The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This may come as a shock to some of you, but Christmas isn't a really big deal in China. Who knew. You don't really see any sort of decorations out, and the only times you hear christmas songs are when you are in a grocery store that tries to create a more western atmosphere. Despite all of this, the other teachers and I forged ahead with Christmas. We bought a tree, decorated the apartment, and did secret santa. At school we had a christmas party, and I had the honor of playing Santa himself. It was a blast and the kids loved it. It was the first Christmas away from home, which was a bit weird, but we made up for it by having a big Christmas party at our apartment on the 25th. Now, I am off to Thailand for a week to enjoy some warm weather and usher in the new year. My new year's resolution is, as it has always been, to be a better person than I was last year. I hope you all had a merry Christmas, and I wish you all a happy new year.

Part I, A Day In the Life

A Day In the Life

My fellow teacher Joel kind of gave me this idea. For one of his advanced students he wrote a short piece detailing one of his days. I read it and thought maybe I would give it a shot. I will write it in multiple installments (just because of how long-winded and full of myself I am) and we’ll see how it goes.

 Part I

The Phoenix

I don’t have a real alarm clock. I use the $30 cell phone I purchased on my second day in Wuhan, China, and the alarm is uninspiring. As it goes off, the only signal my brain sends my body is that it wants more sleep. Painfully, I ignore its pleas and open my eyes. It’s Friday morning.

For most people, or at least the ones I know, Friday mornings are the beginning to the last workday of the week, a prelude to the weekend. Not for me. Friday is my Monday. I am in China.

The air around me is freezing cold. Our apartment somehow manages stay below the outside temperature at all times. It defies what limited knowledge I have of physics. In my room, I can see my breath. I exhale, inhale, repeat. The irony is that though I’ve lived in Canada, I am for the first time in my life bothered by the cold. Cold air is one of the least appealing things to wake up to, and this morning is no exception.

I am wearing sweatpants, two layers of sweaters, and double socks. I leave my bedroom, fueled by my desire for a hot cup of coffee. 5 minutes later, a boiling cup of instant Maxwell House Coffee is keeping my hands warm is I step into the bathroom. The tile floor is still wet from showers from the day before. Chilly temperatures make for a poor drying environment. As I prepare for my shower, I dread the feeling of my bare feet on the cold tile. I do not turn the shower on in advance, because that would waste our hot water supply. When I am ready, I hop into the hot shower, my sanctuary from the cold. My body wants to stay forever. My internal clock turns on and says the hot water will last for another 7 minutes.

27 minutes later. I am clean, dressed, and caffeinated. Ready to face the day. Did I forget anything? I look around the living room. Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced English textbooks litter the room. I pick up the ones I need for today. Mostly beginner classes all day, then my most advanced class from 7-9. The extra 15 minutes I decided to sleep have cost me my breakfast, so I know I have to hurry if I want to grab some dumplings from the cart across the street. One more mental double-check. Left shoe on. Right shoe. I open the door. My weekend is over.  

The Walking Chinese

Have you ever been walking along, texting on your phone, when suddenly someone passes you? Did that piss you off, knowing that he had somewhere important to be while you didn’t? Well you no longer have to live with this frustration, and can instead frustrate those who dare surpass your pathetic pace. The solution: walk like a Chinese person. The Chinese have developed a method for making it nearly impossible to pass them on foot. I will attempt to outline their basic technique so that you can learn this ancient system.

Step 1

Walk really slowly. This may seem counterintuitive, but it is the rock upon which this entire system is built. If you are walking at a reasonable pace, there is no need for anyone to pass you, and you will have given in to the dark side of medium-to-fast paced walking. Walking slowly is not only the basis of this method, but it is also symbol of solidarity against the people with places to be. Fuck them.  Oh, and if you are on an escalator, make sure to always stand in the middle, and never walk. It’s there to walk for you, why should you put in any extra effort?

Step 2

Do not walk in a straight line. It is easy to be passed when walking in a straight line. You only take up one lane when you do that. That is so efficient it makes me want to puke. To boost your inefficiency, never walk in a straight line.

Step 3

This is more of a corollary to Step 2, but it is the key feature of this entire philosophy, so it deserves it’s own step. Never be predictable. Predictability leads to order, which leads to efficiency. We’re not giving in. Be unpredictable. Change directions frequently, and with no discernable pattern. For example, walk in a straight line for a couple of steps, then switch to a more right-diagonal direction, then go diagonally to the left. Make sure to fill as many lanes as possible. Also, don’t make your pace predictable. A human being with a brain can quickly identify openings to pass if you set a consistent pace. Therefore, make sure to accelerate and decelerate often. Once you become adept at this, you can take it one step further by changing how strongly you accelerate/decelerate to further throw off the enemy.

Step 4

Always do something else while you are walking. Eating, texting, talking on the phone and reading a newspaper while walking are good places to start. This will serve to further frustrate the fast walkers, who will be jealous of all the time you have to read a newspaper and all of the friends you have who you are texting.

These are mostly basics. If you truly want to master this art, come to Wuhan, China, and see the true experts at work. Their natural habitat is along busy roads and around metro stations, usually on stairs or escalators. Also make sure to visit our website at www.walklikeanasshole.com and follow us on twitter #youshallnotpass

Next week: Stuck in traffic, being passed by pedestrians? Fuck that. We will explore how to drive on the sidewalk and teach pedestrians that sidewalks are for cars, not people. 

Janus

A pros and cons list is a hard thing to do. You inherently feel like each side should be pretty even, just because the very nature of a pros and cons list implies that you are undecided in determining the merits of whatever it is you are analyzing. By extension, if your pros and cons list is one-sided, you are basically admitting to yourself that you are an idiot and should’ve come to the obvious decision way before having to make a list. In the interest if brevity, I will list the two pros and cons I feel are the most prominent.

First the pros:

The teaching is a blast. There are some classes that suck, but they are completely outweighed by the classes that I love. I teach kids age 5—15. The kids I enjoy teaching the most are the youngest and the oldest in that age range. The oldest kids I have, my C12 class, are hilarious. Their English is strong enough that I can laugh and joke with them, and they can in turn make fun of each other in English. They are very curious about more advanced English, and are not shy to ask me questions about things they don’t understand, which I love. I have the most fun in that class because I don’t really have to stick to a curriculum and can instead simply talk with my students for two hours (in the context of the lesson, but still). The really young kids I love because they are just so damn cute. The are genuinely ecstatic to see me every time, mainly because I’m ideally suited for them to climb on between classes but also because seeing me means they get a break from their rigid, monotonous style of Chinese learning.

The food here is amazing. I could write an essay on it, but you would all get so jealous I think I’ll spare you the pain. Suffice it to say that I can buy 12 handmade dumplings for 50 cents, half a roast duck for 1 dollar, and amazing noodles or rice for 25 cents. McDonalds is the same price here, but that is fine for when I have a McDouble craving. Coming to China I thought that consumer products would be really cheap, but I was wrong. The real bargain in China is food, which is just fine with me.

Now the cons:

            The no.1 con is boredom. When I’m not teaching or eating, I’m basically doing nothing. Why? Well unlike in Cambodia, foreigners are not common here. At all. As a result, no one speaks any English. This makes it very hard to communicate with anyone, so exploring is kind of difficult because the chances of getting lost are very high. Even taxi drivers don’t speak any English, and the metro closes at 10. Also, the work schedule is such that I have Monday, Tuesday and Thursday off and am working the bulk of my hours Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There isn’t much in terms of nightlife outside of the weekend, and even then nightlife just isn’t a very Chinese thing to do. I haven’t even been able to sign up at the gym yet, because I don’t know how to ask the lady at the front desk to let me in for a tour or to give me a membership. It’s kind of annoying.

Con no.2 is overcrowding. I know it is a cliché about China, but holy shit is it true. Nowhere is this as apparent as on public transportation. If you are taking the metro or the bus, be ready to be squeezed between 5 people basically at all times. Since these are my only modes of transport, you can imagine how this gets old real fast. Also, courtesy seems to not have made it’s way over here to China. People don’t hold doors, leave seats for old women, and generally don’t give a shit that you’re standing there and have no qualms bumping into you without as much as a ‘sorry’. If you have personal space issues, you’re in the wrong place. Also, Chinese people are really loud when they are on their phones. Like fucking yelling. When there are about 100 of them within 10 feet of you all trying to top each other in the volume department, it gets rough on the ears.

All in all though I’m having a great time. Learning Chinese especially is an awesome challenge that, while frustrating, has the potential to really change my life going forward. Oops my dumplings are ready. Gotta go. Until next time. 

It has now been almost three weeks in China, and more importantly almost three weeks since my last blog post. Just when you thought you had finally gotten rid of me, I'm back. Well at least digitally. So you all must be wondering: What's China like? The answer is I have no idea. China is big (duh), and I really haven't had any time for sightseeing or traveling, which is kind of shitty (I will get to the pros and cons section soon, be patient). I can however tell you what a foreign teacher's life in Wuhan, China is like. You can draw your own conclusions about the rest of the country accordingly.

In case you didn't know, Wuhan is quite a large city. This being China, that means really really big. Wuhan  has almost 10 million inhabitants. And in typical Chinese fashion, it shows. There are people EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. I guess that's big city life. It does get kind of annoying though, especially when 2/3 of those people are staring at you at all times.

I feel like I have given the impression throughout my posts that everything here is all amazing all the time. While many many things have been amazing, this trip hasn't been without it's downs, and in that sense I think I have not given a full view of my experience in my previous posts, a mistake I intend to rectify. In the interest of short blog posts I will post a pros and cons post tomorrow sometime. Until then, content yourself with the fact that I am alive and blogging.

Going to China

            These last two weeks have been great. Teaching was more fulfilling than I expected, to be perfectly honest. The speed with which these kids picked things up was astounding, or at least relative to my expectations.  They were great kids, always in a good mood and really excited to learn English. They come from extreme poverty, yet talking to them you learn that they have lofty dreams, and their enthusiasm for English stems from the fact that they believe that English will help make those dreams come true. In that sense it was an honor to be entrusted with giving these children the tools needed to reach for their dreams.

           

I feel much more comfortable as a teacher now thanks to that two week trial period and I am now leaving for China. It feels odd, leaving this place. I can’t say it feels like home, but it certainly feels like a familiar place that could easily be a home, if that makes any sense. Phnom Penh has provided me so many memories in such a short period of time that I will always have a soft spot for this city. I’ve made some great friends here, many of whom are now scattered throughout Southeast Asia. I’ve learned a lot, not just about teaching but about people and about myself. For that I am truly thankful.

If you ever have the chance, visit Cambodia. I know it is often an afterthought when it comes to Southeast Asia, but it really is a place worth a detour. See Angkor Wat. Go party on Pub Street in Siem Reap. Visit Laughing Fatman for dinner in Phnom Penh, and then go hang out at Howie Bar after hours. Go to Sihanoukville and relax on the beach all day and have fresh fish grilled for you while you sit with your feet in the sand and a cold beer in your hand. Meet new friends, be they other visitors like you or locals. I did all of these things and more, and I can say I enjoyed every step I took here. Bye bye Cambodia, it’s been real. 

Show and Tell

Time to show pictures. Most of these come from the weekend of October 7th. Pictures from past that will be up at some point. Ok enjoy.


First night out in Phnom Penh. This is a fish massage (or pedicure, can't remember). The fish eat the dead skin off your feet. It tickles. A lot.

Still first night out. At Howie Bar. Awesome place. The little (well average by Cambodian standards) guy in the middle is Pithol, one of our drivers, who we convinced to come out with us. He sucked at pool. So we put money on a game against him. He then proceeded to completely destroy us one after another. Hustling 101. Jerk.

View from our hotel. As you can see, there is some serious poverty. Below is a tuk tuk, our most common form of transportation. Really fun, but sometimes nerve-wracking. Especially when you are dodging traffic or driving in the wrong lane of a busy road.

On the way to Siem Reap. There was some serious flooding, and at times even the road was under water. Oh and we saw water buffalo. I don't have pictures. Sorry.

Our group at temple no.1 (forgot the name). This one had a lot of Buddha faces, some smiling and some frowning. The second picture is me in deep thought at that same temple. We saw 4 temples in all, including the Tomb Raider Temple (where they filmed Tomb Raider) and Angkor Wat.

First picture is the Tomb Raider Temple (Yes, they really did film Tomb Raider there). Very cool tree. No statue of Angelina Jolie though. The picture below is of the Baphuon temple, which was never completed. Because of this, there were no restrictions regarding access, so we got to climb into the ruins Indiana Jones style. It was a lot of fun exploring all the nooks and crannies of this ancient structure.

Angkor Wat. One of the ancient wonders of the world (name the others?) and just ridiculous, in both size and beauty. The picture with the reflecting pool is really cool and just like all the postcards. Too bad about the scaffolding.

Crocodile dinner that night. One of those crocodile was fated to be our dinner. The second picture is of the bill (in case you don't believe me), and the third is of the prepared crocodile meat. They wouldn't let me wear the crocodile head as a helmet. No idea why.

Finally, eating Tarantula. Shit why not? Apparently you're not supposed to eat the butt. The rest tasted fine though, really not that bad.

That's all for now. Yeah yeah still too long. They're just pictures it's not like you have to read. Until next time. Hopefully I'll have pictures up from Sihanoukville. Also, in case you're wondering, I don't go to China for another two weeks. C u later. Go Caps.

A Cambodian Frosh Week

It has now been a week in Cambodia. You should go. Seriously. I have already started to fall in love with this place. It would be impossible for me to recount all the things that have happened to me in the past week without writing a couple of pages, so I will do my best to create a highlight reel spanning this and the next couple of entries. And it'll still too long. Whatever. Deal with it. 

Let me first say that all the people doing the training program with me are awesome. A lot of us are recent graduates, while some others have put their previous careers on hold to go on this adventure. Everyone it seems has a different background, but we all have a similar mindset with respect to moving to Asia, and because of that we have been able to build friendships amazingly quickly and easily. It feels a bit like Frosh Week 2007, and that is the highest compliment I can give. The teaching staff is as professional as it is nice, and the additional staff, comprised mainly of locals, is simply amazing. They do everything for us, and they do it with a smile on their face. I have quickly learned that language barriers are a minor detail when it comes to the human ability to connect.

Cambodia, at least the way it is now, is a very young country. It is still in a sort of recovery stage from the reign of the Khmer Rouge, and that becomes very clear when you see some of the poverty and the standards of living that exist throughout the city. You don’t see many old people, because during the Khmer Rouge era about a third of the population was killed. The recent history here is unbelievably sad. The most humbling part however is that the people here have found a way to put it behind them. Their positivity is contagious. It really makes you rethink how lucky most of us have been.

The energy (yes I said energy, don’t worry I haven’t turned into a hippie) here is amazing. Life moves at completely different pace than life back home. It seems chaotic, especially when driving through the city and witnessing a million motorcycles passing each other in bumper-to-bumper traffic, seemingly completely oblivious to any sort of traffic laws. I have frequently found myself driving on the wrong side of the road or simply cutting straight through moving traffic. But you learn quickly that there is a very distinct order, evidenced most clearly by the fact that there are literally no accidents.

One of the things I was most looking forward to before coming here was the food, and I have not been disappointed. I have eaten frog, goat, tarantula, and crocodile. Still haven’t been sick. I have eaten some amazing Pho, some ridiculously good spring rolls, and a plate of dumplings that simply has no peer stateside. But the best meal I’ve had happened when four of us asked one of our Cambodian drivers to take us to his favorite restaurant, because we wanted an authentic taste of Cambodia. What happened next was a feast featuring spring rolls, dumplings, and pork belly. But the piece de resistance was an entire Fish (couldn’t understand him when he explained what kind of fish, and the menu was not in English, unlike most things here) very simply wrapped in tinfoil and prepared on an open flame. Unbelievable. Oh and no meal has cost me more than 7 dollars. And beer is 75 cents a can. Shit, now I’m hungry.

I will post pictures soon (that I have poached from some others in the group), and I will also tell the story of our weekend trip to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat (one of the ancient wonders of the world), which was unbelievable. This post is already too long. Until next time.

Oh and the title change happened because I am pretty sure that I am by far the largest person in this country. 

That John Denver Song (The One Peter Paul and Mary Stole)

  And so, after the longest summer of all time, I am finally leaving. I was going to attempt some sort of poetic tribute to North America, but that seemed a bit pretentious. Besides, I think it is a fitting enough tribute that my three meals today were fried chicken, a cheeseburger, and another cheeseburger. Today at 1:25 PM I board my flight to Cambodia, with a stopover in Seoul. I didn't mention this in the introduction post, but in order to teach English in China, you actually first have to learn how to be a teacher. I thought my economics degree would be enough, but oh well. So I will be going to Cambodia to become a certified teacher. Yes, I could've added 'and 4 weeks in Cambodia' to the title of the blog, but that would've been stupid.
  I will be spending 4 weeks in Cambodia completing teacher training, and then I will make my way to the People's Republic. I will attempt to document all the interesting things that happen to me along the way, but if that results in too many posts, I will do my best to only tell the most interesting stories. I am excited to begin this journey, and I hope you are excited to read about it (not like 'woooooo' excited, but at least more than 'meh' excited). North America (and I say North America because Canada is such an important part of my life. Not Mexico though), it's been real. I love you, I'll miss you, and in the immortal words of Arnold, I'll be back.

P.S. If you don't get the title of this post, google John Denver. But don't listen to the song. It's terrible.

Introduction

   As some of you know, and some of you may not, I am leaving my dear North America in order to spend a year in China teaching English. I've been advised by many people to write a blog about my experience, and so here it is. Since I love to talk about myself, this shouldn't be too hard. I am however new to this, and have never kept a diary, so I anticipate the style, pace, and substance of this blog to evolve as I get more comfortable with this whole idea. Of course it is entirely possible that the Great Firewall of China will stymie my efforts to talk about myself, in which case you guys are all out of luck. But I think that by using proxies I should be able to continue this thing. 
   You guys probably have a couple of questions (or at least I hope you do) concerning my trip. Why am I doing this? Well it's definitely not for the money. I won't tell you what I'm making, but I can assure you that I will not have any savings at the end of this year. My motivation stems I think from the fact that I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Last year I was convinced I wanted to go to Law School, then I wanted to go straight to my MBA, then I wanted to work in the banking industry like seemingly everybody else with an Economics degree. I came to the realization that I am as indecisive as a child, and in order to decide the direction of my adult life, I first needed to become an adult. And the best way to grow up, to find out who you really are, is to leave your comfort zone completely and challenge yourself to the limit. It is for that reason that I decided to leave my culture, my family, and my friends. I am nervous and scared, but in one year my culture, friends, and family will all still be there, and hopefully I will return to them as an adult. 
   This post is very long winded, and I apologize for that, but this being the introduction, there were a lot of bases to cover. Don't worry, not every post will be an essay. Please leave comments, even if you do so only to pretend to have read my blog. My ego can never be too inflated.  I like quotes, so I will leave you with one by Plato: "For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories." (from The Phaedrus)