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.
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