Living in China
I just made a new post on my EF blog: rose_in_china - you might want to check it out. :) I'm also posting a lot of pictures on facebook, so if you're a friend of mine on there, you might want to check it out.
Things are going pretty well so far. It's very interesting being here. I'm going to try to go out dancing tomorrow at the Pudong promenade, which should be cool. Not sure yet what I'm going to do today... maybe explore the French Concession or try to hook up with my new flatmates and see if I can sign the contract or just hang out with them. Oh, did I mention? I got the flat! It is awesome and Cinnamon is really nice. :) Her boyfriend also lives there, and he's cool, though he is moving back home to Sweden in about a month so he won't be living there at the same time as me for very long. They took me out to barbecue for dinner last night which was awesome.
Things are going pretty well with talking to Rudy, too. I have been able to be online in the mornings and the evenings to chat with him and with my sister. :) We've had minor technical difficulties mainly due to having slow internet here at the hotel, but it's tolerable mostly.
I also found out awesome things about my job. I met up with one of the senior teachers yesterday, who showed me around the school and told me a lot about working there. He said it's pretty casual so I don't need to worry about covering my tattoos. Yay! He also said that I can show up however early I want before my classes to prep, and I don't need to be there at a specific time each day. So basically, I will have either Monday and Tuesday off, or Tuesday and Wednesday off, but I will have mainly late afternoon and early evening classes during the week, and then on Saturdays and Sundays I will work full days, maybe even longer than 8 hours each of those days. However, he said that it's just the nature of the job, and overall it's basically a part time job. This makes me happy because it sounds like it'll be really easy to schedule and coordinate times to chat with Rudy or whoever in the US on skype, and work my day around that. The only exceptions are Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm sure I'll figure something out... I have to have breaks, right?
I'm having more difficulty communicating with people here than I thought I would. I'm not sure how easy this will be to get used to, or how quickly I'll pick up Mandarin, but it is kind of frustrating when I'm in a store and just want to buy something but they don't understand what I am saying. I wanted to get some shampoo and conditioner yesterday, and I couldn't read any of the bottles so I couldn't tell which was shampoo and which was conditioner, and the store employees had no idea what I was asking when I was asking about it... so I didn't buy anything. My cousin Chris knows some Mandarin and sent me the characters for shampoo and conditioner, so now I plan on going back to the store with the written out characters and pointing to them and telling them I need one of each. Hopefully this works.
Anywho, I should probably try to get out of the hotel sometime soon and figure out what I'm doing with my day.
Things are going pretty well so far. It's very interesting being here. I'm going to try to go out dancing tomorrow at the Pudong promenade, which should be cool. Not sure yet what I'm going to do today... maybe explore the French Concession or try to hook up with my new flatmates and see if I can sign the contract or just hang out with them. Oh, did I mention? I got the flat! It is awesome and Cinnamon is really nice. :) Her boyfriend also lives there, and he's cool, though he is moving back home to Sweden in about a month so he won't be living there at the same time as me for very long. They took me out to barbecue for dinner last night which was awesome.
Things are going pretty well with talking to Rudy, too. I have been able to be online in the mornings and the evenings to chat with him and with my sister. :) We've had minor technical difficulties mainly due to having slow internet here at the hotel, but it's tolerable mostly.
I also found out awesome things about my job. I met up with one of the senior teachers yesterday, who showed me around the school and told me a lot about working there. He said it's pretty casual so I don't need to worry about covering my tattoos. Yay! He also said that I can show up however early I want before my classes to prep, and I don't need to be there at a specific time each day. So basically, I will have either Monday and Tuesday off, or Tuesday and Wednesday off, but I will have mainly late afternoon and early evening classes during the week, and then on Saturdays and Sundays I will work full days, maybe even longer than 8 hours each of those days. However, he said that it's just the nature of the job, and overall it's basically a part time job. This makes me happy because it sounds like it'll be really easy to schedule and coordinate times to chat with Rudy or whoever in the US on skype, and work my day around that. The only exceptions are Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm sure I'll figure something out... I have to have breaks, right?
I'm having more difficulty communicating with people here than I thought I would. I'm not sure how easy this will be to get used to, or how quickly I'll pick up Mandarin, but it is kind of frustrating when I'm in a store and just want to buy something but they don't understand what I am saying. I wanted to get some shampoo and conditioner yesterday, and I couldn't read any of the bottles so I couldn't tell which was shampoo and which was conditioner, and the store employees had no idea what I was asking when I was asking about it... so I didn't buy anything. My cousin Chris knows some Mandarin and sent me the characters for shampoo and conditioner, so now I plan on going back to the store with the written out characters and pointing to them and telling them I need one of each. Hopefully this works.
Anywho, I should probably try to get out of the hotel sometime soon and figure out what I'm doing with my day.