Saturday morning was the end of one adventure and the
beginning of another, even greater adventure. Really, everything I do
here just feels kind of like an adventure- some ups, some downs, and some
unexpected twists just to keep things interesting. Anyway, so we met up
at 5:30 to go to the train station. We got on the bullet train (the
fastest one there is) and got all settled in. After going for about an
hour, the train reached the next stop. And it stopped. Within the
next hour to hour and a half we moved forward only a little bit at a time, and
then the train would stop again and we would wait. After doing this for a
really long time (during which time I fell asleep), the train went backwards
and in 2-3 minutes we were back at the station we had stopped at and everyone
had to get off the train and get on another train at the station. For
that train, they just told us to sit anywhere, so we all moved around a bit.
After about 5-10 minutes on the train, Jacob came back to where Kirsten
and I were sitting and asked us to come talk to him and Brad for a bit.
When we got into the dining car, they let us know that really they just
wanted to play Monopoly Deal with us. So we learned how to play (I
finally won the fifth round, which was also the last round we played).
After that, we played "Who's the Idiot?" for a while. It
was really fun playing games with them. But, we finally arrived first at
Nanjing where we said goodbye to Brad, and then went the last 20 minutes to
ZhenJiang where we got off to begin the next adventure.
As we came down the escalator and went out the gate, we were
met by our liaisons. Mine is a guy named
王蕾 (or
Ray). Anyway, I was picked up by him and
we got into the car (apparently there’s a driver for the headmaster, and he was
the one that drove us). While we were in
the car, they asked if I had eaten lunch, which I hadn’t, so they decided to
take me to KFC. I thought it was kind of
funny that the first meal I had in the city was KFC. Anyway, they then took me to the school,
which is only 3 or so blocks from KFC. I
went up to my room, put my stuff down, then they let me stay there to “rest”. Really, I just unpacked and got my stuff
taken care of. Anyway, they gave me a
phone, which I ended up not using because I wanted to just get a SIM card for
my phone but apparently my phone has a much smaller SIM card than the one they
had prepared for me. So I went the rest
of the day I was on and off without a phone.
After I had unpacked, I called王蕾 with the old phone they gave me
and he picked me up to take me to meet the other teachers, the headmaster, the
principle, and other people that work in the school. I also got to see the classrooms. When I was in the room with the other
teachers, I started feeling like I didn’t understand as much Chinese as I had
thought I did- which in some ways is true, but because they were all talking at
the same time, and they were using the ZhenJiang dialect as well as Mandarin, I
just couldn’t really understand what they were saying. But I had asked for an Ethernet cable so they
made one work for me (he cut the ends and put the plastic part on a part where
the wires actually worked). Afterward, I
was shown the office that I would be in (the International Office) and then
they told me I could go back to my apartment to rest some more, and that there
would be a banquet at 5:10.
I went to my apartment and just hung out for about an hour. Let me try to describe my apartment to you really quick. So I have a nice large, empty entry hall with the bathroom right off of it. The bathroom has a sink with a mirror and a little shelf above it. There's a Western toilet, the shower head (in China most showers are just a shower head that points to a part of the bathroom), and my washer. In my actual room, I have a little fridge (yay!), a desk, a wardrobe thing, a nightstand on either side of my twin size bed, and a heater/air conditioner. I was actually pretty lucky with my bed- I get to sleep on box springs. Of course, there's no mattress or cushion part so I feel the springs poking into me at night, but it's better than a wood board covered with a sheet. I also have a "balcony-type room" which is where I would hang my clothes to dry after washing them. Anyway, that's pretty much it; it's all pretty new and in good condition, so I'm really lucky there. I guess my apartment isn't all that big, but it's enough for me!
Anyway, back to the events of the night: I then went
down to the school gate. At that point,
they had taken back the old phone and SIM card, so I just had to trust that the
time they said was right. Apparently
they had moved it up 10 minutes, but I was a little early anyway so it was
okay. I got in the car with the other 3
English teachers and another guy, and we left.
We stopped by a convenience store where the guy bought coconut milk
(with chewy stuff in it), red wine, and some other type of alcohol. I have to say I was glad to see the coconut
milk.
When we got to the place we were eating, we went up to a
really nice room and met the principle (he’s the highest authority), the
headmistress, and the vice principle, the assistant vice principle, and the 3rd
vice principle (I’m not sure what his title would actually be in English, that’s
just the closest I can think of). When
we first came in the room, some of the men were smoking, and the vice principle
told them to leave the room, which I was very grateful for since I really didn’t
want to be breathing in their smoke all night.
Anyway, when they came back I was put on the right hand side of the
principle as the guest of honor. As they
started, I had to tell them that I don’t drink alcohol as they tried to pour
red wine into my cup. So, I got to have
delicious coconut milk (yum!). The thing
with drinks here is that you don’t actually drink them unless you’re toasting
someone. There’s a custom where everyone
basically toasts everyone else; sometimes you stand, sometimes you don’t;
sometimes you clink glasses, sometimes you tap the lazy susan in the middle.
So, sitting next to the principle was definitely an experience! He really likes to talk- but he talks using more ZhenJiang dialect than anything else. So, I had a hard time understanding a lot of what he said, and the more he drank, the less I understood. See, his accent is pretty thick to begin with making it a bit more difficult to understand what he’s saying, but as he got drunk it got even worse. Needless to say, I felt worse about my own ability to speak and understand Chinese that night than I have in quite a long time (I didn’t realize how much of what he was saying was in the local dialect until a day later when one of the English teachers told me that she didn’t even understand everything he said because of that). Well, throughout that night, he would turn to talk to me about something or other and those conversations included, ‘If you eat so little, how can you be so fat?’ ‘Are you single?’ ‘My children are [blank] years old, so I will treat you like my child’ ‘I am very straightforward with the foreigners I have worked with and after a while they all really like it, so I will be straightforward with you’ ‘You need to toast [insert name here] (he said this many times about different people including himself, the other authorities of the school, and the English teachers)’ ‘Toasting is a Chinese tradition and while you are in China, you should learn to “Do as the Romans do”’ and one of my favorites, ‘You must drink it all, then you are family. If you don’t drink it all you are just a guest’. I was told that they wanted me to be like part of the family, which could be good, but could also be potentially not good. So I just hoped I would still be treated with the hospitality/respect that they show guests, but that they would still treat me as a friend too. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this will play out over the semester.
Well, that was Saturday- the beginning of my real life here in China! I'm excited to get to know the people here and make friends with some of the teachers and students.
Until next time! 再见！
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sounds like a warm, straightforward welcome.