Site Visit: Viva la Vida

I’ve decided to make Coldplay’s latest song “Viva la Vida” the theme song of my PST (pre-service training), if not my whole PC experience. If you haven’t heard it yet, I highly recommend going to iTunes and downloading it immediately.

Chongqing – a new home for the next two years. A metropolis. The city is huge and there are people everywhere! If you can manage to find your way to the downtown part of the city, surrounded by giant skyscrapers and major department stores, you could easily imagine yourself in any major Western city – Chicago, New York, whatever!

Chongqing is sometimes called the mountain city, as it is surrounded by hills and mountains. The city streets are also very hilly, which makes for some pretty intense taxi rides (really any experience in a car in China is one where I have murmured many a prayer). The university I will be teaching at (Chongqing Technology and Business University) is about a 15 minute taxi ride from the city center and is nestled in the hills below one of the mountains. The campus is beautiful and definitely takes advantage of their great location. There are hiking trails up the mountain that lead to teahouses and scenic overlooks that help you really envision the vastness of the city.

I was met at the train station by one of the members of the Foreign Language Department and was taken back to the campus. I was shown my apartment that I’ll be living in for the next two years (pictures still to come). The apartment is very spacious and welcoming (and there is a Western toilet!). There is a kitchen, bathroom, a balcony area to do laundry, a living area (and the university was kind enough to provide a TV and DVD player), and two bedrooms. That means plenty of space for all the visitors I expect to see (just let me know when you want to come, so I can make sure to be ready for you!)

I met with several members of the faculty I will be working with including the dean of the Foreign Language department, my teaching counterpart (a host country national who will be teaching courses similar to mine), and some deputies of the Foreign Lang. Dept. Everyone was incredibly welcoming and helpful. I am extremely excited to start the school year! There are actually about 10 foreign teachers at CTBU (only 2 of us are PCVs and the rest are all paid and from all over the world) and we all teach a couple sections of Oral English to English majors (I get to teach the freshman!) and then we all take classes of upperclassmen students who are non-English majors. Apparently every university requires that every student (regardless of their major) must pass a certain English exam in order to graduate. I think they might be able to graduate without the test, but it sounds like every employer in China asks for the results of the test, so if they don’t take it, they will have a difficult time finding a job. I have 2 sections of Oral English from the School of Economics/Business and 2 from the school of Mechanical Engineering. So 7 classes total, and each of them only meets once a week. There rest of the week I will office hours, English corner (an informal setting where essentially anyone who is interested can come converse with a native speaker), and whatever I decide to do for my secondary project.

Because everyone was away for their summer vacation, the university was pretty empty. I am looking forward to returning at the beginning of September and meeting my students and all the other teachers. It was all very exciting, and although I am excited to be back in Chengdu with my host family and the other trainees, I am anxious to get started teaching and I think it is going to be difficult to focus during these last two weeks of PST. We have our language proficiency interview coming up this week and I am terrified. We must manage 30 minutes of conversation with a native Chinese speaker and I am really concerned about my abilities. If we don’t pass this week, we have to get a tutor at our site and then try again in January during IST (in-service training). Wish me luck!

08-08-08

Friday is the first day of the Olympics, and the anticipation is about as heavy as the humidity. (I know that was lame, but adjusting to the tropical climate has probably been one of the more extreme parts of my culture shock.) Seriously though, the build up and excitement for the Olympics surprised me at first, but as I get know more about the Chinese people and their culture, I understand they are very proud and patriotic. The games are a source of great honor for the Chinese. There have been special TV programs featuring ceremony after ceremony all in regard to the Olympics and the pride of China.

The torch just came through Chengdu yesterday in the mid morning. There was relay throughout the downtown, and T-shirts and flags everywhere. We didn't go because of our scheduled training, but we watched a little on TV. Many of the people chosen to carry the torch were those who assisted with the earthquake relief. The earthquake greatly affected this entire area, and it is very common for our students to discuss bring it up in class. There have been several aftershocks since we've been here. Yesterday afternoon there was one that lasted several minutes. And a few weeks ago there was one that registered around 5.0 on the scale. That was in the middle of the night and I awoke as my bed was shaking. It was a little scary.

Other than the Olympics, there is not much else to share. Of course, there are everyday things that are new -- last week we figured out how to eat in the campus cafeteria, which is a pretty busy scene around noon time, and none of the staff speaks English. Nonetheless, I found my new favorite food -- jidanbei. Basically an egg pancake with green onions. Very tasty. And cheap (about 20 cents).

From what I can gather, I am relatively sure my host sister is taking me to her hometown this weekend. It is called Zigong, and is roughly 2 hours SE of Chengdu. Whenever I tell anyone (like my students)I am going there, they inevitably tell me about the dinosaur museum. So my next post will more than likely be all about that.
Hope everyone is well! Zaijian!

the end of the first month

I hope this post finds all of its readers happy and healthy! I am doing well; my main complaint is being really tired from all the training activity. I started teaching model school this week, and planning for that has been especially exhausting. We also still have Chinese language class everyday, and it feels like I have come to a major plateau in my learning. I hope to get over that soon, or else I will never pass my language interview at the end of August.

We are half way through the pre-service training, and in a couple weeks I will find out where I will be living and teaching for the next two years. I am a little anxious to find out, but I am sure everything will work itself out. I have gotten to know the other trainees very well over the past weeks, and I have made some wonderful new friends. Everyone has such different experiences, which makes for some very interesting conversation.

There aren’t any major adventures to share – but many small ones. Every day is some small adventure whether related to finding something for lunch, figuring out how to get around the city, or communicating with my host family.

Well, I have more lessons to plan, a self assessment on my training progress to complete, and my host sister just informed me that we are going to “Jinli” street, which for what I have read, is the ancient part of the city.

beginnings

I know it has taken me a little while to actually make a post on this blog – I apologize for that. It has been a very busy couple of weeks, and I am having a hard time deciding what to pick from to share.
I guess I’ll start with the beginning of it all – staging in Washington D.C. I met the rest of the China 14s (we are the 14th group to serve in China) and had an opportunity to meet with other RPCVs (returned Peace Corps Volunteers) who served in China in the years past. It was also a busy weekend of preparation and getting to know the group of new friends. There are people from all over the US with many different and fascinating experiences, including 14 people who have recently served in other Peace Corps programs. It has been especially interesting talking to them and listening to their comparisons of Peace Corps China to other programs.
We arrived in Chengdu on the 1st, very late at night. We spent the first week in a hotel going through some basic orientation information and beginning our language classes. Last Saturday we moved out of the hotel and in with our host families. That has probably been the most educational experience of them all. I am living with a host sister who is 26 and her parents in a beautiful apartment. My sister has some basic English skills, and with my very limited Chinese, we spend a lot of time trying to communicate through dictionaries, pantomimes, and, sometimes, Google translator.
This last week was exhausting, and considering what I have been hearing from China 13s (the group that came last year and will stay until next summer), things are only going to get even busier. Yesterday we took a field trip to a city called Leshan, which is about 2 hours south of Chengdu. We spent the morning observing the 13s who are in the middle of their summer teaching project, and then in the afternoon we went sightseeing. LeShan is the home of the largest Buddha in the world. It was an amazing sight! But it was well over 30 degrees Celsius and probably one of the most humid days I’ve ever experienced. We were all drenched in sweat by the end of the hike.

I hope everyone is doing well! I am definitely enjoying myself and I will try to post again soon!

Introduction

The beginning of a new adventure!