Wutong Mountain

This weekend Danielle and I decided to get in a little physical activity to change up the pace. So, we decided to hike up the highest "peak" in Shenzhen: Wutong Mountain. It's about a 5 mile hike up and down. We discovered that the Chinese idea of a hike is going up a 2.5 mile staircase. Literally, the path all the way up to the peak is one giant staircase. Along the way we ran into my school's gym teacher, who told us that the fastest ascent was done in about 50 minutes. It took us a little over two hours... Constantly we were reminded of how out of shape we were by seeing little 6-7 year olds pass us by, or by seeing old frail women carry trash bags full of water bottles to sell at the top. Regardless, it was a fun climb and a very nice contrast to the big city.

邱老师

This Friday, we had a Chinese class that was much more interesting than most. Our teacher, Qiu Laoshi (teacher qiu (the title of this post)), went off on a tangent that ended up lasting about 45 minutes. She was trying to describe the definition of a word that meant 'way of thinking', and started talking about how in the Mao era, there was only one way of thinking. She started telling us that when she was growing up (30-40 years ago) people wouldn't answer the phone with the now typical 'wei' or 'ni hao'. Instead, they would answer with communist slogans, because they were never sure of who was calling them on the phone. She said that no one had their own thoughts. Whatever Mao said was simply repeated by everyone as the truth. That's all there was. In everyone's house there hung a picture of the chairman, and before each person went to work they stood and talked to the portrait. They told him what they were going to do that day. When they got home they would tell him how hard they had worked and what they had accomplished. Talk about cultural differences...

Qiu Laoshi also talked to us about where she lived when she was younger. For 7 years she lived in what I think we would call a cow shed. I wasn't sure of some of the words that she was using, but I gathered that she lived in a building with cows, and that before she went to sleep she needed to shovel out the cow dung so that there would be room on the floor. She lived that way for seven years. She mentioned that a few years ago she returned to that place where she grew up and just started crying.

Between 1966 and 1976 the cultural revolution was in full force. Qiu laoshi told us that all of the city youth was sent out to the countryside to work and be "reeducated" by the peasants. For those 10 years, all universities in China were shut down. Not until Deng Xiaoping and the opening to the west did university activity resume. Qiu laoshi was in the first university class after the cultural revolution in 1976-77. She has quite the life story, and I'm really glad that she shared some of it with us. It's amazing to see people here who are in their 50's and 60's and think of what they've lived through.

The Grind...

Now that we've been here almost two months, things are starting to settle into a fairly consistent routine: wake up, teach, go home, fry up some dumplings, watch prison break, sleep, rinse, repeat. Classes are becoming easier and easier to teach as I become more comfortable in front of my classes. Things are less and less structured, and we (the students and I) are able to have a bit more fun. The days are going by faster and faster, and really, it's hard to believe that we're half way into October.

But, there were a couple of things recently that broke the routine. On Tuesday, Niko and I hosted what our English department called the "English Square". This consisted of Niko and I MCing a presentation to the entire Junior 1 class. That's about 250 kids. I was initially worried, but it turned out to not be too big a deal. We played catch-phrase and Jeopardy. At first, the Jeopardy contestants understood the rule that the first person to raise their hand answers the question, but towards the end of the competition (when things were getting a bit more heated) they resorted to jumping out of their seats, flailing, and just calling out the answer. The end result was that whoever got called on had the answer screamed in his ear, and was pretty much guaranteed the points.

Another routine-breaker in the past couple of days has been our walk home from school. It just so happens that we tend to go home at the same time that the elementary school gets let out. As you can see in the picture, we now have a couple tag-alongs on our journey home. We let them listen to our iPods, let them hitch a ride on our backs, or just drag them along. They love it. Next on the list is coming up with a good Halloween costume and planning our school's little Halloween festival. Who would have thought that at age 22 I would be bobbing for apples in China...

The Philippines

This past week saw a group of 8 of us teachers take the short two hour flight down to Manila, Philippines. The plan was to spend a couple of days in Manila, and then head out to a more southern island where we could relax on the beach for a few days before returning to Manila for our flight home. In the end, we stuck to our plan, although we had no idea how difficult that would be...

Phong and I arrived a day after the rest of the group and were greeted by Niko and Jeff at the hostel in Manila around 11pm. We were immediately pulled out to the bars, where we saw what Manila is all about: hookers. Now I'm sure there are women in Manila who are not hookers, but I swear I did not see a single one of them that night. The city itself, or at least the area we were in, was obviously very poor and thus was very dirty. Almost every street had people huddling in a dry corner of a building or lying down on a flat, dry surface. I was surprised by how similar the slums in Manila resembled those in Latin America. I knew that there was Spanish influence here, but if you couldn't hear the language that was being spoken, you would have sworn that you were in the slums of Santo Domingo. Regardless of the state of the city, we had a fun night and got on our 3:30am bus to depart for the town from which the ferry would leave.

Around 5am I was woken up by two things simultaneously. First, I was freezing my ass off. Second, the bus wasn't moving and no one was getting off. The bus had broken down. Of course it had. We were lucky enough to be able to catch a passing Jeepney (flamboyantly decorated taxis made from WW2 jeeps, I believe) and made it to the port with plenty of time for our 8am ferry. When we arrived in a light drizzle, we found that the ferry had been cancelled due to concerns over an approaching typhoon. We were 0/2 with transportation so far. Nearly as soon as we arrived, a man approached us and offered us his personal ferry service to our island. Obviously, we were skeptical, but with no other option, we took him up on his offer. We were driven to a rocky beach about a half hour away from the port and boarded his boat that "could hold 60 people". Yea, sure guy...

About an hour later, tired, wet, and a bit cranky, we made it to the island. A town called Puerto Galera. There a man told us of his cousin's hotel/resort at a town called White Beach. It sounded nice enough, so we decided to check it out. That's how we found the beaches that are in the pictures above. It's the off season now, so we were able to get good rates at the hotel, and were about a 2 minute walk from the beach. Things were looking up.

In the next few days we relaxed on the beach, went hiking to a waterfall in the jungle, and went snorkeling. It was really relaxing and we ended up having a really good time, even if a good portion of the "women" that we saw on the island may not have been born that way...

That's all I have time for, for now. More pictures and updates soon.