Better Late than Never!!

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the long delay between posts but the internet is blocked here (including blogspot, facebook, and twitter). You can try proxies, but they are hit or miss.

Starting on the 5th, we've been training, teaching, and taking Chinese classes from 8:30 until 4 everyday, with 11:30-1 off for lunch. There are 6 periods per day... my schedule is: 1. training, 2. teaching, 3. lesson planning (basically a free period), lunch, 4&5. Chinese, and 6. lecture about teaching. Dan's schedule is the same except that periods 2 and 3 are switched. Dan and I teach the same group of students. They are between 14 and 16 years old, and even though they are considered "juniors" (which is the same as middle school in America), they are very advanced. These students take English classes all day long, for all 6 periods of the day... it's basically a 2 week intensive English camp taught by CTLCers. (CTLC is the name of the program we are doing). We teach on whatever topics we want... we've done food, movies, museums, the beach, weather, holidays, stranded island, pirates, aliens, etc. The point is just to get them to speak in English, expand their vocabulary, and to teach them about US culture. Since we've made so many lesson plans, transitioning to teaching in Shenzhen will be much easier. Sometimes we have meetings from 4-5 or 6pm, so the days can get long. Lately it's been getting easier, just between the training winding down and the teaching and lesson planning getting easier.

The people on our program are awesome-- a very eclectic mix. Right now, Dan and I are hanging out with Maury and Greg, trying to decide what to do for dinner tonight. They went to Wake Forest and they rock. We've met a lot of people, and since there are about 90 CTLCers, it seems like we meet a new person everyday. Moving to Shenzhen is going to be a big change, since we are all together now, and in Shenzhen, we will all be spread around a HUGE city. Some parts can be 1.5 hours or more away from each other. We won't find out where we will be placed or what age group we are teaching until Aug 22nd.

Since we are busy until about 4:30 everyday (including the weekends), we haven't seen much of Beijing. They did give us a day off to see the Great Wall and Summer Palace. The Great Wall was beautiful, and we really lucked out with the weather. It was actually clear (no visible pollution) and blue, and there was even a small breeze. The part of the wall we went to was called Mutianyu. We had to climb up what felt like a million stairs just to get to the wall, and of course, once we were on it, there were more stairs to climb. We took lots of pictures and videos and will hopefully post them soon. In order to get down from the wall, we took a metal luge. The luge was fun-- one person per luge, and you controlled your own brake/speed. Unfortunately, the people in front of us kept stopping, but nevertheless, it was still really fun- kind of like a water slide without the water.

Afterwards, all of the CTLCers ate lunch together (typical Chinese food served family style). A bunch of us headed to the Summer Palace where we saw a boat made out of marble.

Speaking of food, there are some days when we spend 3 kuai (slang for renminbi) on breakfast (about 50 cents), 5 kuai for lunch (about 75 cents), and 10-15 kuai on dinner (about 1.5-2.25 dollars), and maybe another 6-8 kuai on water (about a dollar). That adds up to about $4.50. Of course, we did splurge on a few meals, like Mexican last night. One can only live on rice and noodles for so many meals in a row!!

The night before we went to the Great Wall, everyone went out since we didn't have to teach the following day. We went to a beer garden (which are surprisingly plentiful in Beijing) and to a club called Vics. Vics was your typical Chinese club-- huge, tons of flashy lights, and many different rooms. Even though it was a Monday night, it was still pretty crowded, but the drinks were buy 1, get 1 free!!

We leave for Shenzhen on the 18th, after we visit Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. Then around 8pm, we will be boarding a 24-30 hour train to Shenzhen!

Daniel and I are using our Chinese... unlike last summer, we are some of the better Chinese speakers here, so we talk to the waitresses and cab drivers. It's fun to be able to communicate with people here and it makes things much easier!

We will try to update more frequently, so we can avoid these long posts. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but Daniel can add his 2 cents later!

Much love from Beijing! We miss you all!

Zoie and Daniel