And he's back!

Alright I know I posted today already (er yesterday as I look at the time), but that post was written days ago.  But this evening, I got internet!  Okay so it cost me more than promised, because China Telecom internet doesn't support macs...I don't understand how this is possible, but Mark had the same problem.  So he helped me after school today go to a computer store where I bought a second router to connect to the first and this one talks to my Mac!  And boom, internet.  The VPN is strong now, but seems to have a tendency to fade and might here as it did at the school and Gregory's.  I can always change apartments...kidding.

I have a bed.  A brand new bed from IKEA.  It was more money than I wanted to spend, but knowing it was actually a new mattress was worth it.  It's foam, it's beautiful.  When it arrived I patiently waited for the deliverers to leave, then tore off the plastic, checked for bugs (can't be too careful in this country), and found NONE.  Then I made my bed.  Put my cotton quilt on the bottom, then the sheet, then the quilt.  Chinese sleep with sheet underneath them over the mattress and the quilt above, washing the sheet and quilt cover.  Of course I only bought one set as they were mad expensive, which means laundry day will be interesting with no dryer.  Anywho---back to the bed.  Once made, I squealed (which is rather funny when a 6'4" person sequels) as I landed on a softer mattress; rolling around laughing hysterically.  After 30 mins of ridiculousness, I calmed down and then, of course, wanted to nap.  But I went to my desk (cuz I have a desk) in the school to pretend to do work.

Okay not actually pretend, I did work.  But I was interrupted by Maggie, Elliot (her friend), and their friends who wanted me to join them at KTV.  Unlike my last KTV experience, this place was less dodgey and I wanted to be there cuz I had a bed to celebrate.  After a spicy dinner, Lynette, who we met up with, drove me back to my place to have a look.  We opened some wine ($12 yuan, so less than $2 wine--like grape juice, so sweet) and opened up the door to Eugenia and Cynthia, my two female co-workers.  And after everyone left, there I was all alone with a fresh mattress.  We introduced ourselves and I went to sleep on a cloud.  Okay, it's not that comfortable, but it's so much better than bugs.  I is happy, can youz tell?

But I got ahead of myself.  Things happened this week!  But I'll be brief as I dislike post-blogging and should get to bed (also: I need 120 mins of material for tomorrow; have 0 mins).  Thursday was the opening ceremony of the field day, that strange two-day event where the kids compete in sports and games.  And yes, there was an opening ceremony.  Essentially, I now know how China got ready for the Olympic games, they start young!  Each section of each grade performed a dance/skit/something and marched in unison to the performance space.  I led a AP senior 1 class who did a little dance and then watched as one of the girls performed kung fu moves with a sword.  Pretty cool.  Then I scurried off with Sarah to the police station to register, and to the apartment where we checked on the bug situation.  The second mattress still had bugs after the bug-bombing.  We washed what was washable and Sarah helped me buy water (like water-cooler water...so drinkable) and Internet (which finally arrived today).  I ended the day by going to check out the English corner.  At 9pm every Thursday, English majors meet to practice their English.  I was swarmed by students before I even stepped onto the corner's grounds.  The highlight, a girl asked me where I was from.  I said "near Chicago".  Her response, "Good for you!"  Lynette and I thought this was hilarious and it has become a running joke ever since.  I was overwhelmed at the corner and left abruptly, Lynette joking that if I couldn't handle that I couldn't handle Hollywood.  We met Maggie and Elliot and headed to a bar and played Hearts of all things.  Good fun.

Friday, the washable parts had bugs/maggots crawling and I said enough.  Cynthia gave me the idea of buying a new bed, but Sarah was headed out of town.  So Cynthia agreed to show me the way to Ikea on Saturday.  I worked on my apartment the whole day, cleaning, organizing, making trips to Walmart, etc. and then met up with Charles and Cynthia.  We cabbed to downtown, met up with Jessie at Grandma's kitchen.  And true to form, anything labeled Grandma's was twice the portion size of anything else.  I chose a burger with almost passable BBQ sauce.  My body was overjoyed at the change of diet.  Then we hit of the bars, met some other expats, a student studying abroad, and had a general night of debauchery.

Saturday started off very very slowly.  Somehow Cynthia and I mustered the strength to journey to IKEA.  At the subway stop (after the entire route of Bus 30), we saw signs for IKEA on exit signs.  Then we saw the IKEA shuttle bus.  We decided to walk instead, turned a corner, and in the distance was the biggest IKEA sign I've seen to date.  I felt the hype, the IKEA hype.  We made a pit-stop at Subway where we wondered how this would work with pointing and then felt stupid as we were greeted in English.  Feeling slightly better we made it to IKEA.  Escalators full of people ascended into the magic.  There was so much hype and excitement.  It felt like being in line for a rock concert.  We found ourselves in the biggest IKEA ever.  A map guided us through the store with some secretive passages between living rooms and kitchens and whatnot.  It was ridiculous.  We found beds and someone who spoke English.  I picked out the bed I had found online and then we snaked our way through droves of people.  This IKEA has a restaurant.  People were everywhere.  Some, clearly just there to hang out and enjoy sitting on furniture.  We made it from the third floor to the second and eventually somehow found our way through the chaos to the check-out lines, but not before I'd found a dish drying rack, clothes drying rack, some non-stick ware and glasses.  Everything was much cheaper than Walmart.  Checking out was complicated, no cash usually, but that's all I had as my cards don't work.  And then I found the delivery people and forked over more money for the mattress.  Somehow we made it out alive, but our energy was down so some interesting interpretation of New York Cheese Cake and mochas from Starbucks made things a bit better.  Cheese is not always well done, but as Cythina pointed out the crust was what was really wrong, it was cake-like.  We made it home after spending way too long on an extremely crowded bus and I spent the rest of the night cleaning/organizing after visiting Walmart once more.

Sunday came and went and I was left feeling like I had a home.  And when Monday came, my new clean apartment, with functional kitchen, somewhat stocked-fridge (though Sweet Thai Chilli Sauce is in it which is NZ sweet-as), and drinkable water, warmly welcomed the mattress.  It was a great start to the week, except going to the KTV on Monday meant I wasn't sure what class was going to be on Tuesday until I was up and rolling.

Tuesday's class was good, I think.  I felt a bit prepared.  I passed out the first terms/concepts sheets due Friday for the first chapter and we finished up psychology's history.  Then I passed out the textbooks, which finally arrived!  The students spent the rest of the time looking at the pictures though I insisted they could use this time to start their reading homework.  Whatever, they've never had a psych book before.  I had noodles with Jessie before my first evening study.  I thought I was just going to supervise the students, but Mr. Wang (pronounced Wong) thought I was going to teach college.  Not sure how one teaches college, but the senior 2 students really just wanted to tell me I was handsome and take my picture.  It was very awkward, but I did teach them some vocab: procrastination.  Hey, you gotta start somewhere!

Wednesday's class was good; even more sure of that.  I was prepared.  I lectured on the different psychological approaches (though the students accused me of making up works like biopsychosocial and psychopharmacology).  The bell rang as I was finishing up my last bit of lecture and I was amazed at how well-timed it was.  I announced there would be a quiz the following day, which meant I had to go make a quiz.  Which of course meant I found myself hanging with Tom, the music teacher at another school who's apartment was robbed.  He is very friendly and offered to help me in any way and suggested places to buy things and things to do.  He said his family will have me over for dinner some time soon.  I am a bit jealous of his job: music teacher/choral director at a school that isn't as dodegy as mine with students who want to learn more than pass the SAT.

Thursday (today...err...yesterday) I waited for internet people to show up while making a quiz.  Copying some questions and making up others I put together a 9 multiple choice and 2 short answer question quiz.  Internet showed up while I started grading essays (not sure how to grade them as the English is atrocious).  Of course, the Internet didn't work cuz I'm in China and nothing every seems to work the way I want it to, but the guy called Sarah who put on Mark who filled me in about the computer store.  I got to school, nervous about the quiz, and worked on the second list of terms/concepts.  I somehow managed to photocopy both, though the printer jammed every 7th or so quiz.  I felt prepared, though not sure how to use up the 80 mins so I decided on some more reading time as they don't really have much other time to get work done.  The quiz had them silent and they finished within 20 mins, which is how long I thought it would take them.  The only luck I seem to have in this country is in the classroom.  But, I'll take it!  I had them grade each others and then their SAT scores became available on line and everyone's attention shifted.  After the break, I had them check their scores instead of fighting it. I consoled the saddened and celebrated with the gleeful.  I gave an impromptu speech on the unimportance of the SAT post college acceptance and then dismissed class early.  They were clearly distracted so I assigned more reading and off they went.

Mark invited me over to dinner.  I think he has felt bad watching me struggle with the apartment.  His Vietnamese wife made homemade spaghetti sauce atop spaghetti.  When she heard I was Italian, she grew nervous, but I assured her it was delicious and it was!  She also procured Vietnamese iced coffee which was out-of-this-world good.  Mark then helped me at the computer store and boom, I'm back in business, back in the present, back with the rest of the world.  Damn, I'm internet dependent!

That was fast, brief, but hey...I'm caught up.  Which is good and also keep sounding more and more like a teacher.  Still not sure how I'm doing this, but some people had almost all the multiple choice right so I've done something right!  Though one student had 5 wrong.  But I'll work on it and they'll work on it, or at least that's the plan.  Still hard to believe I'm in China and this is my life.  Perhaps I need to slow down and breath a little.  The Chengdu way.