Here we go again…

First, let me tell y’all about my class schedule for this semester – it rocks. Here’s why: I am teaching the same class (different students) that I taught last year. This means no new lesson plans. I also have every Friday off. This’ll let me do a whole lot of short trips out of Beijing. Also, I start on the 20th of September. (That’s a week later than everyone else.) I’m doing everything I can not to gloat in front of the other teachers, but it’s really hard.

I just returned from a short trip to Shanhaiguan – the place where the Great Wall meets the Pacific Ocean. It’s a beautiful small town (150,000 people) with a really laid back, friendly attitude. It was pretty much everything Beijing isn’t. Let me give you a quick breakdown of what happened. First, Mike and I took an early train from Beijing to Shanhaiguan. We rode “hard seat” class – the least expensive and most uncomfortable way to travel. Thankfully the ride only took 4 hours. Upon arriving in Shanhaiguan, we walked around in an attempt to find one of the three hotels which are listed in the LP. Since the map included was lacking in detail – and the fact that I only saw one street sign as we wandered – we managed to get more than a little lost. Thankfully we did stumble across a pedi-cab with a driver who knew of a great hotel and took us there without too much trouble. The hotel was a remodeled courtyard house and it was in great shape (for China.)

After getting situated Mike and I went for a wander to get a feel for the city. The Great Wall runs along the east side of the city and the part of the city that had our hotel was inside of a gate in the wall. (A gate in the Great Wall was a walled compound that housed a whole lotta soldiers to protect the gate from invaders.) The ocean is South of the city and the Great Wall meets the ocean at laolongtou (old dragon head.) Eventually Mike and I found a museum, which we toured with a guide who spoke English fairly well. An interesting tidbit about this museum – it had no point or purpose. It was a little bit of everything from everywhere in China. Most museums in China have just a little bit of this problem but this one was completely random. After that, we went to dinner at a crazy restaurant recommended in LP. We were the only people in the restaurant and when we finished eating the guy took a picture of us to hang on his wall (the wall was covered with pictures of foreigners.) Also, I ordered a can of coke and watched the waitress run down the block to a convenience store to purchase my coke.
After dinner we wandered around for a while and eventually found a row of shops that were selling tourist junk at remarkably reduced prices – most stuff sold for a tenth of the Beijing price. The next day we went down to laolongtou and saw the ocean. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and a steady breeze. We headed back to Beijing in the afternoon – another long and painful train ride – and dealt with the impenetrable crowds around the Beijing train station.

Mike took a lot of pictures and he has website where he'll be posting them soon. I've added a link to his website - feel free to check out his pics.

The past few days have been incredibly busy – I’ve been playing floor mom for all the new teachers. They’re a decent bunch, although they don’t seem to be adjusting at all. They’re struggling, to put it mildly. Here’s an example: Saturday I took three of the new teachers to the Lido Hotel – the Lido sits in the middle of a great bunch of DVD stores and close to a couple of foreign import stores. We arrived and two of them headed straight to one of the import stores. They purchased loaves of French bread, went outside to the curb, sat down, and ate the entire loaf. I was surprised by the display (as were the masses of Beijingers who teemed past.) So I made sure that they had some lunch and answered more questions. I’ve answered more questions in the past week than I ever have. I mean that sincerely. I’ve actually posted hours on the door of my apartment, because the newbies seem to have no sense of time – have you ever had someone ask you at three in the morning where to buy cheese? I have. (The person in question was very homesick as well as concerned about dairy products.)

More newbies arrive tomorrow; I’m writing a short guidebook that should answer most of their questions. I also bought English maps of Beijing to give them and hopefully this will solve most of their problems here in Beijing. The problems that they’ve taken with them I can’t do anything about.

It’s thundering outside, and it’s bound to start raining at any minute. The sky’s all ugly and bruised, so it’ll be a doozy. The air was thick with pollution today, but tomorrow it’ll be clean and crisp for awhile – until the pollution rolls back in (around noon, most likely.)

Well, that’s enough for now.

The past few days have been a blur – I haven’t been feeling too well and I’ve been taking it really easy. I spent Sunday with the Brassers, Monday I went to PriceSmart, a bulk goods store like Sam’s Club, and browsed around, Tuesday I wandered around the embassy district, and today I moseyed down around the Forbidden City. I’ll give you a few highlights of the past four days:

1. The weather has been spot-on perfect. Bright blue skies, minimal clouds, and a nice breeze is all we’ve had for the past three days – no smog or oppressive grayness.

2. I went down to Silk Alley with Mike T. (the teacher – Mike B. is my friend of Calvin fame.) Mike T has been almost everywhere in Beijing, but he hadn’t been there before today. Silk Alley is one of those “flagrant tourist” spots – it’s a market where everything is overpriced (but you can haggle) and I always keep a hand on my wallet. Silk Alley dead ends into a US embassy, but you can’t get there thanks to a large wall of barbed wire and Chinese guards with automatic weapons.

3. Today I had the strangest dish at lunch – it was beef jerky in a peppery sauce. It came on the recommendation of a waitress, and I don’t have a clue as to what it is called. But it was really good.

I still haven’t heard when classes start or what I am supposed to teach. I’m trying to be patient, but it’s getting hard to be calm here in Beijing.