Enjoy:
From: Brown, David
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 11:18 PM
Hey Mom,
We arrived in Beijing at 11:00am your time , which is 11:00pm in China. The flight was long but went by quickly, I watched the movie The Descendants on the flight and periodically slept the rest of the way. They fed us a lot on the flight too; I had beef with rice and a roll and some salad for dinner, later I had a ham sandwich, and about 2 hours before arriving in Beijing I had some asian noodles and dumplings. They fed us a lot!
When we arrived in Beijing we went to a hotel and it was really nice but on the outskirts of the city because the next morning we all had to catch a flight to Wuhan at 6:55am. Myself and three of the other teachers, Dylan, Scott, and Sabrina all took a walk around the city; where we were was very industrial and it seems like every building is 10+ stories. We were walking at about 12:30am until 1:30 so we saw almost no one. We came across a lit up building and walked in and it seemed kind of sketchy. We thought it might be some weird kind of club or something, but it turns out it was a Karaoke bar. When we walked in there was a front desk and then we walked through some lit up hallways and we were afraid it would lead to a brothel or something (hahahaha) so we decided to turn around and head back to our hotel.
We had to wake up this morning at 4:15 to go back to the airport and we caught our plane at 6:55 and we're now in Wuhan at a REALLY nice hotel. It is currently 11:15am on Thursday. At 12pm we are going to get lunch and then begin orientation today. Ken (Dr. Johnson) said orientation will be very informal today and just a few hours. We're all pretty tired from traveling and the time difference is really screwy. SO far though everything has been super easy. Most of the Chinese people who work for our company speak English so it's been pretty easy to communicate so far. Wuhan is very foggy and it is raining right now but the city is so expansive and looks awesome! I am going to have a blast here. There is so much to explore!
I'm going to try to catch some shut eye, but I wanted to update you. I read some of the book you gave me; very awesome!
I love you! Tell Matt, Meg, and Dad I love them too!
-David
From: Brown, David
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:08 PM
From: Brown, David
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:08 PM
Hey Jilly,
It's 1:30am on Friday here. I passed out at 6:30(pm) after our meetings yesterday because I haven't had normal sleep since leaving Philly on Tuesday so I am up at an odd time. We have meetings again today at 10am, so hopefully I'll fall sleep again for a few hours. Maybe I can wake up at 7am and watch the Flyer's game online because they'll just be starting there :).
Yesterday was awesome! Lunch was really great. Those eating were the 5 teachers and 6 Chinese people who work for China Project Hope. Our walk to the restaurant from the hotel was an adventure in and of itself! Tell Matt that Chinese drivers are similar to the one's in Peru; they stop for no one. It's pretty wild, cars would nearly hit us walking across the street, they don't slow down for pedestrians. Their Traffic systems are pretty cool though because traffic lights run on timers that display for the drivers, so drivers can see a digital clock next to the traffic light that will be ticking down the seconds until they can go or until they can stop.
Along the streets there are lots of vendors and businesses. Many restaurant fronts have fish tanks out front and that is what you end up eating inside. One restaurant had a tank full of large frogs. I'll eventually tell you how that tastes ;). When we got to the restaurant we walked in and there was beautiful wooden architecture inside and a pond with different lotus flowers and exotic plants in it. We walked up stairs which led to a long hallway where there were individual rooms with big round tables. We sat down and the food kept coming. We had multiple rice dishes with different meats in them, noodle soup, chicken soup (that had a full chicken in it), a fish dish (which was not fillet, but also the full fish), some cabbage dish, fried shrimp, a sautéed mushroom dish, a tofu plater, these "chinese hamburgers" that were essentially small rice cake buns that you take and place some kind of meat on, and various other spicy vegetable dishes. All of the food was placed on a circular revolving tray on the table, so we would spin the tray and take what we wanted from each dish. It was delicious, and nothing like sesame or general tso's chicken haha.
After our meal we went to China Project Hope's office and began our orientation and were explained how the organization works and our role in the organization. To some it all up, in CHina students have one shot at being successful and that is if they pass an exam (that they can only take once) and get into a good college university. Otherwise, they're doomed. The Chinese are very status conscious, so their children's success is very important to them. The Chinese are also frugal in nature and do not spent a lot of money, but they highly value education and an average family will spend between 50 and 70% of their life savings on their child's education. The staple of American education is options. Options to choose schools, majors, teacher, etc. In China they don't have that, and what China Project Hope does is offers that. Kids through China Project Hope come to America and complete high school and then often move on to college and open many different doors of opportunities. My job in the classroom is to teach general conversational English to students who are not necessarily going to be coming to America, but who are kids who potentially could have that fire lit in them. I will also be spending some time conducting interviews of those who have applied to go to America and I will be helping to evaluate and place them. I'll learn more about everything I'll be doing today and once I'm in the school. The nature of what I am doing is informal and sounds really awesome. One of the Chinese ladies in the office said the kids at my school are going to love me because I am handsome haha.
The Wuhan Experimental Foreign Language School is a middle school and it is one of the most prestigious schools in the province. I am pumped to be working there and Ken said that this school is their most important client. I felt pretty honored to be placed there and I found out yesterday that over 60 applicants applied for this job, 20 were interviewed, and 8 were selected to come. 5 of us accepted the position and the of the other four teachers, three are over the age of 32, so I feel pretty pumped about that also. The other teachers are all really great people and it has been fun hanging out with them and hearing about what they do. Scott is a college professor, Walid has worked in schools and took a year off to get his master's degree and is now doing this after having completed his degree, Sabrina was an attorney and she still does part time work, but she is currently an ESL tutor and making a career shift into education, and Dylan has worked for various nonprofits, after school programs and camps in Philadelphia, and Americorp. When Waldi found out I was 23 he was shocked; he though I was at least 28 by how I "carried myself."
All in all, everything is going great. Sorry for writing such a long e-mail, but this is serving two good purposes: keeping you up-to-date and acting as a journal for me :). I cannot get on my blog :( or Facebook or youtube. I might try to find a way to though.
Oh--a random thing I forgot to say. Some of the toilets in public places are wild! They are just holes in the grounds (still with plumbing and a seat) that you go in. You just squat over. Our hotel is really nice and has a regular toilet, so I've just used that so far. Pretty interesting...
Anyway,
Love you lots and talk to you soon. Sorry if there are any typing mistakes, I wrote quite a bit and it's now 2:05am so I am going to try to go back to sleep.
LOVE YA!
-Dave
Advertisement we saw when we arrived in Beijing
The meal referenced in my e-mail
This freaked me out when a bit when I got here, but now I have great knees and should be fine if I'm ever lost in the wild. As, beleive it or not, the Chinese believe this is more sanitary (you're not sitting on a germ infested seat).
The view from one of the windows in the CPH office
Street outside of the office
Two foreigners marveling at the traffic
No comments:
Post a Comment