#12 Home Sweet Home. ish.

I went for a retail-therapy shopping experience with Susan this aft.  I just received $100 dollars of organic foods from Fields in Shanghai and I needed/wanted a container for my brown rice (found it!). Susan is quite a nest builder as this IS her home and so she is fun to shop with as she always sees things that are great for this or that, while I try to keep everything down to a minimum.  However, her "pitches" are sometimes irresistible - as is her savvy regarding life in China (she's on her 4th year).  "The Nest" is shaping up to be nice-ish to come "home" to - someone taught me how to work the heater so it is warm now (the weather has changed radically).  Here are a few snaps of what I am calling home these days:

 Bedroom (with a comfortable double bed) and a bathroom with shower and tiny washing machine are upstairs.  There is a decent-sized wardrobe and a tiny balcony (for air-drying laundry).

 

 

View from the stairs of my living room  :>)    I unpicked a duvet cover to make a cover for my (disgusting) sofa, and will make covers for those 2 big pillows when I get to my sewing machine in Germany at Christmas. I am loving finally having a reading lamp - and I have that same lamp in Canada and in Germany, which is somewhat comforting.

Here is a delicacy I saw on sale today: corn milk.
And some words and phrases from a recent menu:
- a list of starch-y type side dishes to accompany your meal, titled:  characteristics of starch
- a list of fruit juice items that are available, titled:  friend-is-pressing-the-juice-series

 

I'll end with a shot of one of my classes.  They are so shy - the camera stunned them into serious mode.  Really, really great kids, though, and the teaching is fun and interesting and rewarding.  I have 3 classes of 18 for English- easy peasy, and great, reliable technology (they are required to have their own laptop/tablet)  - I am in heaven, teaching-wise.

Cheers for now - KAREN

I zip over to a fancy hotel for a breakfast buffet every Sat and Sun (because it is China, there is a lot of lunch/dinner food choices, too).  Lots of good food and all for only 28 yuan ($4.75).  Bacon and eggs, noodles, fruit, chicken skewers...Chinese dishes, a few of which  I eat, and breakfast intestinals, if you desire (yes, they would be sausages).
I did my hard walk with Jan before breakfast, and will do again tomorrow.  She recently purchased a pedometer to ensure she does 10,000 steps a day and when we returned to the "resort' aka tenement housing) we had done 10,022.  Now that is exact! We did my first walk a couple of weeks ago and there were lots of cats and dogs, but today there were no dogs - are they now being served up to the students?

                                      We live in the Yangze River delta, province of Jiangsu.


The loud horking up and spitting is EXTREMELY off-putting and it happens constantly.  The Chinese believe that this is a way to rid their bodies of germs.... Here is what the stairwell often looks like in my "resort" hotel.  Nice, eh?

                     I'll end on a positive note, with some wild flowers....Marigolds, zinnias, etc.

                                                                           KAREN





 

More Buddha, IKEA...and Mah Jong

 

Either some naughty person secretly snapped this pic, or it is an officially sanctioned one from the temple.  On an earlier post I put my picture of a reclining Buddha that is in the temple in Shanghai that I visited.  A-OK to take that picture, but this is the protected Buddha, with the quiet music, the incense in a special (admission fee) room. 

This picture does not quite capture the ethereal sweetness of the face. I guess the dim light and the soft music really added to the whole effect...

 

The pilgrimage to IKEA was fine.  It was so comforting to enter, feeling like I was home because of the familiarity of the layout.  That store could have been anywhere in the world, once you are inside!  I just had the usual awkwardness of schlepping stuff home on public transit (and I guess the Shanghai subway at rush hour is nothing to be sneezed at).  I got the reading lamp I desperately needed (you know, the 2 light one - one bowl pointing upwards and a small arm bulb that can be moved around downwards).  The cheapest of the IKEA standing lamps (there wasn't a one in the 2 towns near the school).  I now have that same lamp in 3 countries in the world: China, Canada and Germany.  Thanks, good old IKEA.

 

Off to do a big hard walk around the area of the school, with a real no-nonsense walker, Jan.  She had an initial night of Mah Jong last week, and those of you who know me will not be surprised that even though I was really looking forward to learning the game, and socializing with a couple of women colleagues, I forgot about it and missed it. Then I had to give the lame excuse of  "a form of dyslexia, actually dyscalulia, regarding time....blah blah blah"  Will they forgive me?  Will I ever learn to play Mah Jong?   

 Karen

More food, sanitary issues, IKEA

I carry napkins, tissues and toilet paper all the time. Half of the toilets I have encountered are the squat-holes, including the student toilets at school.  The school floors are washed daily: with a mop that has been rinsed in the filthy canal water that wends its way around the grounds.  If I accidentally put a piece of cutlery down on a table or counter my friend Susan, a vet, yanks it out of my hand and says, "Never touch that again!" 

Yesterday I went to the school cafeteria (one of several eating outlets) and had little rib things and rice for under $1 and then for dinner went with some people to a Japanese restaurant - all you can eat and drink for  the shocking price of  $25. (The restaurant food was beautiful, as you can see.)

Below are Jeremy and Benson, both from Vancouver, eating at a Japanese café where the food rolls by on a conveyor belt - to pay, the waitress just adds up your stack of little pink dishes. See the small black faucets -  tea on demand!

I have avoided eating any seafood, as the water contamination is outrageous, but as a colleague said - nothing is safe.  Even the veggies have been irrigated with the same water. There is an upmarket (expensive) delivery service from Shanghai that trades in organic foods; hat is where I will be able to get my whole wheat bread.  I am still hunting for brown rice.  Oh, it seems I am on about food again...

Tomorrow is Friday and I will be taking the 1pm student school bus in to Shanghai (multiple actually, as we have 1000 students who will be heading home) and then I'll take the Metro to IKEA to get a much needed stand-up lamp.  It is supposedly the busiest IKEA in the world. I will regular-bus it back "home" in the evening.

My initial IKEA trip in Germany is etched indelibly on my memory.  I picked up a rolled-up twin mattress that, because it was rolled up, I thought would be manageable, but the weight and awkwardness of the thing!  I schlepped  it back in the absolute pitch dark and the rain through an unlit graveyard (crying with the frustration/difficulty/misery of it all) only to reach the (far-off) bus stop to find I had missed the last bus.  So not fun.  We will see if tomorrow's China IKEA adventure can match the German IKEA one for grueling-ness (new word).  I shall gird my loins.

KAREN

                                                   Cute old trucks, and not in a museum.
 

Post #7 FOOD

The first of what I think might become quite a collection of Chinglish signs...

            Food is always very important to get right and a big issue for me as I carve out a life here. 
                 
                       One is warned off the street food (or what is called in Mexico "hole in the walls"). 

                Here is a picture of a kitchen in the back alley of an inside medium quality restaurant:

 

 

The Chinese are funny:  so much of their food is "plastic food" heavily processed and preserved crap, but they also love the polar opposite.  They adore fresh seafood (often it is brought live to your table if you have a little hotpot to cook it in).  Here is the seafood corner of quite an upmarket restaurant where you literally choose your meal:

 

Benson and I had a fun meal in Shanghai at a hotpot restaurant.  Our bowls included an egg and some really interesting veg (see also the fat-streaked meat in front):

 

We have a feral dog and cat population in several of the abandoned buildings on the school site.

Dog is on the menu at one of the student restaurants.

 

I am signing off with some more street food:

                                                              Cheers for now, Karen

 

 

 

 

Post # 6

I find this blogging business quite fun.  I had a huge bubble tea today and of course the caffeine in the tea is now keeping me up.  The girls at my favorite bubble tea place are sweet.  The get really excited when the see me because they know which is my flavour and "no sugar" and they learn a new English word a visit from me.  I have to laugh about the no sugar bit though - no, there is no granulated sugar in it, but glucose and fructose syrups up the yingyang....sigh....I try.  Delish tho - grapefruit (and of course the natural sugars alone would be, well, for get it)

There are 2 towns near the school - one is the building-frenzy-that-is-China Luxu and the other is Shenta, quite a rustic village, which I must prefer. I'm attaching a snap of the main shopping area.  At some point  I will show you the pools of live fish and other sea creatures that are for sale all along the road.

And yes, you do drive through that, it is a through street. 

Just honk your horn a lot!!

"That's all for now,"  she wrote. 

Karen

Post #6 Fish and Rain

I absolutely adored these guys when I saw them at a temple in Shanghai.  I took about 100 pictures of them, and finally had to be pulled away by my companions.

I know these picture gives you no perspective to get how big they are, but they are BIG. The biggest ones (not shown) are about 50 years old and the size of my cat Talli.

 

So, the other day there was a typhoon.  Now, 70 km inland, we just got a little tickle, but let me tell you the rains and winds were biblical in proportions.  I did not dare ride my scooter the laughably short distance to school as I knew I would be blown away. When I arrived in school I took off my shoes and socks and pants to dry them - much to the mock horror of Paul the amusing Englishman.  I defied him to tell me what the difference between bathing suit bottoms and underwear is and blithely left them hanging off the air conditioner/heater.  I have since taken a spare pair of pants (not the English meaning: 'underwear' but rather 'trousers') and shoved them in a desk drawer for the next typhoon. 

Here is the gang again (what else am I going to do with 100 pics of gaping-mouthed koi?)  And one more for perspective.  K

   

Post #5

 

                                                   Traditional woman, massive building
                                                         upheaval in the background.

A snapshot of a day:  At school by 6:30 (I like getting an early start - always have).  My first block - of 4 - is a prep for me so I was able to borrow Susan's scooter and go and get gas for mine.  I brought back 2 2-litre bottles: one for filling up my gas tank and one for spare as the gage is so vague about when one is out of gas, and I didn't want to get caught like that again.  It cost $7 for the 4 litres of gas (two large pop bottles).

I worked the day (well, the 1/2 day - Friday) and kept prepping into the afternoon... at some point during that time I realized I did not have my cell phone/handy/mobile.  I had had it at there school and dropped it earlier (kind boy handed it to me) but then I guess I absentmindedly put it down again.  Anyhow, I knew I was stuck having to wait until Monday morning to really search.  Later, I went off in search of food and as I drove along a cop car went by.  Now, I was in the wrong lane, opposite to him.  He put his lights on and my heart fluttered as the principal has told us that if the cops try to pull us over on our scooters, we should "ignore it".  Jesus, don't make this little jaunt into the nightmare from hell, I thought.  But all was fine, I think he just put it on for the pure power of being able to - we both kept on our merry ways (yeah, the deal is either gas scooters are now illegal, or over a certain cc...it certainly wasn't that I was in his lane).  Anyhow.  That got me to thinking, though.  I was out in the wilds of China with no cell phone (and no phone numbers), so no way to call anyone at the school, should I have had a bit of a bother with the police.  The school secretary had my passport (again) for more paperwork.  Worse, I had just that day taken out the little laminated (yes) card I had made up with the school's address and phone number on it.  So, it would have been a bit tricky to act out "I am a teacher" or "I am a Canadian" or "please call my boss" or ....as the Chinese to this point have been singularly unimaginative in trying to figure out what I might be meaning.  I got to the restaurant, ate, cruised carefully home, and grabbed that little card of info and shoved it back where it belonged.  Monday should see the return of my passport, and, hopefully, my phone.

I'll end with a snap of the only cool thing in the building-nightmare that is Luxu - one of the 2 communities I live near. I love dragons, and he's a beaut!   K

 

 

Post #4

yeah, well the marking can wait...
I want to post some pictures of Shanghai:

and a couple of temples I visited:

 

 This beauty (in pale jade) is lovely, but the star statue, sitting in mystical candle-light with incense and the most evocative music - was not allowed to be photographed, and indeed, no one could capture the exquisiteness.  The face was truly spiritual - quite literally awe-inspiring.

Enough of that.  I have carefully framed each picture in order to avoid the filth and the poverty that are alongside such beauty.  Maybe I will dedicate a post just to that, later.

Later. Karen

 

Post #3

A couple of days ago Jim from Ontario was rammed into on his scooter at the main intersection in town.  He was badly concussed and one ankle was broken.  Driving here is hair-raising, let me tell you.  There is great flexibility in which lanes are for which direction - this is partially due to the ridiculous amount of construction on the roads - but mostly due to...well, I am not sure what.  Here is one cute detail to the general level of driving safety:  many people drive w/o lights at night.  They believe this saves them gas.  As for passing, turning, etc - the word 'careening' about sums it up.  My little scooter was sounding like there were marbles tumbling in the engine and so I got if fixed.  It purrs like a kitten now.  Below is a picture of a cab driver and his 3-wheel basically-a-morotcycle-with-a-cover vehicle.  It costs just over $2 to get from town to the school.

Many of the Chinese wear their coats backwards to act as a cover whilst riding, and here you can see built-on hand protectors!

It is amazing how much stuff can be carried, or how many people - and at such speeds.  One often sees little kiddies clinging to mom, or riding between their legs.

Well, I am signing off - I was really just stalling in an attempt to avoid the marking that just won't seem to go away.

More later.  K

 

Post #2 Sino-Canada High School

Hi again.
I thought I would write a little about the school I am at: Sino-Canada High School.  As I mentioned in post #1  it is housed on a big, gated complex that was once a theme park (plus a series of hotel towers) called Zplashes.  The high school and admin offices are in the main, round building, with ancillary buildings connecting off it.  Within the main complex there are hallways that used to be open-air passages - these have been glassed over.  The effect is an incredibly sunny series of main arteries.

When one enters any room and the air conditioner isn't on - that is your first priority.  Soon it becomes lovely and cool in there.  Then, when you open your classroom door the heat from these sunny greenhouse hallways hits you like a heavy, hot, wet towel. The walls are painted with cheesy murals (Anime - ugh) and rapidly aging photos of past graduates. 

There are about 1000 students, and they attend BC high school from 7:45 in the morning to 2:50 in the afternoon.  Then they attend Chinese high school courses until 9 pm!  One feels sympathy with them when they occasionally fall asleep in class.  Fridays are a half day, as a flotilla of buses away them to whisk them home for the weekend.  There is 100% attendance in class.  The goal of these kids, and their parents, is to gain admission to a Canadian university.  They take the Chinese high school program as an insurance against failure to get into a Canadian institution.  The range of English proficiency is vast.  I teach Communications 11 (this semester) which is like a "B" stream, with emphasis on the mechanics of English (though we are now going into a short story unit). The school has invented several pre-and post Communications courses to get them up to being able to cope with English 11, which I will teach next semester.  My classes are small - about 18 per the 3 sections, and there are 4 teachers for 11 sections of Com 11.  The kids are nice, earnest, easy. 

There is a big gym and track on site, and they have instituted a middle school (which is what I was hired for).  I was moved to the high school because the whole school is focussed on BC dogwood diplomas.  I was thrilled to make my move into the high school English department, as of course that is just where many people have always thought I should be :>), but also because the courses in that department are really well-established, whereas there is nothing in Social Studies middle school and the mad creating of courses has gotten old for me.  I will work with the ms team to develop their Social Studies (brought tons of stuff) once I have made Com and English "my own" and have some creative juices and energy to spare.

I will end with a pic of the hotel complex that about 80% of the teachers stay in (some move to town after their first year there).  Many local families are also residing there - I love the ones with little kids - I smile and coo over the kiddies and the parents are delighted, so there is a bit of a little bond there (what parent doesn't love anyone who melts at their offspring!).  I often embarrass travel-buddy Benson (post #1)  when I connect / make a fuss over babies and toddlers in the streets but he has to admit that the parents have all been v receptive.  My bit for international relations - the maternal bond...

 You can see a dome-shaped, abandoned building on the right, and the condition of the pavement, which makes a scooter ride v bumpy.  I have no doubt that the school will figure out a use for that derelict, and the other empty shells.  At the moment a separate-from-the-main circular building is being transformed into an elementary school - which will be open soon.

ta ta

Karen



Post #1 - from Shanghai

Hi.
I arrived a couple of weeks ago and slammed into the wall of culture shock.  Fuzzy-headed with jet-lag, I figured out the basics at work, got settled into a pretty shocking apartment (the "hotel" complex of high rises on the school grounds), purchased a old scooter, figured out how to come and go to the nearest town, how to get supplies, and, most of all, how to connect to the outer world via Internet. 

At this point I have a cord that runs from the next apartment into mine (through the AC pipe hole - and that has given me temperamental and intermittent basic Internet.  The school's connection is slightly better, and so I took windows of opportunity to write quick messages home and abroad - I was desperate to stay in touch! 

I decided that a blog would be a fun way to let interested folk know what is going on over here.  But, as China blocks Google I could not access Blogger (and being a techno-phobe, it was what I thought was "do-able for me). I have finally gotten sorted out with a vpn, and bingo - I am sitting in a café creating this modest little blog....I guess what I do is alert people on my contact list to the existence of Karen in Cathay, and they (you) can choose or not to have a look - I think you get alerts or something when I post a new...er....posting.  I will probably write quite a few in short order here to catch up about the school, the teaching experience, and first events in the settling-in process.

 

 OK -- here is a picture of the front of the school grounds.  Impressive?  Let me tell you that this was a holiday park and is mostly such a dilapidated site that at times and in places I think I am wandering around a Twilight Zone set....There are wild dogs and cats living in the abandoned buildings,  That is my little scooter out front there.  But the staff is great, the principal too, works hard to help the newbies settle, and the locals are friendly.

Town (which I had had described to me as a little village) is about the size of Nanaimo is about a 10 min bus or scooter ride away - has crazy building sites and broken roads everywhere.  Many new buildings have been built, but they are shells and uninhabited...And the driving - honestly, you have to laugh as almost anything goes.  There is another littler place also nearby that has more of the very rustic store-fronts and open cafes - all knee-deep in rubble.  Dirt cheap, though, and again, friendly locals.

I have been lucky enough to hook up with a young (first year) Taiwanese-Canadian teacher called Benson (the butler)  whose language skills have saved me innumerable times.  He is a fun lad and I seem to crack him up, so we are a good pair.  At the moment we are in Shanghai taking a few days of the week Mid-Autumn holiday away from Hell-Hole Hotel. we came by bus with a long-time teacher who knows the "Shanghai ropes".   My plan, which as you can see is working, was to get a blog going, and to do some school work in the relative luxury of a hotel.  Saying that, when we entered the tiled hallway to the elevator today there was a big black cockroach right in the middle of the room...

More on what we've done Shanghai-wise coming up....  KAREN