My sincerest apologies for the lack of blog posts during this time, I know you are all anxious and excited to hear about my travel adventures. As some of you may already be aware, the government blocks some websites here in China, and unfortunately my blog was one of them! It has only been since this past week or so that I have finally been able to get a solid Internet connection, and my VPN working, but as of now and through the end of training, we should be good! After that, I will have to keep you all posted, as I am not sure what the situation at my site will be. That being said...
We had staging in LA on June 29, where the China 18s met for the first time, and we enjoyed many great sessions to prepare us for our travels. 74 Americans about to depart on our great adventure to China. We then boarded our planes and headed first to Tokyo, and then to Bangkok (15 hours). We spent the night at a hotel in Bangkok, eating dinner at a local food stall, where we realized...none of us speak Thai. It was exciting and scary, but we managed to get a great meal out of it (thankfully!). The next morning, we boarded our flight to Chengdu (5 hours). When we arrived, we had some training sessions and immunizations. For the first week in Chengdu, we stayed at a hotel at Sichuan University. At the end of the week, we met our host families and moved in with them. At first, I was a bit apprehensive about living with a host family, because it was a new experience, but my family is great! They are very mellow; My host mom is a university teacher, my host dad is an engineer, and I have a 9 year old sister who plays piano and like to draw, and is very good! Our house is pretty quiet, and of course, I am too at this point because I don't know how to say anything in Chinese! It took a few days to settle in and begin to feel comfortable. We have had language and TEFL training the past two weeks at Sichuan Normal University. Our days are jam packed, and we are all very tired, but it is very rewarding. (And I can finally order food at restaurants, hooray!) I am starting to be able to understand words here and there out on the street, and am able to engage in some small talk, which is great. I am studying VERY hard. In the coming 2 weeks, we will be teaching "model school", which I am really looking forward to. We have a class of about 12-15 high school students (16 year olds) to practice our teaching and get feedback from the PC staff and other volunteers. I am team teaching with my neighbor Katie, who is fast becoming a great friend and confidant. I have yet to go anywhere besides home and school (and back to Sichuan University on Fridays for our whole group training sessions), but I am thankful that I have been able to have alot of time to study, reflect and relax. Many of our training group members have gone many places, but they are also complaining that they don't have time to study. And learning Mandarin requires ALOT OF STUDYING!
I live on the 12th floor of our building, which has 24 floors total, and next to a loud busy road. The "city living" so far has been the biggest adjustment (well, I guess not being able to communicate is pretty challenging too). But I am doing well adjusting to my new surroundings. It is pretty hot and humid most of the time, but it has also been cooler some days when it has rained. Last night we had a pretty big storm, which knocked down some trees in our complex. There was some cool lightening and thunder. It was VERY windy. Several of our other trainees came over to visit Katie and I, and we played a new card game we learned in language class downstairs at the corner market, which we have now officially named "Our favorite bar". Katie and I go down there to study our language and write our lesson plans over yi ping pijiu (beer).
Overall, the experience so far has been great, albeit challenging. There is still much more to come. After our 2 weeks of model school, we will learn about our site placements. August 9. Can't wait! Then after that we get to go and visit our sites. Hooray! I will defiantly get some pictures of that. :) For now (since I have to summarize three weeks into one blog) I will leave it at that, but there will be much more to come...especially since I've figured out the internet thing finally! If you have Skype and are not connected, please add me. Or Google+, or you can text me at my cell number (goes to Google voice), or Facebook. China...I am so lucky to have all of these resources so readily available! Keep in touch, and I look forward to sharing more adventures!
Peace.
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