A Plan of Action

So the last three days have been incredibly busy for me here. On Monday, the mid-Autumn festival, I went to the small park across the street. After hiking up a rather large hill, I ended up at a shrine of Guan-yin (the Goddess of Mercy). When I came back down the mountain, tired and sweating like a stuck pig, I met the other two American teachers working here in Yizhou (宜洲). Though not the best of all possible meetings, it was nice to get to know them. For the mid-autumn festival itself, we (one of my fellow English teachers) went to the home of one of his (fellow Chinese teacher's) Chinese friends. After eating a delicious meal, we were supposed to watch a live singing competition for the rest of the night. However Guangxi TV zeroed in on us, and took us to a small town just outside of the city to have us observe and interact with the community there. I have never had so many camera flashes go off on me in my life, and my father is a photographer.

Yesterday, I was asked to speak for forty-five minutes to a group of English majors. It was my first time, besides acting, being in front of what I consider a large group (66 students). While I feel I could have prepared a little bit better for my presentation, I found one part of orientation to be completely accurate, it was very difficult to get these students to talk. Despite the fact that it was an English language class, I found myself slipping into Chinese from time to time, mostly to give place names or short descriptions. I now have at least some vision of what my own courses are going to be like, but I still have to prepare for those.

So what happened earlier today that made it so big? I got my schedule. That's right, I know when and where I will be teaching. I have courses all five days of the week, but with the exception of Monday, I have no afternoon classes. So I am thankful for that small thing. Issue is, just over half of the eight courses I am going to be teaching are the better part of a fifteen minute walk, and on Monday and Wednesday I have classes in one location followed by classes on a different campus of the same university. Talk about getting your exercise in. I will see either later today or tomorrow about the possibility of renting a bicycle. Hopefully, it will cut down some of my travel time.

Until later.

From Nanning to Yizhou

Well here I am in Yizhou and I was wrong about the size of the population. The city, still small for Chinese standards, is over half a million people. It's approximately 600,000, maybe more. So while not Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, or any of the other mega cities, it is fairly large by American standards. In fact, Yizhou may be more densely populated than the city of Boston (not including it's urban area). However I would not put any money on a bet.

Before leaving Nanning, I had the chance to go to a night market, focused on selling street food. I got some good pictures, but didn't eat anything, mostly because I was still full from having eaten dinner at most an hour before we went to the market. The night before departure ended up with karaoke at Chinese Central Television CCTV, and I may have ended up singing one of the few songs I can sing in Chinese... I'm not proud of myself.

There are approximately 212 kilometers (what that translates to in miles I am not quite sure) between Yizhou and Nanning. As we got closer and closer to Yizhou, more and more the landscape began to resemble a type of valley. Suddenly, out of the lush ground came teeth of stone covered in small scrub. Yizhou is called by locals the small Guilin, which is famous for its sudden mountains. I am lucky to be in such a picturesque place.

So my apartment? It's on the seventh floor, and this building has no elevator. Say hello to awesome legs everyone! At least I hope to have awesome legs by the time I finish in China. As my classes won't start until a little later in this month, I am going to take time to walk around and get to know my new city. Hopefully, I will be settling in soon. Right now, I still have a few things to unpack.

All the best!