Shell in China

Yeah! I am officially a PCV now! Up until now we have basically been on one long job interview (kind of like The Apprentice, except Jon Derrah, our country director is the one saying "you're fired!" and he has said it to at least two of the trainees!) Being official means that my two years officially starts now. ;) The last two months have just been trial time, not official service.

Swear in went well. I have pictures that will eventually go on the blog, if I can get the picture part of it working again. :) We had the ambassador and Christopher Hill, the assistant Sec. of State at the ceremony. The swear-in part was all of 30 seconds and had to be done in a closed meeting, as it is an oath to our country and that isn't well received on foreign soil. Then they opened it up and there were speakers and lunch. Overall it was about 2 1/2 hours long. Afterwards, some of our people left with their schools right away. Those of us going north didn’t leave until Friday (swear-in was Thursday) afternoon, so we just hung around town all day.

Well, after a whole big mess, we have finally arrived in Chengxian. Wait until you hear this story!

It all started Friday morning. We were supposed to meet our dean and waiban (they guy in charge of foreign affairs at our college) in the hotel lobby at noon. The plan was to go get some lunch and then come back for our luggage and go to the train station together. So, Thad and I were in the lobby, at noon waiting. Well, wait we did! At 1:30 everyone else was on the way to the station with their schools, but ours had never shown up. One of the other waibans started calling around and couldn't find our people. We decided to go with her to the station because it was getting late and we didn't want to miss the train. SO, Thad and I lugged 7 bags to the train station! We left a note at the hotel in case our school people came there. We got on the train (which was a whole hassle in itself since we all had so much luggage to load and there really isn't a good option for checking luggage.) So, we are all sitting around and there are a good 5 or 6 people on their cell phones trying to find our school people. And, off goes the train with no school officials! Just as we start going, someone gets a phone call saying that our people just got to the hotel and got the message that we went to the train station. So, we were offical-less, which wasn't a big deal since we had made the train trip before without them. They called ahead and had a car meet us at the station this morning and bring us out here. They both came over on Sunday and apologized for missing the train. Apparently they both got pretty bad food poisoning the night before we had to leave Chengdu and Mr. Pu (the waiban) ended up having to go to the doctor for an IV of fluids. They are both doing better now and back in Chengxian.

What was supposed to be our settle in and lesson plan day, Sunday, quickly became run around with school officials day! At ten our dean and waiban came to the apartment; they had just gotten in from the train ride. So, they came over and we had them look at the hot water, which has been non-functional since we've been back. They messed with some pipes, broke one and flooded the bathroom and then fixed it, we think!

Then we went to the lunchroom to get meal cards and then into town for lunch. Thad mentioned wanting a basketball, so then we went to the store to get that. We got back to the apartment in the afternoon, but then had to meet them at 4 for a student performance. Sunday was the National Teacher's Day, so there was an hour and a half singing and dancing performance that we were given front row seats to. After that it was off to dinner with the school officials. Dinner was pretty tasty. J It was a banquet, so there were lots and lots of dishes, which works out well for me because I can pick and choose the ones I want to eat.

Oh- we also met the other foreign teachers. Sara is from England and Tomas and Rachel are from Sweden. (Rachel is actually American, but has been living in Sweden for seven years with her husband.) They all seem pretty nice and I think we will probably be spending a lot of time together. They are all volunteers as well, so they live on the same small budgets that we do! Sara is with the British version of PC and Tomas and Rachel are with Amity.

Well, Thad and I survived our first day of class. Granted, it wasn't a long or tough day, as we teach on a university schedule, so we don't teach all day long. Thad had two classes and I had just one. Each class is actually two hours long, so Thad taught from 8-12 and I taught from 10-12. We both had Oral English classes. My class had 44 students in it! That is a lot to try to do activities with--I will definitely have to be creative with these classes. Today we just did introduction stuff.

For lunch Thad and I ate in the school cafeteria (they call it the canteen!) It wasn't bad. I think each of our meals cost 2 kuai. Can't beat that. We both had noodle dishes. Mine was a little spicier than I would have liked, but with the cafeteria, you can’t really order food made the way you want it. You go through the line and get it dished onto the plate. For dinner we ate across the road for 3 kaui each. Those prices are less than fifty cents each! Although you do have to remember, I live on less than $200 (American) each month, so the cheap meals are good!

Tomorrow I teach another Oral English class and then I have my first Western Methodology class. I think I have decided that I will teach the first few, but then they are going to be assigned lessons to teach. They do their practice teaching next term, so once we have talked about some basics and lesson planning, I think this will be a good, safe place for them to experiment. Most English teachers actually teach in Chinese, so getting them to teach a whole lesson in English will be a good thing!

It was cool outside again. Not cold, I wore a skirt, but I also carried a jacket with me. My toes were a bit cold. I can see that keeping my feet warm is going to be an issue when winter really gets here.

It is nice being moved in and starting to get into a bit of a routine. I think we are going to have a lot of free time on our hands though, since a college teaching schedule is quite different from what we are used. Also, since we teach mainly Oral English, we teach the same lesson plan all week long. (The kids only meet once a week, for two hours, for their Oral English classes.) On top of that, there isn't a whole lot of grading outside of class, when the point is to get them talking in class! I hope to have a tutor set up by the end of the month so I can continue my language classes. I am a little leery about finding the right person, so I want to get to know some people around campus before I actually hire someone to do it.