Shanghai Times

Amara here.....
So the last few weeks here have been eventful (in a good way). I experienced my first Teacher's Day. They make a really big deal of it here in China. Since I had only been teaching at Kid Castle for a little over a week, I didn't expect anything, but I did receive one gift from a student.

It's a Fuya. They're the mascots of the Olympics. While the teachers in China may not be paid all that well, they are greatly respected.

Here's some pictures from my day in Suzhou.

Here's me with some of the girls I work with at Kid Castle.

Here's me with one of my closest friends here, Iris.

Things have been going much better for me in terms of getting the paperwork I need in order to work here legally. Although the previous school I worked at, Shane, continues to refuse to give me the results of the health exam I had to take in order to work here, I have managed to get another copy from the hospital. Ten dollars later and I'm good to go. When Erik and I go to South Korea, I will go to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul and apply for my work permit. Once I have my work permit, I can apply for my residence permit. With that I can stop reapplying for visas all the time and I'll also be able to move freely in and out of China. So, needless to say, I am very happy right now. Things are beginning to work out.

So today is Mid Autumn Festival. It's the celebration of the full moon that occured tonight. During Mid Autumn Festival, it's traditional to spend time with family and eat mooncakes. We spent the day at the zoo. Yes, we finally made it to the Shanghai Wild Animal Park. Erik has been waiting to go there since we got here. It was fun. Much like last year. We rode the bus through the lion and tiger pit and fed the lemurs. At night, we visited one of our friends who lives near Fudan University. Fudan is like the Harvard of China. Our friend Benjamin is busy studying in hopes of being accepted there this winter. The campus is beautiful so it was a nice night.

So things have been going well. I have a three day work week, and then Erik and I are off to Korea! We excited for our first trip out of China.

Today was a fun day out. Erik and I finally went to the Shanghai Aquarium which Erik has been looking forward to seeing since we got here. It was fun. They had a Deadly Aquatic Animals exhibit which showed some of the most dangerous sea animals. Some of the fishes were huge! We loved seeing the sharks and of course, the penguins!

This is a picture of a man feeding the fish. He seemed totally unconcerned about the sharks swimming around him!

After the Aquarium, we went to our first FIFA game. It's women's soccer and it's pretty popular. The USA played Nigeria, so there were many Americans watching the game. It was a fun experience.

The stadium where the game was played

USA VS. Nigeria. USA won 1-0.

So things have been a little crazy here for the last few weeks. Changing jobs was much more difficult then I imagined. My boss at Shane (the job I left) has refused to hand over some important papers that my new job needs in order for me to legally work there. I've been told it is illegal for my boss at Shane to not give me these papers, but he apparently does not care. We joke that he must be some kind of mental case because he is acting highly irrational and although he has a right to be angry at my leaving, refusing to give me my documents, especially when I gave him notice before quitting, is a little extreme. We've definitely been having a little bit of a rough start here in China! But we're learning as we go along. Fortunately, I was paid for my last month of work. I was concerned that he would try to not pay me, but he did. So the worst thing that could happen now is that I would have to retake my health exam (which is unhealthy to redo so soon and would cost me nearly 100 USD, but whatever I guess). I took one before, but he won't give me my results, so I'll probably have to get another one. So frustrating!

On the positive side, I'm enjoying my job at Kid Castle very much. I love the people I work with and I've made some good friends. The kids are a challenge to teach, but I feel I'm adjusting. Thankfully, there are some wonderful people there who are helping me work out this mess with my previous job and have even helped Erik and me with our apartment issues.

Like Erik said, we’ve decided to hold off on getting a new apartment for now. Although we would like to get a nicer place, this one is extremely cheap and we're able to save a lot of money. Mostly, neither of us wants to deal with any more stress or making new adjustments.

Though, we've been busy, we've still managed to have some fun. On Monday, I went to Suzhou, a city about an hour away from Shanghai, with the staff at Kid Castle. They treated us to it because the school met the recruitment goal for this year. Since I've only just started work there, I was not really apart of it, but got to go anyway. It was a very fun day. Suzhou is a beautiful city that is called "the Venice of Shanghai" because of the many rivers that flow through it. There are many beautiful gardens there. We toured one of them and also went to the Suzhou Museum which I found to be a little boring, but I enjoyed feeding the fish in the pond. They were so huge! And they would jump out of the water and fight for the cookies. We also did a little shopping, of course which was also enjoyable.

Today we hung out with one of our friends from the U.S. who's here for a little while. Always good to do that. And to get an American breakfast of pancakes and a chocolate shake. (I guess a chocolate shake isn't really breakfast, but it’s so hard to find good ones here!)

Erik and I are looking forward to our trip to South Korea next month. We'll be staying there for 8 days and hopefully will be doing a little traveling around the country. Erik is looking forward to seeing one of his friends who has been teaching English there for the past year. Should be fun!

Not too much else going on, hopefully I'll get all my stuff sorted out soon.

Amara and I have decided to stay in our apartment and instead use the money we saved to add to our Korea trip budget. Our first step in our preparation was a trip to the foreign bookstore to buy "Lonely Planet" Korea. We plan on spending a few Days in Seoul. Then we want to tour the Demilitarized Zone on the border of North and South Korea. We'd also like to spend a few days hiking volcanos and resting on the beaches of Jeju island, an island south of the country. Mostly, we are looking foward to seeing our friend Ryan, who has been teaching in Korea for a little over a year.

Classes started the other day. The teachers communicate with us in only Chinese, but they are able to get us to understand with non-verbal communication (hand gestures, facial expressions, etc). We also have a textbook that we follow along with during each lesson with English translations. The only thing that I don't like is that I was placed in the beginner level class due to the fact that my Chinese reading skills are limited. So I'm going to request to be placed in a more challenging class.

The weather here has been cool, the best weather I've seen in Shanghai.

On the downside, we've been having trouble with our landlord getting out of our lease agreement. We stand to lose around 400 USD if we leave.

To make matters worse, I broke Amara's camera today. I feel terrible.

Today I went to my orientation for my classes. It felt like freshman year again. I got my student ID, took my placement exam, and met a lot of interesting people from all over the world. It will be interesting to see how these classes are taught, being that everybody speaks different languages.

I included some pictures from our friend Michael's birthday. We were the only foreigners there, which is good. Those experiences really help us better understand both the language and the culture.