Cooking with Jack and Jao

Picture and video displayed visualise the recent happening of Jack and Jao cooking at my place, preparing some tasty Chinese food. My endeavours of the night preceding that Friday of making something that should resemble an Italian pasta were, given the very limited ingredients I had at my disposal, not a total fiasco and hence Jack was eager to make me something tasty as well. Contrary to the food which is served at lunch in the canteen, which is of superb quality as I get to eat with the ‘leaders’, the meals served for supper are less tasty and hence I intend to utilize my kitchen more regularly during the evenings. This is also a great way to spend some good time with Jack and Jao, with whom I get along really well! The video also shows those sections of my 'apartment' that I have not displayed yet.

Qingdao!

The trip from Sanmenxia to Qingdao was forced on me by the threat of being illegally employed in China, not something many people would fancy, without having the requested employment or business visa in my possession. Endeavours of obtaining one of these items locally sprouted the scenario of doom that my Chinese adventure may come to a soon and sudden end as I was bluntly and decisively told that there was no way of acquiring the requested legal items. The organization which had linked me to the school had been promising from the very beginning on that they would take care of the visa process but their vague answers and sporadic replies by email suggested that they had as little notion about the crucial visa procedures as about the best way to grow eco-friendly strawberries on the North pole. Hence the hazy reference I eventually got to a certain ‘Miss Zhang’ did little to rouse my conviction of total incompetence of the bureaucratic mess I found myself in. Yet China keeps surprising you, and this time the surprise was as pleasant as much as the previous ones had been less favoured. The lady who was referred to as Miss Zhang called herself Linda, and besides her lovely looks she was more than competent of dealing with the visa mess. (insight that I gained later that she was working for a different organisation whose services mine had profited from temporarily shed a clarifying light on the initial paradox of skewed efficiency) Hence I took an overnight bus to Qingdao (big struggle, too long a story for now) and was well received by Linda the next morning. I utilised the Sunday to visit the city and on Monday I was led by Linda to various bureaucratic strongholds which were surprisingly easily dealt with and thus in no-time a valid 6-month F visa showed proudly on my passport.

The city of Qingdao is famous for its German heritage and, interrelated to the German occupation, for its tasty beer. The old town displays a variety of architecture and churches which would lure one into the feeling of finding himself in a cozy German provincial town, though a look at the skyscrapers which line the coast underlines the very fact that Qingdao is a well established Chinese city. Strolling around Qingdao made my first weekend trip, and plans are to continue the sequence in five days by visiting nearby Luoyang. Soon more on that!

Off to Qingdao!

in about five minutes I'll head for the bus station where a sleeper bus will take me to Qingdao, all the way at the coast. I'll have to settle my visa dispute there, but since the place is worth visiting I've taken an extra day to do some sightseeing.. So time and money are not utterly wasted ;)
When I've returned more on the visa experience and about Qingdao!

Teaching and living at ‘Sanmenxia foreign language middle school’

Of course the cliché feelings of being here for only a few days but having the feeling that it has been weeks are applicable to my situation in Sanmenxia. The last days have been ones of integrating, getting settled, buying the necessary clothes / sport shoes / apartment utilities, and meeting new (Chinese) people. And of course my first days as a teacher here! Monday and today I have spent as my first official working days and as of now I am happy to have started! Classes of sixty kids each, twenty different classes a week.. you do the math, that’s 1200 new faces.. Fortunately order is more of a virtue here than in India where even the smallest classes were in turmoil from time to time and hence I am confident that my ‘oral English classes’ will run as smooth as I intend. Yes.. oral classes. Since it’s a foreign language school there’s loads of Chinese English teachers here but their oral skills are as limited as the flexibility of the bureaucracy here. They do a good job in general though, as I was positively surprised by the English skills of my 2nd grade kids. However, the job as an oral teacher is far more intensive than a regular teacher’s job as during the whole class it’s either me talking or having a student talk. But well.. just another challenge eh :)

I am definitely more positive about my apartment than I was at first glance.. the concrete cold rooms with scarce furniture have been transformed into a new home for me during the last days. I’ve bought a big mirror, some carpet to cover the floor next to my bed with, have had twelve big pictures printed and spread them out over the walls.. The air conditioner is fortunately also capable to share warm air so that my room is warm and cozy compared to the rest of the dorm buildings, be it with the exception of my kitchen and bathroom. And it is in my bedroom, under the heater, that I write this story now.. Soon more and better!

the video below shows you my bedroom.. the other rooms are too cold for me to enter now ;)

And yesss I have internet in my room! Since I have a class to teach in 15 minutes I will just quickly upload two pictures; one is with Jack, the guy who's helping me out here, and the other one is of the school grounds. Soon more!

getting settled in Sanmenxia

yeah finally I got here.. Sanmenxia! As of now I do not have internet in my room, I have been promised that it will be arranged as soon as possible but of course those words are subject to a whole range of different cultural interpretations.
From the first second I set foot on Sanmenxian soil I was accompanied by Jack. The name Jack may spur an imagine of an American bloke in his late twenties, with short black hair, a motor jacket and a cool smile, but in China 'Jack' is the nickname chosen by my 'buddy' who's been chosen to help me out during my stay here. He's 24 and an English teacher here at the secondary school where I will be teaching and I am really happy for his company and help. Since I'm the only non-chinese person in the whole area it's nice to meet Chinese people with whom you get along well, and this certainly holds for Jack.
Bit of a bugbear however is my visa, as I am here on a one-month tourist visa I need to get an appropriate one that lasts for four months asap and up till now there's been little action regarding that matter. Anyway, we'll see how that works out!
In my next post I hope I'll be able to post the pictures I have taken so far, if the promised internet access has been realised by then you'll be supplied with a visual image of the scenario on the ground here!
As for now, all the best from China!

China!

Last Friday I departed for what would become a 24 hour journey from the door of my Kalkaji flat in New Delhi to the very hotel I am still residing in now. Saying goodbye to the very good friends I have made in Delhi was not easy but I knew I’d see them back in Europe so all in all I was mainly excited to go to a new country! Plan is to teach in China for four months, starting coming Monday. Since my arrival Saturday evening in Jinan I have spent my time in a hotel and it is only from tomorrow on that I will move on to the town of my school. More details about that will follow later!

China itself is truly a new experience; the people, the food, the cities, the infrastructure, everything is so very different than India! I love it though, and the lays days I’ve spent at least two hours each day just roaming around the city, buying random food from the street without having a clue what I’m eating, drinking tea in various teahouses, and especially looking around and being excited to be in China. The city of Jinan itself would by most Western people be regarded as very ugly and grey, as it depicts much of what communism does to architecture and such, but .. it intrigues me. Like at the time I studied in Poland, I can wander around the concrete flats and square blocks and be fascinated about the people who live here and what it must be like to live in such a culture.

Chinese people are very kind and although hardly anyone speaks a word of English here they are willing to help you out. My first encounter was the taxi driver at the airport of Beijing.. think of it, the capital of China where the Olympics had just been held, you’d think the guy spoke some English. But no, he had no clue whatsoever what I meant by ‘train station’, nor had the guy in the yellow outfit who directed people to the respective taxis. Anyway, I decided to draw a train on a piece of paper and name the name of the city I had to go to. The yellow outfit guy shot a glance at the paper, made a sound that slightly resembled the whistle of a locomotive from the 30’s, and we were on the same line again. :D And well.. that’s how I deal with people here. ;)

More news about my new city will follow shortly! As for now, all the best from Jinan!