opening of the epic

I am now the only foreigner in the entire town of Santai, 2 and a half hours northeast of Chengdu. Walking down the street causes the local population to dissolve into fits of giggles, stop their bicycles and stare, or to come running over me to practice their English.

The trip over was relatively uneventful though painfully long. Six and a half hours from Toronto to Anchorage for refueling, then another 11 hours to Hong Kong from there. The plane landed at the new airport, skimming over the waves so close that you could just about see the colour of the fishermen’s eyes. I had hoped we’d land at the old airport, as I’d heard many stories about skimming between the skyscrapers with mere metres to spare at either end of the wingtips. No such luck, the new airport is beautiful, new and efficient, with everything being updated for the coming Olympics in Beijing.
Three hours of sitting semi conscious in the airport later we boarded the plane to Chengdu. After only two and a half hours we landed in Chendu's airport, a wonderfully efficient place, I was out with my bags and checked through customs in half an hour, only to find that the agency representative was not there to meet me. I stood around waiting with my luggage at the arrival gates, watching people leave, contemplating my next option. Several tour guides were also at the gate, holding signs with the names of the people they were waiting for. One of the girls kept looking over at me, and came over to ask if I was the person she was waiting for, we got chatting, and it turned out she was a Tibetan from Kham. Next it turned out that the two tourists she was waiting for hadn't arrived, so she and the driver took me back in their car into Chengdu, where I stayed the night in the Lhasa Hotel, a marvellously posh place, though I'd little interest in anything at that point apart from a bed That night, I called the agency office, and found out that Fiona, the rep who was to meet me had been waiting at the wrong gate.
She came to meet me the next morning, we had lunch and a quick wander around the city, and then the school car arrived to bring me to Santai.
Santai Middle School has about 5,000 students, aged mostly 15-18, from all over Sichuan province and the surrounding areas. Most of the students are Chinese, but there are a few Tibetans from Kham and Lhasa. Each class has about 75 students in it, and the system here is extremely competitive. The top students are in what they call the rocket class, and then the class levels go from there, with class 1 having better students, and class 30 the academically worst. Not sure how confidence building it'd be to be classified as the worst students, but that's how it's done. Each of the three levels, Senior 1,2 and 3 has 30 classes in it. I teach mostly Senior 1 with a few Senior 2 classes, and it turns out I have something like several thousand students! My job, it seems, is to provide oral English practice, and I teach 40 classes, 20 classes per week which means that I only see each class of students once every two weeks. Not great for any sort of real continuity, but I suspect I've really been hired as an attraction for enrollment. Parents like to send their kids to a school with a real live foreigner! I also don't have to prepare exams, or teach grammar, but focus only a speaking and games to get them to improve their speaking and listening skills. Easier said than done when there's 75 kids in a class, without creating complete mayhem. Ah well. I'll figure it out. I am planning to circumvent the system a bit though. Have been talking with the other English teachers. Their salaries depend on the scores their classes get on the exams, and they have a huge amount of material to teach the kids per term. So several of the teachers are planning to pre-plan and discuss lesson plans before I teach their classes, so I can use vocab words the kids have been taught, and get them to speak aloud and be able to use orally some of the words and sentence structure they have been taught.
See how it goes. Otherwise I can see the kids as writing off the oral english class as play, and pointless in the face of their preoccupation with exam scores.

The teachers here have been very friendly, with as much if not more desire to practice their English as the students. I’ve been invited out for dinner every night since I have arrived, as the Sichuanese are rightly proud of their cuisine. Unfortunately, my vegetarianism has gone out the window, and I've gone from vegetarian to extreme carnivore in mere days. There is very little vegetarian food, and when I’m invited out to eat, they wish to offer me the best of their menus, which tends to be meat and lots of it. Not only have I had to relinquish my beloved vegetables, I’ve already eaten beef throat, duck feet and congealed dog blood, along with many unidentifiable squishy and squiggly bits ( I've learned quite quickly not to ask what anything is!)which are thrown into a “hotpot”, a large pot of bubbling oil and spices on a burner in the centre of the table. Meals are an extremely social affair, with everyone dipping their chopsticks in, toasting each other every few minutes with tiny glasses of beer. The toast-er and toast-ee stand up, the toast-er proclaims a long, occasionally semi coherent toast, both glasses are drained (unless you point in advance to how much you intend to drink-I learned this one quicky, as self defense!) and both sit down again til the next toast. In between drinks and the hotpot, plates of peanuts or orange slices are passed round. Most dinners which I've attended have lasted a minimum of two hours.

My social life has taken off, and I've not actually cooked for myself once as of yet, despite having my own kitchen. My flat is big, way too big for me, after living for so long in my little room in the monastery. There's two bedrooms, one empty apart from the paraphernalia left by the last teacher (including a punching bag and boxing gloves!), a lving/dining room, another room where I keep my laptop plugged in, a bathroom complete with western toilet and shower, and the kitchen. Not only that, I've my own fridge, TV (which I've left unplugged. There is only one english channel, and it's all internal politics) and, bliss and joy, a washing machine! Got my own phone as well, and the school is getting me a cell phone (not impressed about that, but everyone insists I need one).

I have also made several forays out into the city on my own. Not speaking much Chinese, trying to shop for fruit is a bit of an adventure. I did manage to get what I needed, though since I've not quite worked out the number thing yet, instead of buying 6 bananas, I ended up buying 6 kilos! I now have enough bananas to start my own market stall...will be eating them for breakfast, lunch and snacks for weeks. However, on the optimisic side, I am finding spoken Chinese fairly easy to pick up. I've about 30 vocabulary words down pat already, and though my pronunciation often sets people off in fits of laughter, at least they know what I mean! I'm giving the written characters a miss altogether though.I 'm too old for that sort of thing.

I've also had several phone calls from friends in Xining, and plan to go up there for the New Year holiday, when the school shuts down for a month or so. Meanwhile, Sunday is my day off, for the rest, I teach in Santai Middle School from Mon-Fri, and in Long Xiang school on Saturday. Enough to keep me out of trouble for a year or so...