her 3.5 year old daughter (who was sooooooo cute!) and her husband. The husband could understand English but not speak it, the daughters kindergarten teacher came over as well and spoke limited English, the daughter spoke no English, and the woman spoke pretty good English actually. Once I got there I found out that I was demoing a 45 minute lesson to what was supposed to be 6 students, around the age of 4, and their parents, but when I arrived there were way more kids and parents than that! Not to mention I only had about 35 minutes to create a lesson plan that I didn't even know I was doing in the first place. For some reason when making the lesson plan up my brain completely froze on children's games we could have played and it was just terrible. Once we got to the classroom I watched another guy teach English and it was good, definitely hard to go after because it was hard to compare with that. My teaching was terrible! The kids had already been sitting there for 45 minutes and didn't want to sit there or listen anymore. She had me end at least 25 minutes early and I just felt terrible. So I will get a call with the results sometime in the next few days but we shall see. Meanwhile I will keep looking for minor jobs around the area for foreigners to see what is available. Oh and a minor detail I forgot to mention, the entire time I was teaching, my head was throbbing like crazy!

It was kind of a rough afternoon but I learned a lot from the situation and am anxious to see what comes out of it. Overall I can't say it was a terrible day though. We will just have to see what tomorrow has in store. I joined the Taoism class and we are going to a monastery tomorrow and then we have our first real calligraphy lesson with our teacher who speaks no English, so it may be even more of and adventure than today was. We shall see!