...Living in a Foodie's Paradise--and a Boarding School

On the way home, the bus was so packed, I was practically sitting on the bus driver's lap.  For all its social awkwardness, the front-row view was amazing!    The  panoramic vista of our four-story tiled school and the Mediterranean-inspired Country Garden villas just unfolded in front of us, twist upon turn as we toddled down the road.

I relished the thought of the delicious dinner we had at our favorite dive, 'The Dessert Restaurant'.  It was so named for all the sweet things on the menu and its cheap prices!  

We can order as many as 6 things without breaking a financial sweat.  (Might add up to like $6.50.)   Some of our favorite menu items are deep-fried peanut-butter filled french toast, fresh mango, dragonfruit and jellies in coconut milk and barbequed garlic eggplant.  

My restaurant outing was a welcome relief.   It’s been a tough week here at Guangdong Country Garden International School. I have had some difficult classes in the midst of some wonderful ones.   What a learning curve I should have expected—teaching through miscommunications and different management expectations.   

These last couple of days,  my teaching style has been affected by fear.  Which class will make me want to cry?  In which class will my lesson fail? Which class will rise up never to be brought back to order again? These thoughts haunt me some days.

This kind of thing can happen class after class.    Another problem is I forget which classes are good and which ones are bad.  I start coming down hard on good classes and going easy on bad classes.    This creates a weird mix of student behavior.  Arg.   I have persevered however, and with the help of class monitors, am feeling more like the authority figure I should be.

I have to say, my students are an eager bunch.  When they know what they are doing, they go for it.     Earlier today I gave them a worksheet, and they colored it so ferociously they looked like they had been let out of a cage and their first act of freedom was to color.   :]    For the next 20 minutes all you heard in the classroom was the strumming rhythm of crayon against paper.  

I teach in a boarding school. My students are in class from 7:20 am till 9:00 at night. They have breaks for lunch and dinner/PE and playtime but it’s a pretty much classroom, lunch room, dormitory, classroom, lunchroom, dormitory. They probably don’t get much time to color. That makes me sad.   

Students of privilege should be the very ones who have time to express themselves.   I think the staff depend on the foreign teachers to provide that kind of thing. One Chinese teacher even mildly rebuked me for not taking them to the library.   If he only knew how badly they behaved, he wouldn’t have made me feel bad.   (Since this posting, I have taken them to the library and they have behaved much better.)

In some of my classes--and these are students from very wealthy families--the students don’t even have crayons. The thought of not having crayons—or any coloring device--deeply saddens me. Maybe that will be on my class supplies request list.   Yeah, I asked before, and they referred me over to the supply room and signed me out for a few packs of art class crayons.   Great quality, but not enough to keep all the students occupied.

Before I ramble on to the place of no return...I should mention my surprise trip to Hong Kong.

In the next post...

A Horrendous Departure

I wanted to share with you my most recent adventures in Shanghai. I chose Shanghai to end my China travels because I’ve always wanted to go there.  More specifically, I wanted to see the iconic Pearl Tower.  (There are unfortunate events related to that topic but we won't dwell on that.)

I packed up my household, put it all in three suitcases, checked out with my Foreign Affairs lady and headed out to catch my flight--an international flight.  All in one day. Not recommended. This is especially not recommended if one must travel the day before to do errands and only start packing up after midnight.   Add to this the intensity of saying goodbye, spending time with friends and having an apartment inspection, and you have disaster!

It made me wonder if I should go.   I was literally emptying the contents of my desk drawers into trash bags that I could sort out on the bus.   I ran out of time to pack-up.   I had 3 taxi drivers mad at me in one day and I found antennae-waving cockroaches two inches from my head in an airbus that took me to the plane.  The only word to describe this whole experience was ‘horrendous’ with a capital HORROR.

That's just the general overview.   I started my journey by rolling two huge suitcases--one whose handle broke on the way down my apartment steps--a backpack weighing more than the rolling suitcases, a purse, a computer and three shopping bags to a waiting taxi.   This only is told to give an idea of my immense relief at the present moment as I am relaxing in the most lovely of Chinese hostels, hoping to find that Shanghai Golden you always hear about. 

Shanghai Nights!

Still reeling from the scam realization. I sleep in late but join the Finnish girl and her Chinese roomie for a night cruise. Actually it turns out to be a trip around ‘The Bund’ like Shanghai’s waterfront to some of the Chinese friend’s fave places.

We went to the glamorous area which looked like something out of Santa Barbara’s downtown State Street shopping area. Really classy. I took lots of pictures.

We passed a Starbucks and our Finnish friend mentioned she had never tried one.    What?!  The Chinese girl and I both looked at each other.  ?   That had to be remedied.    When 'Helen' pointed to a bottled frappaccino in the display case, my Chinese friend and I both exclaimed, "NOooooooo!" :O and helped her order something more memorable for her Starbucks initiation--like an iced grande hazelnut mocha frappuccino.

After that, we tried out the local frozen yogurt shop.    I ordered a green tea frozen yogurt with watermelon, papaya, gummy squares and mango on top.   It was very good to the taste but I was starting to realize, 'I can’t have any more sugar!  

In-between reaching another Cantonese desert place on The Bund we shared some sweet Chrysanthemum tea and a mango, sticky rice, coconut milk sundae. Very good, but too much sugar!   All this sampling, walking around in the heat, eating wild combinations of food started to take effect. In the cab Helen, who has just been here two days, said she was going to throw up.

The taxi drove us as fast as we could back to the hostel.   Oh, the poor girl. I can’t imagine.   In one afternoon/evening, Helen had sampled frozen green tea yogurt, Chrysanthemum tea, tofu and green bean street food, herb-filled wantons, fried spinach, lychee fruit--which tasted a bit ‘off’, a squash-like fruit, and then that first-ever mocha hazelnut frap.   A local Chinese person would have been sick with that combo.

Not that China’s food is bad, but all of that on a China-newbie stomach is too much. (As it turned out, she was okay and didn’t end up throwing up but it was pretty gruesome in the meantime.   Foreign travel trauma averted for the moment.)

I think we all slept way late the next day.    I got up in time to wander around the neighborhood but also decided--when thinking about bed time that next day--that I could not sleep another night on a hard dorm bed. 

It was now down to my last two days in China. The only softer option was a private room.  I went for it and am now happily typing, solomente.