There are no fitted bedsheets in China. I call them bungie sheets but apparently I'm the only one. I did not know this before I came. One of the other ex-pats asked, "Didn't you do any research before you came?" as if fitted bedsheets are at the top of every blog post about China. Yes, Michelle, I did do research. Didn't think to ask about the bedsheet situation in China. So here's at least one blog post with fitted bed sheets at the very top. You're welcome world.
Two weeks.
It seems longer. Way longer, and not because of it being an awful time or anything like that. Every day is just fucking packed. I've had almost zero idle time. If it's not work it's paperwork for staying here, or karaoke or watching a soccer match that starts at 2 am. I've packed a month and a half of activity in two weeks it seems like.
The school. It's inside a shopping mall, which is weird. The training at this school is actually pretty top notch. I heard horror stories of people getting to a school and just getting handed some chalk on their first day and being told to teach the present perfect tense today. Good luck! It's 3 weeks of online training, classroom training, observations and then team teaching. You can go from zero teaching experience to teaching confidently in three weeks. It's actually quite remarkable.
Little kids and the elderly stare at me. Mouth agape, blatantly. I was warned about this but it's not something I think you can really be prepared for. Just wave and say ni hao. A teenage girl almost ran into me at the mall and she just looked up and me and says, "Uho! English man!" I haven't made any kids cry but apparently my roommate Tom makes children cry almost daily. A tall long haired Brit with a patchy beard. Guess he's terrifying to little kids. On the plus side for Tom, the same traits that children find terrifying just drops the panties of the local girls here. Can't take this guy anywhere without hearing that anime laugh follow us wherever we go.
And the main thing. Everybody wants to help the stupid foreigner.
Example. I was riding the bus and a couple of the local English teachers were on the same bus. They told the bus driver which stop was mine and asked him if they could help me out. Now that's sweet of them but I have an app that tells me exactly when to get off, and I just recognize my neighborhood now. So I'm looking at my progress on the app and it's just the driver and myself and suddenly he turns off his route onto a dark deserted road. My stomach instantly sank. I was like, "Oh shit. I hope they only take one kidney." But then, we started heading in the direction of my stop.
He had turned off his route and bypassed the two stops between where we were and my stop so the guowai wouldn't get confused. He left people in the rain, for me, a stranger. Now is that too polite? Yeah, 100%. But I feel a lot of us in the States can learn a little bit from our neighbors across the sea.
I also have a series of videos called First Impressions that chronicles when I try something for the first time. Enjoy everyone
