Life in a Bubble (May 23)

This is all I did for the entire day. I provided a rough English translation of the conversation in this clip. My Mandarin is still pretty sketchy so there might be a few errors.

Video Footage From Beijing

My first 3 days in China were spent in Beijing. Here is some (kind of boring) video footage that I have been unable to upload until now. Unfortunately, I still have another video that I can't upload because of the terrible internet connection.

From May 22

I love to take walks around Nanjing. Sometimes I get lost, but I always find my way back and learn the layout of the city better. Usually I walk around for at least 2 hours at a time and maybe more. Here are the most interesting things I’ve seen. Some are more common sights than others.

A child of 9 or 10 started urinating on a busy street just a few feet in front of me. His red neckerchief (see example below) was securely fastened. I was tempted to take a picture but decided against it.

*I did not take this picture.




I’ve seen games of mahjong, cards, ping-pong, etc being played on the sidewalk.

I saw a flamboyant Chinese man with bleached blonde hair, really short shorts, and a swagger in his step. He was surrounded by a posse of young women who were definitely going for the diva look. People were staring at this man as he walked by.

A man finished his meal and started to ash his cigarette over a huge plate of left-overs. When he finished the cigarette he stuck it in the food to extinguish it and left it there.

I’ve seen taxi drivers swearing at each other in the street because of a car accident.

First Day of Teaching

Evidently, no one had told Gail that I was the substitute teacher, so she was expecting someone in the 30-50 range. She said she was pretty surprised when she first saw me. However, we have gotten along very well. She has helped me find my way around town a little bit.
Anyway, my first day of class was so-so. Much time was spent trying to figure out the student’s actual English level. They were all pretty surprised when someone their own age walked into the class. Also, every single one of my students is a girl. I don’t think there are any male nurses in China.
Today (Monday, May 19th), during class we had a three minute moment of silence for earth quake victims. For several minutes after class, sad children’s choir music was blasted through the loudspeakers. It was a little weird.
Also, at some points during the day they played air-raid sirens throughout the city. Gail told me that it is supposed to sound like wailing or weeping. Though I found many things strange, it was touching to see how people mourned for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.

On Saturday (May 18) night I took a train from Beijing to Nanjing. It was supposed to be 14 hours, but it actually took 16. I guess you could describe this train as incredibly slow. I have no complaints though, because the train ride has probably been my favorite part of the trip so far. The train has these awesome triple-decker bunk beds so I did a lot of sleeping. I was in the middle bunk. When I wasn’t sleeping or listening to music in my bunk, I would just walk around the train.
A lot of the men would hang out between train cars to smoke and talk. Some of these guys were very excited to see a foreigner. I got lots of offers for coffee, cigarettes, beer, etc. A business card and a cigarette seem to be the standard gift.
The train arrived 2 hours late and there was no one there to pick me up when I got off. Luckily, I met a PhD student on the train who helped me out and let me use his cell phone. He also stayed with me for 30 minutes while I waited for them to arrive. He was stand-up guy, and I have his contact info so we’ll probably hang out later.
Ms. Zhang, who goes by Gail, came to pick me up with another teacher named Hu Liang. This was our first conversation as we were getting in the cab:
Gail: “So Jordan, how long have you been a nurse?”
Me: “Uhhh…actually”

TO BE CONTINUED

The First Post

Well, these first few days have kept me pretty busy. I’ve been doing a lot of boring stuff involving school registration, banking, etc. Fortunately, even the most mundane errands seem adventurous in an unfamiliar place. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice Mandarin.
I can’t upload video right now because YouTube seems to be blocked by the Great Firewall of China. I’ll try to figure something else later. Here is a list of some interesting things I’ve seen in Beijing:
-A woman using her finger to clean the earwax out of her boyfriend’s (?) ear on a very crowded sidewalk.
-A Jesus-fish magnet on the back of a Chinese person’s car
-Haidian district of Beijing seems to have a lot more westerners and a lot more Chinese hipster-types (ie. long hair, tight jeans and Converse All-Stars)
-A student at Renmin University English Corner gave me a short speech about where to find the “hot and sexy” girls in China. Hahaha, it was pretty funny/awkward. I don’t know how he knows so much slang. He probably listens to a lot of hip-hop or something.
-I went to a pretty good punk rock concert a couple nights ago. It seems like there are a thousand bands in Beijing now.
The plane ride over was great because I knew someone on both parts of the flight. From Phoenix to San Fran I sat right across from someone I went to high school with. It was so crazy because I haven’t even seen him for over a year. From San Fran to Beijing there was an ASU grad student on my flight. I had met him at the beginning of this school year. He is Chinese so he was flying back home for the summer. I slept for much of the flight. The best part was waking up and realizing we were flying over Siberia. There were beautiful snow-covered mountains as far as we could see. It was quite a breathtaking view. I thought of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and wondered if there was still a Russian Gulag hidden inside some freezing cave below me.