Hey all! Sorry for the long silence here, I've been waiting until after I taught my first class to make my next post. As it turns out with my schedule my first class was not until this previous Friday. Starting this late was unexpected but since it gave me another couple weeks of freedom I'm not complaining. I've been assigned to the College of Interpretation and Translation here at SISU, and I'll be teaching 2 sophomore classes and 4 freshmen classes. However, since all freshmen have to do one month of military training here in China I only have to teach my sophomore classes until October. So I taught both of my sophomore classes on Friday which was a lot of fun. Each class was 40 students and between both classes there were only 5 male students. I was very impressed with my students English and they seemed very excited to have a foreign teacher. I did have to field a whole slew of personal questions mostly dating in America. While I was pretty nervous about teaching I found that after 5 minutes in front of the room everything felt natural and easy. I spent most of the class doing intro activities but I'll be sure to share some of the more interesting topics that I end up covering with my class.
Since I didn't have to teach until this week I've been exploring the city and having a lot of fun. Last weekend Tim, our friend from school, who's been in China for 3 years came to visit us from Kunming. Tim also happens to play for Chongqing's semiprofessional American football team so we went with him to watch their game against Shanghai. Unfortunately we lost but it was really great to see some football. Tim also showed us a Korean barbecue restaurant not far from our apartment which has some of the best food I've had in Chongqing. It also happens to be incredibly cheap, about 40 RMB ($6) for all you can eat and all you can drink which is an insanely good deal. Mikhala, Scott, Justin and myself went there on Tuesday night this week and then decided to go out for a few drinks at a bar directly beneath this restaurant after dinner. To preempt these videos here are a few facts: Most people in China don't speak English, We speak little to Chinese and the Chinese we do know is mostly food based, Mikhala and Scott agreed to compete in some type of competition at this bar despite knowing none of the rules and being unable to communicate with anyone.
Since I didn't have to teach until this week I've been exploring the city and having a lot of fun. Last weekend Tim, our friend from school, who's been in China for 3 years came to visit us from Kunming. Tim also happens to play for Chongqing's semiprofessional American football team so we went with him to watch their game against Shanghai. Unfortunately we lost but it was really great to see some football. Tim also showed us a Korean barbecue restaurant not far from our apartment which has some of the best food I've had in Chongqing. It also happens to be incredibly cheap, about 40 RMB ($6) for all you can eat and all you can drink which is an insanely good deal. Mikhala, Scott, Justin and myself went there on Tuesday night this week and then decided to go out for a few drinks at a bar directly beneath this restaurant after dinner. To preempt these videos here are a few facts: Most people in China don't speak English, We speak little to Chinese and the Chinese we do know is mostly food based, Mikhala and Scott agreed to compete in some type of competition at this bar despite knowing none of the rules and being unable to communicate with anyone.
According to Scott, as far as he could tell the goal of the game was for him to jump slowly towards Mikhala and attempt to land a straw into a bottle she was holding from as far away as possible. I apologize for my poor description of this game but hopefully that helps you all understand how confused we were at the game. The next two videos show the outcome of the competition. Also worth mentioning is that Mikhala proudly announced into the microphone that their team name was "Team Meigoren" or Team Americans. Enjoy the videos and I hope these help display to you all how complicated even everyday activities can be with our language barrier.
While we have tried a lot of new things in the past few weeks there really isn't too much more to write about yet but expect another blog post in about 10 days as there is some exciting stuff on the horizon. Our first vacation is coming up on October 1st and we will have a week off of school. Justin, Scott, and myself are all taking an 18 hour train ride south to go stay with Tim in Kunming. There are tons of really cool places down in Kunming so expect some cool pictures and stories. Also the three of us will start playing rugby for the Chongqing Conquerors this week (despite never playing before) and traveling with the team so I hope to have some real good stories for you all soon. Once again thank you to everyone who has contacted me since my arrival here I really appreciate hearing from you all. Sorry for the long gap in between posts and hopefully there won't be anymore gaps in the future. Missing you all and wishing you the best,
-Adam
-Adam