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(Hopefully, I’ll have pictures inserted throughout this long-ish post soon.) The first stage of cultural exchange is commonly called the “honeymoon” period, the time when baby expats get moonstruck by being in a brand spankin’ new place. But when I first got to China, I didn’t feel particularly excited. It could have been a [...] Having two weeks off before I begin traveling around China to see family is nice in that without morning classes to worry about I can get out of my corner of Shenzhen and make sure I’ve actually become familiar with this place and how it works. They say Shenzhen doesn’t have “culture,” but surely [...] After my last class of the morning I decided to go exploring. Heck, it’s a nice sunny day and I need to get out. An easy option was to look around the Sea World area, a few miles south of my neighborhood. As all Shenzhen expats know by now, our Sea World does not [...] To continue the story of the last post would mean that I have to skip ahead of telling the story of my actual Christmas spent in Hong Kong in the pleasant company of family there. For making you feel at home in the wintertime of a country that ostensibly doesn’t celebrate Christmas, there’s nothing [...] At almost the eleventh hour the Shenzhen Education Bureau – that is, that peculiar section of the Shenzhen municipal government that is “responsible” for us in the way an insurance agent is “responsible” for your medical bills – has decided to throw us a Christmas party after all. Magnanimous! Us “foreign expert” Americans+Assorted British Commonwealthers [...] I’m sitting in a Starbucks – the one at the Coastal City megamall complex a few blocks north of my school. I took the bus to get here thinking that I needed to restock on frozen dumplings and could also use another space heater since it’s getting a little chilly again. But I guess I [...] I have been wanting to watch television in Mandarin for a while so that I could improve my vocabulary, but the news isn’t suitable (the words are too hard; I can’t imagine translating ‘bilateral trade negotiations’ on my iTouch and feeling very much accomplished) and the Chinese soaps I find on TV are too silly [...] My parents have come for a visit and are currently staying in Hong Kong. They’ll be visiting Shenzhen this weekend, to see just how their son is eking out his illiterate existence, and maybe even watch a class (those rare hours of the week when Andrew gets to turn the illiteracy tables on his [...] I can’t really sleep (I think I drank too much tea) so here’s one post for you. Teaching a foreign language has been an interesting challenge for me, since I’m the kind of arsehole who has trouble keeping my syllables down. A friend once affectionately (euphemistically, I thought) said “you talk just like you write!” [...] I usually see the same guards every time I return home, usually because it’s later at night and only a few of them must have those shifts. By that time they are often not in the guard house attached to the gate, but have pulled a school desk and chair into the courtyard further away [...] |
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