November 24 - The Bad Road - before they made it worse

I keep forgetting to upload my pictures in the same post. My fault. I'll try to be better about that.

November 24 - The past two weeks (Part 3/3)

In my last post, I wrote December 10th. I meant November 10th. My mistake. I'd edit the post, but I cannot since the blog is blocked in China.

As I said earlier, it's a really good thing that I have a bike that is in fairly good working condition. A couple of days after my bike was repaired, I decided to bike to work. It's a good thing that I did because, overnight, the city had torn up a certain length of one of the two lanes of the street between me and my workplace. At the time, I was really amazed with the astonishing efficiency of Chinese workers. Unfortunately, this street happens to be an extremely busy stretch of road, particularly during morning rush hour. It also eliminated the option of taking the bus. 

November 21 - The past two weeks (Part 2/3)

One of the things that had been bothering me a lot is self-sufficiency. I can cook for myself well enough, but ordering food was a problem. Since my first day here when I felt like I was all alone and might starve, food has become a more important topic for me. In some ways, I always took for granted that food would always be available. Now I find myself planning my entire day around how next to secure a meal. For much of the first week, this wasn't a problem. My students took me out and paid for every meal except breakfast, and I was eating bananas for breakfast every morning.

November 20 - The past two weeks (Part 1/3)

So I've been here for three weeks now, and while my first week here was pretty tumultuous, the subsequent two weeks have certainly not been lacking in excitement either. Here are some of the highlights, lowlights and just plain weird things that have happened to me:

November 18 Pictures of the People's park entrance

These are the only pictures I have of the park. I'll try to get more in future.

November 18 Downtown

I realize I haven't been able to keep up with this blog as regularly as I would like. So many interesting things happen to me here that I don't have time to write them all down. I'll try to get the highlights in once in a while. Though, for the sake of completeness, this will be my last ultra-detailed post about a single day for the next little while. Maybe there will be more in future, but I'm pretty busy here, so we'll see.

On Saturday the 6th, I went downtown for the first time with a large group of students and Yan Yi Shu. We went together to see the memorial pagoda in Er Qi square (二七) which commemorates the first workers uprising against the 国民党 (guo min dang, or Kuomintang as it is known in the West). The pagoda looks magnificent, but it appears lost and a little bit lonely in the vast square surrounded by huge skyscrapers.

November 15 - Medical Check

On the 5th, I was told to meet Vincent at the East Gate of the university to head over to the southeast corner of the city for my provincially mandated health examination. When I arrived there, I was told we were waiting for someone else to come along with us for his health check. I was pretty excited to meet my first fellow 老外 (lao wai; foreign friend).

Vincent and I waited around for him for over half an hour, with Vincent finally going to check a different gate of the university in case they got mixed up. He finally did show up and turned out to be a pretty hefty looking guy from Ghana.

November 10 - An evening with some students

On Thursday the 4th, after class, I was asked by two girls in my class if I wanted to be a fashion model! They wanted to set me up for a photo shoot that was to take place today (Sunday). Even if I don't get paid for it, I don't care. I'm not really looking to be a model and I'll have free professional photos taken!

After that, I was invited by some students to go out to Henan Provincial Museum, which is really close to my school and is supposedly the 7th most important museum in China (although I have no idea how that ranking was worked out). They took me out for lunch first at the same place my students took me on my first day of class. It seems that restaurant is pretty popular among the students. It's called "A-liren" and it's a chain, as I saw another one downtown yesterday. Anyway, this time I made a slightly better go of things and didn't splatter everything everywhere, though I still got tomato soup all over my face.

November 7 - Zijingshan with Yan Yi Shu

On November 3, after class I met with my friend Yan Yi Shu for the afternoon. We went by bus to Zijingshan, which is a traffic circle at the geographical centre of the city. Zijingshan is the name of a small park at this intersection of 4 different streets. As the geographical centre of the city, Zijingshan also serves as the sort of Grand Central Bus Station for the city. Most of the city's buses pass through Zijingshan at some point or other.

Yan wanted to take me here because he knew of a particularly good restaurant in the area that had fairly good sanitation and excellent food. I have no idea what the name of the place he took me is called, but it certainly deserved his praise. The food there was wonderful. A particular highlight was a dessert pastry shaped kind of like a small egg roll, but with tastier pastry and filled with a sweet tarot cream. I'm really tempted to go all the way back there (even though it's pretty far) just to eat those again.

November 7 - Transportation

I woke up at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning. This has become a habit. I, the consummate night owl, have been going to bed before 9pm and waking up before 6am. For some strange reason, even though I am sleeping well, I feel a lot more tired than usual. My mom suggested it might be because I am still getting used to having a consistent work schedule.

I had to get up early so I could be ready for my first class at 8am. My students had shown me which bus I needed to take on Monday, so I walked over to the bus stop. My bus arrived really quickly. Bus service in Zhengzhou is exceptionally frequent compared with Montreal. Zhengzhou doesn't have a subway/metro yet, but it's currently under construction with 5 routes planned in all. The central east-west line is expected to be completed in 2013 and the central north-south line will be completed in 2015. Until then, buses are a really great way to get around the city. At rush hour, certain buses are really crowded, but in general it's not too bad. It costs 1 yuan ($0.15) to ride the bus, or 0.8 yuan if you have a bus card.

November 4 - Meeting some of my students on Nov. 1st

About an hour before Vincent came to pick me up, I went to take my first shower in Zhengzhou. I couldn't take a shower previously, because I had no hot water. It was finally turned on again (it had been off while the apartment was vacant) and I could wash away the grime and become a new man. When I took off my shirt, I immediately discovered that I was indeed a new man, in a very bad way.

November 3 - Night and Day (The First Two Days) Day 2 (October 31)

I woke up at between three and four in the morning, still exhausted, but also starving and panicked about looking for food in a country where I don't speak the language nearly well enough to get around. I lay there in bed, my heart pounding. My thoughts whirled. I was tired, lonely, hungry and afraid. My contact had abandoned me, I hadn't slept well and I had not eaten in 24 hours. My stomach was gnawing at me in pure torture and I had to go to the bathroom repeatedly as something I ate on the Korean Air trip to Zhengzhou did not agree with me. Finally, Vincent hadn't even told me at which building I'd be teaching. Furthermore, according to my schedule, I was supposed to be teaching 4 different subjects. This wasn't what I had signed up for and I didn't even have textbooks for half the subjects.

November 3 - Night and Day (The First Two Days) - Day 1 (Oct. 30)

So I finally have some time to write a nice, extremely long blog post for you all. As the title says, life here is pretty crazy.