Ice Breaking {Julie}

It's a Saturday afternoon and I'm sitting on the couch in our apartment looking out the window. I see a big, bright blue sky, underlined by weather-beaten roofs of nearby buildings, some are apartments, some are commercial, many are a mix of both. It's an unmistakably Chinese skyline, with the clay tiled roofs, laundry hanging from balconies, and numerous cylindrical tanks dotting the rooftops, and most obviously, the sight of 6 giant Chinese characters perched like candles atop a 20-storey cake of a building a few blocks away.

What I see is the same as it was the first time I peered out our sixth floor living room, but looking out the window is different now. No longer a strange, confusing concrete jungle, this place has become familiar. I have a place and an orientation in it. I know this window faces north, and I'm looking northwest out of it. I know there is a dark, loud, chaotic,  local market on the main floor of an apartment building 3 blocks away from here, and two blocks south is what we call the Dumpling Place (a favourite, run by a smiley, toothless old man who has dedicated his entire operation to creating his signature fried dumplings). And that building with the Chinese characters on it - although I still don't know what they mean - is the  Women and Children's Hospital. The sense of surrealism I once felt when stepping outside our apartment is gone and has been replaced with something like... Anticipation.

Now that the shock and wonder of discovering what my new "normal day" is going to look like (at least for the rest of the year) has worn off, I'm eager to immerse myself in this place and explore what it has to offer. When time permits, I like to make a point of taking a new path on each journey out so that I can expand my mental map of the city and the places I'd like to take a closer look at. Although I still get turned around sometimes (especially at night), Shaoxing is becoming more and more familiar every day as Cameron and I venture out along it's many rivers, roads, and ancient alleyways, where we have seen a lot of pretty cool stuff already. From stumbling upon a modern castle on an afternoon run to the biking through the eery abandoned train station district, we've explored a lot, but here are a few of the most interesting places we've discovered so far:

Inside a shop in the Ancient District



Ladies Dancing (and staying fit!) on Jiefang Road at night



A riverside walkway in spring time 

1. Kuaiji mountain & Shan Lu fun monastery, with it's stunning view of the greater Shaoxing area.
2. Fushan Park, with its giant lucky bell and ancient pagodas.
3. The Ancient district near Fushan park, with its cute little shops, crowded narrow streets, rice wine museum, and boisterous gambling gazebo.
4. Jiefang Road, which has everything on it, including an underground Walmart, our favourite restaurant called 70s, and an awesome movie theatre that shows American movies, serves delicious kettle corn and has couches in the back rows of each theatre. 
5. The Night Market on East Street, where you can get yummy street food while testing your bartering skills with the various vendors selling everything from pots and pans to clothes and electronics. 
6. Shaoxing University, where we found free Zumba and yoga classes and fellow English-speaking foreigner friends! (But not in that order)

View a top Shan Lu Fun Mountain

A castle of some kind

Shan Lu Fun Monastery

I have to say, after going over a month without talking to a native English speaker besides Cameron or our older American supervisor, Darlene, the most exciting discoveries for me so far on this trip have been the people we've very recently become acquainted with. For the first time in my life, I went 45 days without any casual social engagement outside of Darlene, Cameron and skype with my parents. This was something I had been told to anticipate before coming here in order to keep my expectations low, but after arriving and finding that most of the Chinese English teachers at our school are generally around my age, I couldn't help being optimistic that, as a fairly sociable person by nature, I'd soon be able to "break the ice" and make a connection with a few of them at least. This turned out to be much harder than I thought though, after six weeks and several failed attempts at having a genuine conversation with many teachers were either shyly resisted or interrupted by requests for photos, or by my removal from a group discussion thanks to a quick language switch from English to Chinese.

But last week, it all changed. While chatting with a lovely Chinese teacher named Vicky I asked about sending some postcards, and she offered to take me to the post office on one of our days off so that I could mail them, and would I like to go out for some Chinese food too? That same day, Cameron and I also set up our first Chinese lessons with Toto, another teacher from our school who we discovered is actually very chatty and friendly and we like her more and more each time we talk with her. And she lives in the same apartment complex as us!Then, as if by divine intervention , Cameron and I were walking past the big university here one day on our way to the nearby Kuaiji Mountain Park, when we happened to notice a girl with natural blonde hair and real blue eyes about to bike past us.  Cameron was first to notice and point her out, but it was me who instantly sprang forward to stop her, waving, calling out "Hello! Foreigner! Hello! We're foreigners too!" I looked a bit ridiculous but I couldn't help myself. It'd been so long! Christi is her name, and we talked for maybe two minutes because she had a class to go to, but it was long enough to see that she was young like us, friendly, and knew a lot of other foreigners who were also teaching at that campus and a few at other places in town.  We exchanged phone numbers and have been able to meet up several times since, each time being introduced to a few more foreigners from the group.

It's as if we had to fulfill a six-week waiting period to make friends here, but shortly after that ended, we suddenly found fifteen in one week. Bizarre, but nonetheless terrific. I'm looking forward to finding out what new adventures we'll be able to experience with the help of some local knowledge.

And there you have it - the weird, wonderful, and somewhat desperate ice breaking period of this foreigner's new life in China.

If you want more details, send me an email at julie.pqtt@gmail.com. Other mediums of communication we've got are skype, FaceTime (if you have an iPad or iPhone), what's app messenger, WeChat messenger, and MagicJack free phone calls!

Belated First Impressions {Cameron}

Having been settled for a full month now it seems a bit tardy to be posting this, but here it is anyways, two writings I had made after entering Shanghai and then Shaoxing. They were unable to be posted at the time due to the great firewall of China, but now we're past that here it is.

Morning of the 31^st of January

The moment we arrive into the center of Shanghai, it is distinctly clear that the rhythm of the city is a resting pulse: traffic is calm, the shops are shuttered and even the smog seems to have settled somewhere away from here. Movements are muffled shuffles, greetings are relaxed smiles and the huge numb skyscrapers that envelop us stand in remembrance and promise of busier days. Only the sound of stray taxis barking and the racket of bi-hourly municipal fireworks break the content silence that has blanketed the city. Prior to arriving into Shanghai for the dawn of the two-week Chinese new year holiday, we held expectations of party fervor; a clamor reverberated by Shanghai’s 25,000,000 people showing up within full force of celebration. Alas, the sensation of the eve of our western new year is not to be considered synonymous with that of the east. If anything, I feel like a tourist on Christmas, here for the party, but only greeted by the unfortunate few forced to work and operate the obligatory institutions. Chinese New Year seems to be a celebrated indeed, but behind closed doors, with home cooked meals and gathered family. Good for them.

Firework Greeting

View of Nanjing Square from our hotel room

We have arrived into this foreign culture heartbeat racing, expecting to hit the ground running, but instead, there is a sense of calm we have had to adjust to. Julie and I, with all the hype and sensation, overcompensated in preparation to stand fast against some overwhelming tide, when in fact the waters are quite still. A blessing I suppose, considering that our upcoming journey isn’t a sprint, but an endeavor of stable rhythm and endurance. As our feet become grounded and our senses familiarized, the pace around us will surely crescendo in progression with our own.

Febuary 4^th, 9am

We’ve arrived in Shaoxing. In a word, it is Chinese. We’ve been here 36 hours now and I have not seen one head of hair other than our own deviate from natural black or charcoal grey. The downtown seems like a continuous market broken up only by bouldering business towers. We live literally earshot from our school and 1 minute walk from one of the many downtown 2-floor KFC’s, perhaps the most universally revered institution of China’s 1.3 billion people. No joke, there are line-ups trailing outside the door on any given hour. Where there is KFC, there is everything… only the most pristine real estate will do. Perhaps, like water, KFC creates real estate. KFC is a river for its people. As such, we are close to everything - situated right in the heart of this city, cut like a grid by rivers and canals. 

Chinese New Year is still in full swing, an hour ago I was awoken by the obligatory municipal fireworks. Rarely an hour goes by without the formal reminder that the holidays are upon us. Those who don’t directly depend on street traffic for revenue are spending the day leisurely, evidenced by the public parks, restaurants and markets crowded at all times of the day. It is nice to see, everyone seems to be in cheerful spirits. Steam filled hole-in-the-wall family restaurants commonly have the whole crew, gathered around a platter of food, doors open to the public as a formality, but a clear aura which states like a sign “this is our time, please don’t bother us”.

Our arrival into Shaoxing felt surreal. Yesterday, sitting in our Shanghai hotel lobby we met a employee of the school sent on an errand to pick us up; Kingsley was his name and his age was about the same as mine. So here he strolls up wearing a full pleather and Teflon outfit, his charm seemed largely cut and pasted from watching the Fonz. Initially this was off-putting but as I began to understand the circumstance more fully it became endearing. Here is a kid, recently a husband and recently a father.  The well being of his family rests on a career of teaching English in a city where there are no native speakers, and certainly no informal conversational English practiced. Although he was born and raised in Shaoxing, a simple hour and a half trip away by train, he has never leasurely visited or explored the city. One time only had been to Shanghai before greeting us, and that was to greet another teacher. His experience of the city was [train station-taxi-hotel-taxi-train station]. 

So here he is, nerves through the roof of being entrusted with this errand, entering a city which has always been either an hour-and-a-half, or 90¥ out of reach, and to top it off, tasked with making a good impression to people from a totally different culture and natively fluent in what he has dedicated his life towards – English. We had a bit of time so I suggested that we go out for a beer. Nerves were expressed via machine gun laugher so I passed it off as a joke and just suggested a stroll around the square.

The time came to catch our train, with about 250lbs of luggage to haul behind us, we moved slow and deliberate. I got caught in a snag with my hunting knife, which was a bit of a stress on poor Kingsley who was tasked with translation, as I tried to convince a squad of 5 bewildered police that it wasn't a "murder weapon" as they claimed, but a tool. They took my point, but wouldn't let me on the train with it. The conseierge refused to send it to my school because it was a "weapon", so after a few more futile attempts I had to toss it. Pretty upset about that. Early retirement. Moving on…

We haul ourselves around three stations to finally hit the main terminal that will speed us off to Shaoxing. I sleep during the ride and by the time we arrive nighttime is in full effect. As we step out of the trolley we are met with a long one-way escalator descending through a thick haze of fog and mist. From the top, the bottom is obscured. Landing at the base we find ourselves at the edge of a massive concrete square, as empty and flat as frozen lake and greeted by a host of people offering rides into town. One is picked and we embark across the hazy square to find a black car, parked in the dead center of a dead end 6 lane highway. No cars. There are buildings, but the only light projected is that of street lamps. Luggage goes in the trunk and Julie and I sit in the back behind the tinted windows and silent driver.

Our drive was silent and both inside and outside of the car, it took a while to see another car join us on this broad stretch of pavement, but as it entered the city we wading within a sea of taxis, tri-cycles and pedestrians. Oblivious to our surroundings we turn down a narrow alley, decked out with luminescent signs projecting characters of a foreign language, then turn to one even more narrow – and dark. One more turn to the point I expected the mirrors to scrape at any moment and then car stops. We get out and find ourselves in a residential complex. The driver is thanked an paid. Kingsley leads the way and dutifully we follow, trekking our luggage up 7 flights of stairs to the top floor, a door is opened and we have arrived to what will be our home away from home for the next year to come.

 - Cameron

CrazyLoveNChina {Julie}

Obviously, we are now in China. As you may have seen in some Facebook and Instagram pictures I've posted, we landed in Shanghai, had a ball wandering around during the peak of the Chinese New Year celebrations, stayed in a luxurious hotel, and explored as many unique Shanghai attractions as we could before blasting off to our ultimate destination of Shaoxing. What you may not know is that on the very same day we arrived in China and were just beginning our adventure after some 20 hours of travelling, some bad news came to us.  At 2am Shanghai time, I was about to type up a quick "We made it to China!" email to my family when I received a gut-wrenching message from my Mom, informing me that her mom, my dear old Oma, had suddenly passed away about six hours ago. My mood shifted instantly from sleepy excitement and anticipation for the promise of the next days' adventures to guilt-filled grief and anxiety. In that moment, the news struck me in such a way that i was quickly transformed into something like a neurotic fish out of water, distraught and frantically wishing to be back in the comfort of my home waters. Some of my anxiety was soothed by just being able to talk with my mom and sister on skype and I was reassured in finding out that my Mom and the rest of her siblings in Edmonton had all been there with Oma as she passed on to be with the God she loved and trusted so much. And, at 90 years old, she had lived a full life, her body withered and tired, so death came as a blessing to her, I think. Still, the news hit hard and I was emotionally volatile for the next five days, but having Cameron with me was such a blessing because he provided me with both comfort and distraction from the harsh reality I was having to deal with, largely for the first time as my Oma was the first person close to me, in memory, to have died. Cameron also strongly encouraged me to write something in memory of my Oma to be shared at the funeral. I took his advice, and am ever so glad that I did because it helped me to process my feelings and gave me peace and comfort in knowing that even if I couldn't be home for the funeral, that I could still have a presence there through my written contribution, which ended up actually being the base for all of my cousins to build on, sharing their thoughts and memories of Oma in a collaborative eulogy for her.

Although there was a shadow amidst those days in Shanghai, we did manage to have a good time nonetheless, exploring the Bund, the Oriental Pearl TV tower, Yu Garden, Nanjing Street, and many more sights before meeting up with our colleague Kingsley, who came to escort us on the 2 hour journey via subway, bullet train, and taxi to our new home base for the year.

We've moved in to a modest apartment on the sixth floor of a packed apartment complex in Shaoxing. This "cozy and well-lit two-bedroom apartment" (as a real estate ad might describe it) is owned by the school but it's our home and we're quite fond of it. It's a five minute walk to our place of work (Leading English Learning Centre) and located in the heart of the city, nearby everything we need: food, water, household supplies, haircuts, hotpots, dumplings, beer, bikes, buses, banks, gardens... the list goes on! We're in a good spot.

What you might not have heard is that when it comes to the internet, we're not in a good spot. The Chinese government upholds a great stone wall as well as a great cyber firewall in their country and it's there to make sure that millions of people are protected from accessing controversial websites such as (insertyourfavouritepornsitehere), as well as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and numerous controversial news sources such as The Guardian and... CBC? Who knew. Anyhow, we're not big fans of internet censorship so we found out the thing to do is to modify our computers to connect to Internet outside of China through a VPN (virtual proxy network). I don't know all the details but I do know that it was quite a challenge for Cameron to install for us. BUT, he eventually succeeded (yaaay Cameron!) so now I can post things on Facebook again. Unfortunately, it's too late to catch any Canadian coverage of the Olympics on CBC, but I read that we did great and that everyone got drunk at 5am at their favourite pub??!! Sad to have missed that too :(

Did you hear that we're pretty much celebrities at our school? There's not too many foreign faces around Shaoxing, and many people have never seen one at all other than in advertising campaigns. For this reason, it seems as though every new class or closed room that we walk into, heads turn, eyes widen, and jaws drop. Also, cameras come out. A lot. It's pretty funny to watch but slightly uncomfortable to wait out,do I often just laugh and smile, and maybe throw up a two-fingered peace sign to make them laugh. That part's not so bad, and neither is the teaching English thing, actually. Our classes are each 45 mins long, never more than sixteen students at a time, and we always have a chinese teacher in the classroom with us to translate when the kids have a hard time understanding our English.

What did suck was getting roped into being the only two judges of our school's annual Spelling Bee because of our official English faces and voices. We were told that we'd just have to read a word from a list and then ask a student to spell it, and provide a definition or sample sentence for them if they ask. Oh, and ring a bell if they spell the word incorrectly or take too long to spit it out. Sounds simple, right?

Not so, at least not for this Bee.  We were given a digital copy of the list of words + definitions +sample sentences  that was only about one quarter of all the words on the list the kids had studied from. Eventually, we realized that we were expected to fill in the rest of the 400+ words and definitions for four different levels in about 3 days time. So, of course we couldn't get them all done in the six office hours that we had scheduled at work, but our boss told us, "oh, it's okay then, don't worry, just go with what you have. It'l be fine." Right.
As the Spelling Bee was underway, we were interrupted numerous times because first, the words we were reading from our list were too easy (even for the beginners), and not enough contestants were being eliminated. So we skipped ahead to some harder words and, lo and behold, they quickly started dropping out like flies. But then, we had angry parents standing up and yelling in Chinese at our boss and the rest of the organizers about how the words were too hard, that we were giving their kids the wrong words to spell  because that word that Tommy spelled wasn't on the beginner's list. I should mention that there was a cash prize  as well as a ticket to the National Bee in Beijing that summer at stake for the winners of each level, so these parents were pretty focussed on their child placing first and knew the list of words front to back, even if they nor their children knew what they meant.

So, by the end of the day, we'd had a few instances where kids were ejected and then reentered into the competition. Some did so legitimately, because we had accidentally given them a word from a different level that they were not required to study for, but others seemingly got thrown back in because their parents made enough of a stink to our principal that, in order to smooth things over, and 'save face' for the school, he caved and said okay, they can have another shot. The whole fiasco was played out in front of an audience of 200 people, umpteen cameras and video cameras, and was fuelled by the sweat and tears of over 100 lovely, intelligent, innocent and hard-working Chinese children. I can't describe how awful we felt walking out at the end of the day; it was as if we'd been contracted as dream-crushers for the day.

Anyhow, it's over, we succeeded in the task of downing our sorrows, and we plan on being much better prepared for the next (and hopefully last) regional Bee which we'll be judging for in a couple of months.