One Memorable Train Ride ;)

Ok so now for the 24-hour train ride with over 100 of my new closest friends from CTLC! We made it by bus to the train station and unloaded there to form a line and get all of our tickets. Due to the issue of each ticket having to match our passport, CTLC did the tickets in alphabetical order and that would be how we slept on the train. I was pretty excited, because I knew some people who would be by me, and I was even happier when I saw that I was assigned the lower bunk. Getting a lower bunk means that you are able to sit up while in bed, and don’t have to navigate the ladder or foot pegs to your bunk. We went through the train station ticket checks and security, which is normally pretty annoying and even more so in a huge group, but it went rather quickly. Then the whole group gathered by the entrance to platform 10, which attracted quite a few looks from all the other passengers, sees this massive group of foreigners! Since we actually made it on time (and trust me, everyone was surprised by that) and we were all able to swarm the nearby McDonalds for food. After waiting for about half an hour, we were able to board the train, and they actually let CTLC board first, because we were such a large group. I found my bed quickly and was excited to start the journey and get some sleep finally!!!

            Lights out is 10 pm on the train, and most people were ready to finally catch some shuteye after the hectic time in Beijing. One guy in our bunk was still not back when the lights went out, and I kinda just assumed he was playing cards or whatever with some other people… little did I know. Fast forward to a little after midnight, when I woke up to a rain sound, and roll over to see the guy in the middle bunk hanging from the bed peeing on the girl’s blanket beneath him… which she was asleep under. Both of us quickly woke up, and I exited the compartment area quickly, while Caroline (the girl who had essentially just been peed on) scrambled to the corner of her bed. We told the guy to stop, and he turned managing to straddle the two lower beds (mine and Caroline’s)… and then continued to pee on the floor… through his pants (which I guess is better than whipping ‘it’ out). This kid was sooo drunk that he pissed through his pants and then just stood there straddling our beds for 15 minutes, as we attempted to get him down, with the help of another guy. When we finally got him down, the guy from the hallway managed to take him to the toilets, which are squat toilets, and allowed us to clean up the compartment. Caroline was able to get new sheets from one of the train attendants, and we managed to clean most of it up with toilet paper. Meanwhile some guys were taking care of the drunk guy, and they said they would let him sober up some more, and that we could go to sleep. So we went back to sleep and they brought him back about an hour later (in new shorts), and he promptly passed out until morning.

            Cue wake up to Chinese music and noise, as everyone apparently gets up at 8 am.  Everyone in our car woke up, and the drunk kid got down and asked to sit on Caroline’s bed, and was shocked when Caroline said no… probably because he had no idea what he did that night!! >_<  When he was told, he just said oh and walked off, without so much as an sorry or is there anything I can do… seriously dude! Basically for the next 12 hours of the train ride we never saw him, but everyone in the train probably heard the story by the end of the ride lol! The rest of the ride was spent playing cards, talking to people and taking naps, and it passed relatively quickly. While it was definitely not the most relaxing ride, it was certainly memorable for the sheer stupidity of some people and the good times with others!!

Beijing Training Rundown!!

Ok so Beijing is now over… thank God!!! While I greatly enjoyed the time spent getting to know my fellow CTLCr’s, Beijing was EXHAUSTING! Here’s a little rundown of how things went…

Day 1: August 2^nd-  Arrived in Beijing after about 24 hours of travel from Washington Dulles to Seoul, Korea to Beijing. Then we spent a couple hours getting out of the Beijing Airport and to the hotel, making our ultimate arrival time at the hotel… 11 pm, making that the best hot shower of my life! Also, at the hotel I will be forever thankful for the men who carried our luggage up the three flights of stairs to our room (which sadly was the best part of the hotel) By “our room” I mean, myself and Katie, who I met on the bus to the hotel, and she was an awesome roommate!!

Katie and I in Tiananmen Square

Day 2: August 3^rd- All of CTLC had a bright and early start at 7:30 am, as we were shown places we could get breakfast each day. Breakfast foods included dumplings, stuffed buns, congee (rice porridge), scallion pancakes with egg, or what appeared to be a Chinese empanada filled with noodles. Then after a breakfast and bottled water run, we got our first look at Peking University’s (or Beida’s) Campus, the number one university in China, where would be spending the next two weeks. We then got introduced to our schedules, with for me included a daily 8:30 am TEFL activity class, followed by teaching from 9:30- 10:20, followed by TEFL Lesson Planning from 10:30-11:20. Then we had an hour and a half lunch, followed by two hours of Chinese from 1—2:50, and then TEFL Lecture for an hour, usually followed by a CTLC wide meeting. We spent of the rest of the day meeting our teaching groups, planning lessons, learning what grades we would start teaching on Day 3, and then having TEFL lectures.

Day 3: August 4^th- First day of teaching!!! Facing this first class of 19 Chinese fifth grade children was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, as I was sure that I would completely crash and burn. However, the class actually went pretty well as we went over climates, weather, and clothing. The kids were really sweet and excited, little did I know, but it was fun and not a complete failure, which made my day!! After that first adrenaline filled class, Chinese was pretty easy, and the rest of the classes were just a daze, but a busy one. This whole day you could tell people were struggling through the jetlag and the stress, and everyone just wanted to sleep when they got back.

Day 4-7: August 5^th-8^th During this time with continued on the above posted schedule and I taught fifth grade, which steadily devolved as the kids became restless. Of course who can blame them, they spent 6 hours a day learning English and were told that this was “Summer Camp” (for the record, possibly the worst summer camp EVER).

NOTES: During these fun-filled amazing days (please read with light sarcasm), I was also having the great experience of literally being eaten by some, as yet unknown, insect (probably a spider, although first thought to have been bed bugs) My legs had massive bites on them that were extremely red, swollen, hot and painful to touch. There were about 15 on each leg, with at least 5 on the each knee. So do I have the best luck or what!!

Unknown (probably a spider) insect bites... ouch :(

Day 8: August 9^th- Break Day!!! Aka Great Wall Day!!! (which if you’ve ever been to the Great Wall, then you know this was not a restful break day, but more of a physical workout day, haha CTLC, you got us ;) ) Anyways, we went to the Great Wall, with only a few minor snafus, as one bus got lost on the completely straight road to the Wall, and the other bus just randomly stopped so the driver could have a smoke… welcome to China! Upon arrival to the wall we then spent 20 minutes milling around for tickets before beginning the “enjoyable” trek up to the actual wall. Once on the Wall, due to time constraints, we essentially had to walk along the wall to where the toboggans were to go down. I will say that the toboggans were as sweet as ever, and only had a few minor traffic jams. After our toboggan ride down, we headed over to a restaurant for lunch (coincidentally the exact same restaurant I ate at the last time I came to the wall) Then we all loaded back on the busses and headed back to the hotel.

Great Wall Round 2!! (it's still there lol)

Hospital Round 1: So after returning to the hotel from the Great Wall I received word that another teacher had also received bites and wanted to go to the hospital, and that I should probably go to, which I, of course, was not averse to.  Boy was this an interesting visit. We walked into the hospital and went to registration, to be told that we needed a card to register, since we were foreign. Then at the counter to get the card, they told us that we couldn’t get one until we saw a doctor, and the doctor had to say that we could be treated. So we then wandered down a sketchy hallway to a very small pretty crowded exam room, with one extremely harried and very harassed looking doctor who was being talked to by about 5 people at once. After standing around waiting to talk to the doctor for about 20 minutes, he looks at my legs, and tells our Chinese TA, sorry we don’t do skin today, they need to come tomorrow… of course. So we left the hospital and spent ages hailing a cab, as it was now rush hour in Beijing.

Day 9: August 10^th- Hospital Round 2. Today we switched grades, and my group got to start teaching 9^th graders, which I was kinda excited about, as we could do more interesting subjects. The first day went ok, but the kids were a bit loud, and obviously a lot harder to control than the fifth graders. After the class I, along with the teacher who also attempted to go to the hospital yesterday, and another teacher who had been bitten on the face that night, were supposed to go to another hospital. While the teacher from yesterday forgot to show, Cassie (the teacher who had been bitten on the face) and I went to a different, and much nicer hospital. The gamut for this hospital went, first trying to register on the first floor, then being told to go down to emergency to register. Of course in the Emergency Room we were told we need a card, which was a pain to get as no one could read our passports, they wrote our names wrong, but it was finally done. We then took our cards and went over to the nurse for triage assessment, to be told they don’t do skin in the Emergency Room, and that instead we needed to go find a doctor in the dermatology department. So we went up to dermatology, where there was no one at reception, and then we just walked into a patient room where a doctor was, and our Chinese TA talked to him! The doctor said he had too many patients to see and that we should try another doctor, so we walked in on another patient/doctor consultation. This doctor said that she would see us after she was done with her current patient. So we waited and then went into see the doctor. The doctor looked at me and said that my case was more severe than the other girls, and would therefore take longer to heal. As with every other Chinese person, she asked if I was allergic to mosquitos (like they only have mosquitos in China!!!) She then recommended that I avoid parks, trees or anything green, and that I should live on a high floor, and usually wear trousers instead of skirts, to protect myself from bugs, as these bites would probably continue in Shenzhen! During this advice session I just nodded and smiled, while mentally discarding almost everything, but she did give me topical lotion and pills.

Total Cost for a Chinese hospital visit (including cab rides, cards and registration, and medicine): 70 RMB or US$11

** Note: everyone kept telling us to save the receipts to file with the insurance, to which I just laughed and laughed inside my head :D

Day 10: August 11^th- Regular teaching day.

Day 11: August 12^th- Fight Club!! Ok so today should have been a normal teaching day, during which I was going to cover disasters (both manmade and natural). However, instead as an observing coordinator pointed out, the day ended up being my own manmade disaster, lol :( During this class the kids were extremely restless, they were quickly losing letters (if the lose them all they write lines), and in the end there was a physical fight between two students, which involved kicking and punching. I, to date, still don’t know what caused the fight, but I just broke it up and attempted to continue class, but the kids were just going crazy and we ended up doing lines for ages. Overall, it was a really rough day, but it also taught me a lot about how to handle kids in the future and what situations an occur. Later tonight I got a little pick-up as we got to go see some awesome Chinese acrobats!!

Day 12-16: August 13-17^th Mostly regular teaching days, interspersed with a couple late nights, some great dinners and meeting a lot of really cool people!

Day 17: August 18^th- So today was the last day of teaching!!!! Hallelujah, Hallelujah!!!! It was a really exciting day, and the day of the student talent show, which was sprung on us a couple days earlier. This consisted of our kids spending ages practicing this random Westlife song the picked out called “My Love” from like 2000. (Chinese kids know the strangest bands and songs sometimes!) Then they preformed along with all the other 13 classes of kids, from grade 3 to university level. This talent show, had to be an exercise in torture, or at least that was what it felt like at the time (as it was VERY hot and extremely noisy!!) However, in the end we were done with teaching and it was time to party!!! Which we did by going to a place called Wudaokou and a bar/club called Propaganda, and dancing/drinking the night away. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet a bunch of people.

My Beijing 9th graders!

Day 18: August 19^th- So today was the Forbidden City tour day, for which people had to be at the bus pick-up spot by 7:30 am. I however, having already seen the city once for 3-4 hours, chose to instead sleep in and leisurely pack my bag for the train  (NOTE: our large bags had been shipped days before to Shenzhen) After packing my bag and checking out of the hotel, I decided to go to the Pearl Market and maybe pick-up some bags and pearls. At the market I ended up running into another CTLCr and was able to get some things I wanted. I then headed back to the hotel and stopped at Carrefour (a French grocery/walmart chain) for some snacks for the train. Then I headed back to the hotel, where apparently the coordinators were revealing people’s assignments. Drumroll please….. ….. …..  I, for the next 10 months, will be living in the Futian District of Shenzhen, teaching at a Vocational school for high school age kids. I will be living in an off campus apartment with another girl whom is apparently British and I hadn’t met yet, but I’m very excited and pleased!!

Train Time: We, yet again, loaded onto the buses yet again, and headed through heavy traffic (aka normal Beijing traffic) to the train station. We then went through the long process of checking tickets (which, because China is cracking down on foreign travel, meant our tickets had to match our passport numbers) and going through security en masse. Having made it through we had enough time to get food, at the train station McDonalds and queue up to enter the train for our minimum 24 hour ride. (I’ll talk more about the train ride in a future post :D )

First Day of the "Real World"

So today, in less than 5 hours I will be on a flight bound for Seoul, Korea and then on to Beijing! It will be my first job in the real world, and I'm both excited and nervous!! Since I graduated from the University of Virginia 73 days ago, I have been thinking about and preparing to go to China and teach English. I've spent the last 2 months at UVA studying Chinese so that I would be better prepared for China, and yet I still am not sure how this next year will go :/ Well, there is nothing I can do about it now, and I am currently getting yelled out to continue getting ready for my flight so I will hopefully write more later, when I am an "official" part of the 'real world' ;)