Our Little Dumpling Shop
So Anderson and I have been looking for places to eat near our sweet apartment, and we found a little alleyway when Anderson, had to take a cab to work. There are a bunch of really cheap places to eat including a place that I am dubbing our little dumpling shop.
It’s really good food for a really low price, (13 yuan each or 1.90 USD) and also has cheap beers. Below are some pictures of our dinner tonight.
Here’s the inside of our shop.
Here are the dumplings or Jiaozi in Chinese.
Here are the xiaolongbao (which are nothing like the real things in Shanghai, too doughy).
More Jiaozi next to our 3 yuan (44 cents American) beers.
Jiaozi Soup.
The food being cooked outside.
McCoy’s Food Corner: Cafeteria Food
I’ve decided, actually it was probably about a week ago, back when we didn’t have internet, that I wanted to try to do a weekly post about different foods in China, with a Chinese vocabulary section in it. I’m going to start taking pictures and stuff now that I know I’m going to do this, so get excited for that. However for the first week I’m just going to give you a normal post.
Vocabulary words for the week: 啤酒 pi jiu – beer
冷水 bing shui – cold water
(I’ll put the tones in there later when I figure out how but for now I’m not going to)
These words were very dear to Anderson and I upon our arrival, because we wanted cold water and also beers. See the Chinese have a habit of drinking boiling hot water (probably to kill the bacteria), but being from America we expect our water to be cold. Anyway back to actual food post.
So I found out that they are going to feed me at my school, which is pretty nice, because I can save money by not paying for lunch. I also found out that cafeteria food is actually not that bad. Monday was rice, vegetables, and pork; Tuesday was rice, a vegetable, and spare ribs; Wednesday rice, vegetables, and chicken; and Thursday rice, vegetable, fish; and Friday was rice a vegetable and chicken wings.
Are you sensing a pattern? Yup that’s right, rice meat and some sort of random vegetable. It’s actually very good though and they give you a lot of food, so I’m not complaining. The kids are also fed the same thing as the adults for lunch but they also get breakfast and dinner, which I find to be kind of odd.
The other problem is that they are fed the same thing for breakfast and dinner. It’s always a soup that has tofu in it for breakfast and something rather similar with rice for dinner. It seems like it would be pretty boring, and it’s also weird that they are fed all 3 meals, but hey, it’s China and they aren’t starving in the fields like in the past so they deal with it.
Anyway my food corner will be better when I start incorporating pictures and get into more interesting foods. While I’m still trying to get settled and on a real schedule I’ve been eating out of the school and the convenient store downstairs. Hopefully this week I’ll start exploring the food more in depth.
And I’m Back…
Sorry guys, I’ve been really busy moving in and been really tired from actually having a job. Also Anderson and I were watching Dexter, so any free time that I’ve had has been spent falling asleep to that. By the way if you’ve never watched Dexter, start, now.
Anyway so I’ve started at my new school, and it’s pretty awesome. The kids can get pretty rowdy at times but that’s more on me than it is on them, but they are freakin’ awesome. The one problem that I am dealing with is the fact that I have like 120 kids so trying to learn all their names will be quite a task, but I’m up for the challenge.
The one problem is that even within classes some of the kids are on much different levels, so some of the kids are way ahead of the words I’m trying to teach, and others are way behind. This I suppose is a dilemma of a lot of teachers (and is also a problem with schools in general), but there isn’t too much I can do about it. I try to work with the kids who are behind and try not to favor the kids who are ahead (they are usually easier to work with and I have an urge to favor them).
The school that I’m at is much better than I expected. From the stories that I’ve heard about the school they never usually help the foreign teachers, but on the first day my 90 minute class went really well and they brought in a translator so that I could communicate with the other teachers, and they said that they really like me, which means job security.
This is important because teachers tend to be moved around a lot. This means that they could move me out at any time, which seems to happen a lot. I don’t think that I will have much of a problem because as far as I can tell I am doing a pretty good job, and I assume that most of the people who come to China to teach are not here to actually teach. In fact I’ve often come across this with the teachers that our recruiter brought in.
I’ve also talked to other sources who have said the same thing applies for other countries like Korea. Why would you come to China if you don’t like Chinese food, for instance or if you don’t like kids. It really makes no sense. Anyway I’m going to leave you all with the clip below in case this post was terrible. Enjoy!
Here’s a video to entertain you with in case this post was bad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjGfgV7rJHI
McCoy’s First Day
Okay so my first day was much like Anderson’s in that they just threw me right into teaching, even though I made sure this morning that I wasn’t going to be teaching they still put me in a classroom completely unprepared. It didn’t go as well as I had wanted it to but in the end I was fairly satisfied.
My first class was half an hour and it was a group of 5 and 6 year olds. I got them up and moving with Head, Shoulders and then did some body part flash cards with them, and then played a game with them. This class was only 30 minutes and went pretty well considering the circumstances.
The second class went much worse. It was what my placement coordinator called an international class, of 2 and 3 year olds, who speak very little English. The first problem with this, as Anderson pointed out, was the fact that 2 year olds have much more important things to learn. Why the hell are they even in school at this age. The second problem is that the Chinese teachers for whatever reason don’t give a crap about these students.
So I was left basically alone, unprepared with teachers who refused to really help me or the children. I suppose it could have been worse, they could have been ass holes to the students like the ones at Anderson’s school. So I tried as hard as I could to keep their attention and to teach them colors and body parts and did really enjoy it when the students knew what was going on.
The best part of my experience with the second class was when I was saying goodbye to them. They were all very sweet and were telling me that they would see me next week, and were excited to give me a handshake or a high five as I was leaving which I found to be incredibly sweet and awesome.
That was pretty much it for my first day, and I’m getting excited for teaching these kids when I actually have some plans and music for them.
And one other note. I also met another American who teaches at the same school that I am going to be at. We went out for a beer at the end of the day and I asked him his motivations for teaching and what he thought about the kids. The first thing that he said was that he believes that there are no bad children, and we went on to talk about methods for teaching and stuff.
It is refreshing, after seeing so many of the new recruits, and how they don’t seem to give a shit, to meet somebody who when you ask them a question like that, that their first response is that there are no bad kids. It really does make me excited to know that there are other people out there who are doing this for all the right reasons, and realize the impact that we are going to have on these children, as opposed to people who are doing this just to get to China.
So overall a pretty bad day considering the circumstances, but one that affords me great hope for this coming year, and has made me really excited for being here.
The [New] Karate Kid (A.K.A. Karate Black Kid) Trailer 2
First I want to give credit where credit is due. I stole the name of Karate Black Kid from Vince on Filmdrunk. You can check out his review of the trailer here http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2010/02/karate-black-kid-has-a-new-trailer.
The original plan was to include all sorts of aspects of Chinese culture into this blog like entertainment so here is the first one. I realize that the new Karate Kid movie is made by Americans for American audiences but it does take place in China, and there are scenes in schools, so I think that it’s apropos to talk about it here.
In case you haven’t seen the newest trailer for the movie here it is:
The [New] Karate Kid Trailer 2
So the new movie stars Jackie Chan, and Will Smith’s son, Jaden (which I never understood why his name is so similar to his mother, Jada’s). Jackie Chan plays Han, the Miyagi, mentor type role, which in this preview seems a bit off. We see Han rescuing Dre Parker (Smith) from a bunch of bullies who are half of Jackie’s size.
