School Has Started

It is Sunday evening. Today was our first day off from school. Our school is on an interesting rotation, in that they do six days of class, one day off, then four days of class, with three days off, then six days of class, etc. It can make for a long week, but it is also nice because you have a three day weekend every other weekend, which gives us time to travel. With our one day off, we decided to head out to downtown, braving the Changzhou traffic. Here is a picture of the traffic, taken out of Evelyn's bedroom window. Every car in the picture was moving, most at full speed. What I have learned of Changzhou traffic, size matters. Buses are the biggest, so they go where and when they want. Then come vans and large cars, then small cars. It is common to see a car going the wrong way in the street. After cars come bikes, and then come pedestrians. The drivers here are actually quite amazing: they know exactly how little they need to slow down to just miss something or someone traveling in another direction. Nobody stops all the way; they simply slow down a bit or take a new course (sometimes over curbs) to [barely] avoid something in their path. Actually, in the physics book that I had read for school, there is an entire chapter on the physics of traffic. Here is the press release shot of our school. Actually, now that I look at it, I think it is the back of the school, but the front looks the same as well. It is eight stories high, my office being on the fourth floor. Jane is in a separate building, a much smaller building which would be situated just behind the photographer of the picture below.

As expected, Jane is teaching English to first and fourth graders (I may have mentioned some of this in a prior post). She really enjoys it. She has a very broad range of nationalities in her class, from throughout Asia and Europe. I began teaching chemistry and physics, but I dropped the physics. There is an engineer who also teaches higher level physics, who was scheduled to teach English. Because physics is his strong suit (and not really mine), we swapped, and now I teach chemistry, basic science and English reading. My chemistry students are pretty amazing, they range in ages from 15-17 and they are all preparing for college level chemistry. The book I am teaching is different from the books I learned from, so it takes a lot of preparation on my part to be ready to teach. It is nice, though, to have such energetic and interested kids. In my basic science and English class, there is a much larger difference in English comprehension, but again, the kids are all doing very well.

After our first few days of classes, we had a welcome dinner for the foreign teachers. At our table below, from right to left, are me, Jane, Jenny (the local director of the teaching program that our school uses), Mr. Jiu (who I will talk about later), Ali (the physics teacher from Canada), and Cecile and Severin (French teachers (from France)).

Jenny (from New Zealand), moved into our old apartment (poor Jenny). She is very nice and she and Jane have hit it off quite well. It is funny, there are about three teachers from New Zealand and a few from Australia. I share my office with one guy from New Zealand and two from Britain. My Chinese does not seem to be improving too quickly, but I think I am developing a pretty good Australian/New Zealander/British accent. In the picture below, we are at a very nice Chinese hotel, and we are dining on our first round of food. In front of me is an expensive bottle of special Chinese wine that the principal brought (it was very strong, like saki). There were several toasts at our table, and the Chinese men taught us that when touching glasses during a toast, if you respect the person you are toasting, your glass be lower than the other when they touch (the tip of your glass should touch the middle or bottom of the other glass). Well, everyone at our table respected each other, so it was a constant struggle to be the one with the lower touching glass.

Here is another picture of our table, with some of the other foreign teachers in the background. You can see the new round of food on the rotating table (you take what you want out of the big bowls and plates and put it on your personal plate). I would say that they probably brought out 30 different foods altogether, some being: chicken skewers, beef, many different vegetables, wontons (my favorite), and plenty of fish (including an entire fish that was about 2 feet long and 1 foot wide). Also in this picture, you can see Felix to my left. He is the vice president in charge of academics. He is extremely nice, and when he did toasts, he was almost laying on the floor to ensure that he was the bottom glass.

As a side, at the dinner, Felix paid me a pretty big compliment. He said that I reminded him of a soldier, meaning that I was strong, clean-cut, educated, and level headed. He said that he thought I would be a good role model to the students. It was quite a nice thing for him to say, but simply put, he is a nice guy. Now on to Mr. Jiu, another nice guy. Because we have still had nanny issues, Jane has not been going to school in the mornings, and she did not go for the first few days of orientation. When we were at dinner, Jane talked a lot with Mr. Jiu, especially after a few of the toasts started taking effect. Jane was being her boisterous self, joking with Mr. Jiu and calling him her new best friend. Mr. Jiu said that whenever we have visitors, we should bring them to him and he will help show them around. Jane thought that Mr. Jiu was the driver that had driven the bus of teachers to the hotel for dinner. I then realized that she had no idea who he was, so I told her that he was the headmaster of the school. It was pretty funny, but it did not matter, we would have had a great time with him, and the others, no matter who he was.

After dinner, when we were leaving, a few games of mini-pool and mini-ping-pong were played in the hotel lobby. Mr. Jiu beat Jane 11-9 at ping-pong. One thing is for sure, the Chinese take ping-pong quite serious; the game was pretty intense. Below are Jane and Jenny playing pool, and Ali and Jack (the vice principal in charge of non-academics (housing, pay, meals, etc.)

On Wednesday night, we decided to go out to dinner instead of cooking. We decided to go to a Sichuan restaurant, where the food is in bowls of hot liquid, filled with tons of different types of hot peppers. We got a chicken soup, and here is Danny gnawing on the chicken's foot. He was not brave enough to try the chicken's head (nor was anyone else). Dan actually found the foot by wading his chopsticks in the deep soup bowl, which he called "fishing for chicken".

Here are Jane and Evelyn at the same restaurant.

Here is Danny with Stacey, who has been the kids nanny in the afternoons when Jane goes to work (the pictures were taken using her phone). Stacey is a college student who we randomly ran into at a bus stop; she asked Danny, in English, what his name was, so we struck up a conversation with her. She is very nice and is very interested in our family (being with us is a good way to study English). She goes to class in the morning, and then heads straight to our place afterwards, where she works for four hours or so watching Evelyn and Etain (Dan is in school all day). She also watched the kids Friday night when Jane and I went out, and she has offered to be an on-call babysitter whenever needed. She has been a big help with the kids, and she has taught us a lot about where to go and how to get places.

Here are Etain and me.

Here are Dan and Evelyn, playing in the playground of KFC. Stacey took them there one day, where they feasted on soda, juice and cookies.

Here is Stacey and Etain, the picture being taken by Dan.

With our one day off, we decided to head downtown to do some much needed shopping. Another thing that I forgot to mention that our whole family has fallen ill with some flu type symptoms. Evelyn had it first, gave it to me, and then it went to Dan and Etain. I think now we are getting over it. But with the chills, the aches, the rock hard beds, and with adjusting to everything being slightly lower than normal, my lower back has been killing me. The first thing I wanted to get was a foam mattress. We headed off downtown, went to another huge department/grocery store, and bought a bunch of stuff. I bought my mattress, but it was just a tiny little pad (hopefully everything helps, though). Afterwards, we headed to McDonalds, where Danny got another happy meal with a Star Wars guy, as well as some balloons. We then went to another shop along the street, where we bought cell phones. Right now, our phones only do local calls, it will take a few weeks before we can register for international calling. Our cell phones cost about $40 each, and we got the cheapest ones. The phones here come with SIM cards; there are no calling plans. Each card has some pre-paid amount on it, and when it is up, your phone does not work. I think the card charges per call, regardless of the length, and each charge is about $.03.

Here is young Daniel walking the streets of downtown Changzhou. (The funny thing about this picture is that, seconds earlier, the red balloon was in Evelyn's hand. She dropped it, though, and it went flying down the street. Jane chased it for about a block and a half before she was finally able to snag it.).

Here are the Grizwolds coming home from Wally World. (Actually, it is us after leaving the store (the stroller was packed with groceries, and pushing it felt like pushing a dump truck. We also got bombarded by street vendors, and Jane gave in for the extra balloons.))

That has got to be enough for now, I have to go read about electrochemistry to prepare for my classes tomorrow.