Week Well Worked, Dinner with Good People, Game Night, H#1977, and First Band Practice
This past week practically flew by. On Monday I was brought to the Civic Center to take care of some important stuff relating to my visa, residency, and work permit. I had to submit my passport which I will get back soon. I voted by mail from China. It cost me about $57 to mail it through a courier service. I hope it gets there because the next US midterm election is a big one.
What I love about teaching here is that I am able to experiment with many of the ideas I have had over the last four years. I have already talked at length about the negative aspects of teaching in the US. Those issues are far worse in urban settings. It was rare that I had enough consistent attendees, or students who cared enough, in class to even execute what I had planned. I am now in the fortunate position to use much of the plans that I have accumulated over the last four years. This means that I never need to come up with anything on the spot, and only need to draw from my vast stores of already prepared lessons. After some modification they are usually ready to go. That being said, I have still taken the opportunity to develop new plans. I am actually using presentations and lecturing again as well as preparing to do some labs in the coming weeks. In the last two weeks I have played Cytosis the board game with my students and have started them on an organelle research and design project. They will continue their research and builds into next week. I have been observed three times in the last two weeks, which is more than I have been observed in the last four years. All of the feedback has been positive and helpful.
I started hitting the gym in our building this week, and although I have been going light, I am glad I started up this fitness routine.
I am making friends among my coworkers and among the Shekou H3. On Friday night I got dinner with the principal, academic dean, some other teachers, and their partners. It was a good meal and we had some good laughs. I was surprised in the middle of the meal to see a spectacular water, light, and pyrotechnics show at SeaWorld. The video is too big to post unfortunately. If you really want to see it then find it online, it has already been shared on YouTube by other expats. After dinner I walked to my friend's place for game night. We started with "Uno", which I have not played since middle school, continued with "Pandemic" and I left in the middle of "King of Tokyo". By that point I was pretty drunk. Despite having paced my tequila and beer out over the course of a few hours, I still had about 3 of each, and was too drunk to even try using an app to hail a cab. It was 2am and the streets were pretty empty. What should have been an hour long walk either flew by very quickly, or I walked very fast, or both. I know I stopped at least three times to water the plants.
I spent Saturday taking care of some household chores before going to the Snake Pit for Hash #1977 with the Shekou H3. We ran around the Lixin Reservoir in Fuyong District of Shenzhen. The beer stop was by the lake and there was a shrine, a rose garden, some graffiti, and some statuary that reminded me a little of Philly. We finished the run and enjoyed some burgers, hotdogs, and potato salad before the circle and then we went back to the Snake Pit in the harrier shuttle drinking beer with American metal and rock music blasting. We got back around 7ish in the evening and I went straight home and to bed.
Today I joined the staff band which is a mix of musically inclined Chinese and international teachers from Basis (along with one student who is the son of the Director of Operations). We are going to be performing four or five songs at the Chinese new year celebration and today was our first rehearsal. It went very well, and despite having only about seven Sundays to rehearse, I think we will be totally fine. I picked up and learned a little bit of the bass guitar for a Japanese song from the anime "Detective Conan", will be playing acoustic and doing back up vocals for a Chinese song called "Dang", and am taking the lead singer and acoustic guitar roles for Beatles "Come Together" and Omi "Cheerleader". I finished off my evening with dinner with my friend.
I am enjoying this so far. I have heard stories of people who had difficulty adjusting to living and working here. I suppose it comes down to resilience and flexibility. I have been through a lot of hardship in my life, and thanks to my mental fortitude I have made it through all of that even stronger than I was before.
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