Thoughts after 1 Week

1 Week in LinCang:

Thoughts after one week: 

1. the food is amazingly delicious. 

a. I feel so sorry for people who can’t eat spicy food because they keep crying and sweating and don’t share my opinion. 

2. I’m going to get good at pool while I’m here—there’s a pool hall nearby, and it’s real cheap, so I’m going to get awesome during the twoish months I’ve got here. Fair warning: I plan on pool sharking everyone when I get back to the states. 

3. every conversation with people here eventually turns to bathroom issues (e.g. some of the girls hadn’t realized the correct way to face in the stalls, and were apparently mooning everyone (even the little middle schoolers whose school we share))

a. every conversation here also uses the teaching lingo/skills we’ve been learning (e.g. How would we able to teach someone to correctly use a Chinese squat toilet? Objective: SWBAT (students will be able to) explain and demonstrate the proper squat position….)

4. the other people in the program here are awesome. I’m a huge fan of everybody

5. teaching is going to be so hard. I’ve talked with a lot of the older fellows (especially ones who aren’t associated with teaching us and are willing to be more honest and direct) and it sounds tough, and it also sounds like there are things that we just aren’t hearing at all from TFC (my program, Teach for China) but I’ll get into that some other time. 

6. I’m really tall and white. 

a. (people notice)

7. other than chuanr (Chinese meat on a stick) the kindle is the most amazing invention in all of ever. 

a. I had pig mouth on a stick last night (surprisingly tasty)

b. if I was writing this on my kindle I could post it right now, rather than having to wait for the internets to work, the only downside being actually having to write on the kindle. 

8. I’m really tired, this program is exhausting, but in a good way. It’s going to be nice to have two days to relax and recuperate.