IHC

There was one other phrase my TEFL instructor back in Beijing shared with us during our first week here. He said that all expats living in China, no matter how long they have been here, will inevitably have a really crappy day from time to time and just get completely fed up with China. He calls them "IHC" days (I'll let you use your imagination). Today was definitely an IHC day. After school on Friday afternoon we decided we didn't feel like cooking dinner and instead decided to try a Korean restaurant down the road. On the way we decided to stop by one of the many street vendors and pick up a quick and ridiculously cheap snack of grilled pork on a stick. Then at the restaurant we go some rice bowls along with a side of some discount sushi. Not sure if it was the street food or the sushi, but today has just been miserable. We figured it must be food poisoning and have vowed off both for a while. It's a shame too, because we both really enjoyed the Korean restaurant and thought we had found a sweet new place. Only in China can you get delicious food that also makes you miserable.

To make things worse, we had already made plans today to go into Shanghai. Chelsea wanted to get some things for her classroom and I really wanted to plan out or route to the airport on Monday - we're going to Hong Kong to get our permanent visas this week and I think it's going to be a close call from the end of school to making our flight. Including lunch, we had about 4 stops we wanted to make. We thought getting out and about might actually make us feel better so we went ahead and bought train tickets to and from Shanghai. Almost immediately after boarding our train we started feeling worse and started crossing stops off the list. By the time the train arrived, we had decided to just get a quick lunch and head home right away. Then on the subway ride to the restaurant I apparently spiked a fever because I started sweating profusely and felt like I was going to pass out. Luckily a really nice Chinese guy who spoke some English could tell I was in misery and offered me his seat. I graciously accepted.

After lunch, we caught a cab back to the train station. Unfortunately we had already bought return tickets for 7:30 that evening but knew we definitely didn't want to stick around that long. It's actually pretty easy to exchange tickets for a different time, but the only time available wasn't much earlier. We decided to eat the 48 RMB (about 9 bucks) and just get a cab back to Kunshan. We knew it was a long ride and would be expensive, but we both felt so awful we didn't care. The cab driver immediately tried to negotiate the price instead of just using the meter, which we knew would be much lower than the set price he was quoting. He obviously wasn't happy about our request to use the meter and proceeded to take the most indirect route back to the highway. He literally just zig-zagged back and forth for a while and at one point even passed the highway he was supposed to get on. When we called him out on it he magically figured out where to go, but not before racking up an extra 100 RMB or so on the meter. We finally made it back home and have just been laying around ever since.

To top it all off, we actually have school tomorrow, Sunday. The Chinese have a very strange practice where they make up all the holidays they take off by working on the weekend. So if they take off Thursday and Friday for a holiday, they have to make it up by working Saturday and Sunday. Luckily we're following a true American school schedule and don't have to do that too often. But tomorrow is our one day or so per semester that we weren't able to work it out in the schedule. Not too bad compared to local Chinese schools that can get very strange looking weeks around holidays, but still very annoying.

It's been a long, not-so-fun one day weekend, but we're just trying to look forward to the upcoming week. It's another Chinese holiday and we'll be spending the week in Hong Kong. Aside from a few days for the visa stuff we should have the whole week to relax and enjoy the sights of a very unique city.

Till next time,

Hunter

Mid Autumn Festival

Hunter and I celebrated the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival with a relaxing four day weekend. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a harvest festival celebrated in many Asian countries. The ancient Chinese observed the movement of the moon and believed it had a close relationship with the changes in season and agricultural production. Hence, to express their thanks to the moon and celebrate the harvest, they offered a sacrifice to the moon on autumn days. It is now an official public holiday and my favorite part was all the moon cakes they handed out at school. A lot of my students and parents brought these delicious addicting cakes; I have some leftover and I can't stop eating them!

For our time off, we planned a nice weekend in Hangzhou and left early last Thursday via a one hour train ride. Hangzhou is full of beauty and history and is the kind of place you imagine when you think of China. It was nice to get away from industrial Kunshan, breathe some fresh air, and take in the scenery.  I don't have much to say except that West Lake is the main attraction and it is gorgeous. I will let the pictures do all the talking.

 Sleepy faces! We woke up early to head to Hangzhou and have some fun!

 We stayed in a hostel. I was really hesitant about doing so but it turned out great! It was cute, had everything we needed, and it was cheap too!

 It just had the basic necessities.

Our hostel was in a really neat area. There were tons of restaurants, shops, and vendors. 

We finally tried the chicken on a stick we see everywhere. It was pretty good.

Neat building near our hostel.

We explored West Lake on Thursday. At least as much as we could, there is so much to see! This city is definitely a hot spot for Chinese tourists; it was packed.

We took a nice boat ride across the lake. There are a few islands and sights to see and the boats would take you to all of them.

 This was a really cool temple we explored on Thursday.

 The two pictures above are the hostel. Pretty cute place!

 We went out for dinner and drinks one night at a Western restaurant. Really great nachos and margaritas! They also had some good music playing. The entire place reminded me of Austin and I got a little homesick.

Getting into the swing of things

Week two of school is in the bag! We both feel like we're getting more comfortable with our coworkers, our students, and just the day to day proceedings of the school itself. I'm really liking all of my classes and my students are all fantastic. They are so respectful and nice and are all very interested in school and learning. They are also really smart! Their English levels vary though from pretty low all the way up to nearly perfect. One of my sophomore students is from Germany and his English is so good I would have never realized he wasn't a native speaker if he hadn't told me. Most students are somewhere in the middle though so I have to be very conscious about my rate of speech and vocabulary when I'm teaching. Anyone who has seen me teach in the United States knows that I talk very very fast when giving instruction. It is easy for me to get carried away with how fast I was talking when I was in front of a class of 90-95% native speakers. I know my few language learners had a hard time keeping up and it was something I had to continually work on and remind myself of. But here, it's much easier to be conscious of my rate of speech when I look out into the class and see 100% ESL students. I also do a better job of explaining vocabulary words they may not know. I really feel like my teaching skills are already improving after only two weeks of class here in China.

Outside of class, we have been spending a lot of time researching where we want to travel on our upcoming breaks. We have Thursday and Friday off next week and the whole first week of October. For the long weekend, we decided to go to Hangzhou (pronounced Hang-Jo: the 'zh' makes a 'j' sound in Chinese). It's only about 90 minutes away by train and is supposed to be beautiful. It's famous for a large lake and lots of great parks. We were advised to stay in hostels anytime we travel because they are significantly cheaper than hotels. The website we were given makes it really easy to compare hostels and book online. We're not quite adventurous enough to try the dorm style rooms, so we will be staying in a private room. And if it turns out hostels aren't our thing, we'll make the switch back to hotels. For the long break in October, we wanted to visit the ancient mountain town of Fenghuang in the Wuyi Mountains. We had even reserved a hostel there also, but then found out we'll need to go to Hong Kong instead to get our permanent work visas. Luckily we hadn't put any money down yet for the hostel and it was easy to cancel. So Hong Kong it is for the big break, where we will spend about a day or so at the consulate and the rest of the week exploring. The nice part is the school is paying for our flights and two nights of the hotel since we're being sent there for official business. We were really looking forward to Fenghuang, but we've also been wanting to see Hong Kong; and since the school is paying, we're okay with saving the mountains for a different break. But the break we're REALLY excited about is Chinese New Year at the end of January/first of February. We have three weeks off and have decided to go El Nido, Philippines. It is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous there and crazy cheap. The flight will be the most expensive part but we're going to check prices every day and should be able to get reasonable tickets. We've already booked our resort though, which was only about $40 a night. The pictures of El Nido remind us a lot of our honeymoon in Jamaica - we're super excited!

On Friday night we unwound a bit by going out for drinks for the first time with coworkers. We started at the apartment of an Australian teachers aid for 2nd grade. The five people present represented the countries of the US, the UK, and Australia. It was a lot of fun talking about our different accents and how things are pronounced differently in certain places or just go by a different name all together. It was a really interesting conversation and cool to hear how the same things are different in other parts of the world. After that, we all left and met up with a few other teachers at a small bar downtown. We ate, played pool, listened to music, and just enjoyed having conversations that didn't include lesson plans, daily schedules, or students. We really needed the break and enjoyed unwinding. It was also good to get to know some of our coworkers outside of school. Saturday has mostly been about relaxing. I went to the bank this morning and figured out the process of sending money back to the United States. Everything here is so complicated I really didn't expect it to work out. It was pretty easy though and they said the money should arrive in about a week. The rest of the day we have just relaxed and watched Netflix/napped. Sunday, as usual, will be about lesson planning and preparing for the upcoming week. We've done a good job of establishing a weekly schedule, which has really helped with adjusting to the stress of moving to a new country. Figuring out things like the grocery store, bus schedules, banks, and cell phones has helped a lot also. We're getting more and more comfortable as time goes one.

Thanks again for reading,

Hunter

PS - I'm really looking forward to the A&M game tonight! I was told about a British website where you can stream most sporting events live. It's kind of a drag that it will be playing at 3:00 AM here, but I feel like I just can't miss the Alabama game! BTHO BAMA!!


No pictures this time, but here are just a few Google images of Hangzhou and El Nido! We can't wait!

                                            

                                            

                                            

The lake and the skyline of Hangzhou. Everyone knows Beijing and Shanghai, but the crazy thing about China is there are like a dozen other cities with 10+ million people that westerners have never even heard of. Hangzhou is one of those cities.

                                            

                                            

El Nido!

                                            

Our bed and breakfast!

School, Sashimi, and Suzhou

Hey guys! It has been a while since I posted and I feel like so much has happened. We finished our first week of school this past week and man was it hard. I love teaching and the content is pretty interesting, however, the classroom management side of things is proving difficult for me. The kids are very sweet but when 20 of them get together, crazy things can happen. Hitting, pushing, yelling, wondering around the room while I am talking, leaving the room randomly...you know, kid stuff. I am hoping I will get the hang of things as time goes on. The kids are already growing on me and I love seeing all the different personalities.

Hunter is enthralled with his classes and students. His content is much heavier but his students sound amazing. They are so incredibly smart and very sweet. I will let him share about his students though.

We were too busy to go anywhere this past week so when Friday rolled around we were ready for some fun. We decided to go to a highly recommended Japanese buffet in town for dinner and drinks. That was the best decision we could have made. It was so delicious! I have never eaten straight up raw fish (sashimi) but we tried it and it tasted amazing. Everything we ate was great and there was nothing negative I could say about the food. We tried raw salmon, sushi rolls with roe (crab egg), shark, cod fillets, the list goes on. I am hoping we can visit Japan one day so we can try genuine Japanese food.

Saturday we went to Suzhou which is famous for beautiful gardens and shopping. We tried a vegetarian buffet and it did not disappoint! We both agree that one of our favorite things to eat are baozis. They are soft, chewy buns with an array of different fillings. Hunter loves the ones with pork, I prefer the ones with a sweet bean paste.

After we ate, we went to a famous shopping street with tons of shops and vendors. We searched in vain for winter coats while also perusing all the random knick-knacks. We then went to a small theme park that has a giant Ferris wheel overlooking one of the lakes. It was gorgeous.

We ended the night with some awesome Tex-Mex that we just happened to stumble upon. It was surprisingly not that bad. Today we will work on lesson plans and grocery shopping, have to get back into the groove!

Anyway, I am missing everyone back home and hope you are all doing well.

 Love, Chelsea.

 This was a neat temple we found randomly in Suzhou. You can't tell in the pictures but the statues are huge!

 This is Jinji Lake in Suzhou. There is a pretty little park as well as the amusement park where we rode the Ferris wheel.

 The people we rode with on the Ferris wheel were kind enough to take a picture even though I complained about having to ride with them. I didn't realize they spoke English ;-/

Quesadillas!!We miss Tex-Mex so much.

Kunshan International School - American Program

We started our new teacher orientation on Monday with the American Program at Kunshan International School. Including the two of us, there are five new teachers in the program, which is a significant number considering there are only about 15 teachers total. Just a brief background of the school:

I'm not sure how long the International School has been around but it's basically just a Chinese private school that hires a few foreigners to teach English. That alone gives it the right to call itself Kunshan International School or KSIS for short (in Chinese, Kunshan is actually written as two separate characters and sometimes that translates to English: 昆山 = Kun Shan). Except for the English classes, the curriculum is entirely in Chinese and its a Chinese style of education. I wont get into how that differs from Western education, but just know that schools here operate very differently. At some point, the idea was brought up to have a true Western style program within the International School, complete with a full English curriculum and all Western teachers. The idea is to prepare students who wish to attend universities in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. With that, KSIS-AP was born in 2010. There is a diverse population of students from Taiwan, Korea, China, Singapore, and Indonesia, as well as one or two Western countries. All students are required to take an English test prior to admittance so, in theory, all students will speak pretty good English. The teacher demographic is even more diverse with the countries of the United States, Canada, Colombia, Spain, Russia and the UK being represented. As for the campus itself, there is a separate wing of KSIS for our program and we operate almost entirely independent from the International School. The program has been very successful since its inception and was actually granted independence from KSIS for the 2012-2013 school year. It became known simply as Kunshan American School. Recently however,"the powers at be," as our director likes to call them, decided the school should rejoin the International School, once again to be called KSIS-AP. In addition, we will no longer be accepting elementary/middle school students. Our youngest group is in second grade this year and as they progress through school we will just no longer have those grade levels. When they become freshmen, we will continue strictly as a high school program. Our director's theory is that we were 'stealing' elementary applicants from the International School. Apparently the waiting list to get into KSIS has been greatly reduced since the American Program has done so well. Nobody likes an ego blow. 

So as I stated before, we started our new teacher orientation this week. It has been a pretty relaxed week where we mostly went over school procedures and received more details about our teaching assignments. Chelsea will be teaching 4th grade and I will be teaching high school English. I will have at least four courses to teach: English I, English II, American Literature, and British literature, one for each respective grade level. There is a possibility I will pick up a fifth course but that is not yet clear. Our current big task is to come up with course outlines for each of our classes. As a guide, we were given outlines that previous teachers have used but the director of the American Program really wants us to make the courses our own. We can even use whatever standards we want, as long as they come from an accredited institution. He gave us the link to the Washington State public education standards, but said we can use others if we want. For instance, I could use the TEKS from Texas if I wanted. It's nice to be given so much freedom but it also puts a lot of pressure on us to come up with our own material. We will both be working on our outlines over the weekend and throughout next week. 

On Friday we took a "field trip" into Shanghai with the director and a few of the returning teachers who are already back in town. Apparently they do this every year as a team building type activity and to help everyone get more acquainted. First we went to the Chinese History museum which had a ton of cool artifacts from thousands of years ago. We then had a delicious family style lunch at one of our directors favorite restaurants. Most traditional Chinese restaurants operate this way: you just order a few entrees and a few sides and everyone shares everything. It's a great way to try lots of different food. After lunch we headed downtown to the observation deck of the tallest building in the city, The Shanghai Financial Center. Although its only the 5th or 6th tallest building in the world, it holds the world record for the highest observation deck. Right next door, the Shanghai Tower is nearing completion and will be the second tallest in the world. We could see construction workers walking around on platforms 100+ stories in the air! After the observation deck, we headed back to Kunshan - unfortunately during rush hour. 18 million people all leaving work at the same time does not make for a good commute. The normally 30 minute trip took us well over 3 hours on the way home. We would normally take the high speed train to and from Shanghai, but I guess with a group of 11 they thought it would be more cost effective to hire a bus driver. 

By the time we got home it was around 8:30 and we were a little tired. But this is the last weekend of the Kunshan International Beer Festival and we have both really been wanting to go. So we took the bus to downtown Kunshan to check it out. It wasn't quite what we expected but we had fun. We tried beers from Germany, Czech Republic, Taiwan, and China. We also got a pretty good Chinese version of German sausage and sauerkraut. By 10 or so we were all Beer-Fested out and took a cab home. We're planning on having a pretty tame weekend to work on our course outlines and prepare for the week. On Monday we start our in service with the entire staff, then the following Monday is when school will start! We're looking forward to a great year!

As always, thanks for reading,

Hunter

The front of the KSIS building. The American Program is basically the whole 4th floor. All the dorms and other buildings are behind this one. 

We went to the top of the building with the hole in the middle. The Shanghai Tower is the one to the right that's under construction. It will be significantly taller than the Financial Center. 

Inside the financial center they had this really cool model of the city. The model includes a rendition of what the final Shanghai tower will look like. 

A few pics from the observation deck. Shanghai is definitely clearer than Beijing but you can still see a fair amount of haze and smog. 

A few pictures of Kunshan City Park. There are lots of parks and nature areas around Kunshan. We've only explored this one so far but want to check out more.