Life going on

So my school took me and 20 teachers to escort about 300 children to a theme park on thursday...all out insanity. although the kids really enjoyed themselves. It was pretty insane though, i can't imagine doing that in the states...too many kids running rampant and possible lawsuits. It was great to get to know more teachers around the school though. Rode a bunch of rollercoasters with them to prove I wasn't scared...and they all grabbed on to me for safety...psh, act like they're so tough...

It was intersting getting to spend some time with teachers outside of school though...learned some are buddhist and pretty much none are from Shenzhen. They all come from all over China and have pretty cool stories. One teacher spent a year in England and thus "knows how to drink like wetserners" according to her. And the PE teachers, I have found, can really keep up with our American drinking styles...haha. At least better than most of the lightweight Chinese.

I have befriended a bunch of people that work on the island by my apartment now. They all work at a bar that I frequent, but they say they don't like it when I drink there because they think it's too expensive and feel they must treat me to beer, not let me pay...so, we often go to the beach and hang out, go climbing together before they have work. It's a little tough with such different schedules but it's pretty entertaining...most of them have promised ot take me back to their hometowns with them too which is exciting...meet their families and all...

anyway, that's most the update for now...more to come...

Nice break

So the bro in law came to china this week doing some business. It was nice to see some family and get out of town for a bit. He showed me aroudn to some pretty cool stuff in Hong Kong, so I think I am finally warming up to that city. Went to a pretty cool rooftop bar there, overlooking downtown HK which was pretty badass. Got to catch up a little on events back home too which was nice.

Other than that this weekend was pretty uneventful. I made some new chinese friends that are really nice and fun. They work at a bar next to my place, but we go to the beach and hang out sometimes during the day when they're not working. They speak pretty good english I think for being waiters...they want me to teach them and ask me for translations all the time. They're from all over which is kind of cool too, one from sichuan who is going to teach me the sichuan dialect which will be awesome (in exchange for english) (oh and he's a migrator of 16 years old...crazy. he looks older though. the rest of them are my age...but i can't imagine leaving home at 16 and not knowing when you're going back...)

Other than that things are as usual. Going out as usual, having my chinese mafia friends taking me places and getting me free stuff...you know, the average life...haha. oh, apparently there is a volleyball tournament coming up that me and ben are expected to take part in...so that shoudl be interesting/fun. can small chinese people spike the ball? we shall see...

More School

So I think the whole “new kid” at school thing is about over...I'm mostly adjusted to the school and everyone knows me. I guess this is routine...

Anyway, guess the most recent interesting news is that one of my students tried to hit me actually...and also said some profanities...I guess I did hit him on the head first for acting out, but still, i don't think this warrants a kid trying ot get back at a teacher. Anyway, we had some words after that, and the class was not so happy for hte rest of the class, but of course the way kids are, the hard times were over by the end of the day and htese kids were back to following me around and coming to my office to play...

Met some more Mexicans and Colombians here last night at a friends dinner party too. they had some kids running around the restaurant who I played with for a little bit while we were at this brazilian place. I think they follow me to China because I meet more spanish speakers here than any americans...

Other than that, things are going swimmingly...I enjoy classes, am learning a good amount of Chinese, and have made a few friends, but have started to miss some of the smaller things back home finally. God I want a thundercloud sub...

of course...

i'm surrounded by the most random people/events...i think i'm destined to be south american or something...i met colombians today walking, so we had a chat and hung out for a bit, talking shit about chinese and such...but just so random that i'm in the smallest town of shenzhen and there are 2 colombians by my school...kind of fun to not have to think about translating and stuff though, good to just talk to someone since my english has gone to the wayside...my vocabulary is shot since all i teach is "this is a cow, this is a pig" sort of stuff...

other than that, school has been pretty interesting...we just celebrated halloween here. we had a big festival with mummy wrapping, bobbing for apples, and such with face painting which is what i did...of course, with my 12 year old maturity level i ended up in a paint fight with all my kids...destroying the school in the process and taking out a few teachers (they're not my biggest fans at the moment...)

anyway, my new costume for tomorrow will be a chinese student...wearing their uniforms and all, so i'm pretty excited...hopefully the bars won't think i'm too young to get in... :)

during economic recession, I...

Gangsters wearing some visors in war ma...all the workers in the streets wear these, they're badA


Ben being attacked by our daily riot of midgets...


My advertising foreign teaching pose...


My favorite kid...he's the funniest kid I have ever met who doesn't speak english. he wanted to "gangsta pose" instead of smiling so he made me take the picture with him...


Playdough face...my favorite class


The daily eye exercises....too much reading means they have to play with their heads and massage their faces...it's kind of cute really

Still enjoying the teaching and liking some of the kids more every day and disliking others just as much. It's been a trip though. I have been teaching pretty consistently since philippines and now am pretty exhausted, but i trek on. haha. i actually do the normal 8-5 hours here...well almost...2 hour break for lunch and i'm done around 4ish 3 days a week, but it's pretty long anyway, plus teh lesson planning

I've been watching hte market crash slowly from over here...it's kind of crazy. Mostly sad because I watch my money slowly shrink away as I wish I had just hid it under my bed like old people do instead of trying to invest...who knows if we will ever really come back from this. Asia is pretty affected as well, but investments aren't as big of a deal here, no one really makes money of the markets on the mainland, that's more Hong Kong style...the westernized parts.

As for the rest of my life here, I have befriended some gang members (that I didn't know were mobsters originally, promise). We go out pretty often, and its' fun bc they don't speak any english so i like the challenge of getting my ideas across...so i've started discussing politics and stuff with some chinese people, which is cool that i now am able to do that...i also have them teaching me cantonese, bc it sounds cooler than mandarin...

The main guy A Fo 啊佛 is pretty gangster...he pays for everything and for some odd reason has taken a real liking to me especially...i suppose I was the one who introduced him to the rest of some foreign teachers, but still...

so that's my life in the past 12 days mostly...class here, class there, english here, chinese there. there is a lot of routine ot growing up though which has begun to bore me horribly...in need of some more travels soon...pay day is soon, which is good news

philippines baby

A not very comforting sign painted on our boat as we headed into a typhoon to get to another island and away from manila...
braving the choppy waters to get to white beach...we're so brave, i know
hiking to a waterfall where we proceeded to swim and have fun...good day
drunkenly riding back on the back of motorcycles bc that's how the locals do...it was awesome.

Fire twirler guy for the last night...this was pretty badass




beautiful sunset to end the trip...taken from the airport...at least the philippines can boast nice sunsets, no?

Ma ni la!

So just to start out, I'm going to tell y'all that Manila is probably the craziest place on earth. It really is the sin city of the world...there are no rules and everyone does as they please. The area of Manila that we first saw had nothing but pimps and prostitutes...like Vegas x100. haha. Other than that, we saw some pretty cool stuff though, such as the hobbit house that legitimately had little people to serve your drinks to you...so moral...



The other thing that I loved about this city were these things called jeepmeys. They looked like the old Jeeps made in the old days but extended so that they could act like a bus...there were 1000s all over the roads and all individually painted so that they had their own personalities...I think they were also the driver's personal car as well as the public transport. haha. Some of them had awesome stereos and stuff too so that you would party on the bus on your way somewhere. They also had these extreme pedicabs that were with motorcycles instead of bikes...those were pretty awesome as well. I've got to admit, other countries have such cooler ways of getting around than the USA.
Here's the roomy with who turned out to be a prostitute....like i said, everyone was a prostitute...even though she was cool and just told us about manila and philippines/what to do around there...she also did believe though that i was from the philppines, ben was from spain, and my asian friend phong was from norway...
We boarded a random boat because all the ferries were cancelled due to the typhoon in the philippines at the time....this is what was printed on our boat....it probably wasn't our most intelligent decision to take a boat into a typhoon, but isn't the water the safest place during one?