Beijing was incredible! Words can't even describe.
People here really do spit everywhere. They also pick their noses. No shame here... none.
They also stare at us, all the time. White people really stick out. We even had people ask to take pictures with us. That mostly just happened in Beijing though, not so much here in Guiyang.
Babies here don't wear diapers. They just have slits in the bottoms of their panties and go when they go. Kids pee in the streets. Again, no shame.
But really quick I just wanted to fill you in about my city, Guiyang. Foreign teachers really are treated like gold here. We had three people pick us up at the airport with a sign that read, "Jean Forham and Ann Muller" (our middle names, and both were misspelled). One to drive, one to interpret/translate and one to help carry bags.
We drove all the way to our apartment building and found out that we're teaching at a private boarding school, full of well-to-do kids and also ones from the poor families who are the smartest ones who took piles of tests... five year olds who had to take tests to get in!
We live on the 9th floor of a high rise apartment complex and we not only have a Western toilet, but two balconies and a washing machine! (Um, no dryer, of course, and also no oven, A/C, or heating, but still!)
It's an extremely prestigious school, and I'm very excited and extremely nervous to begin.
Tomorrow morning we have a meeting with both Headmasters and the other English teachers. They are "interested in our ideas for American ways of getting the students to retain information." Yeah... no pressure... I said repetition, but apparently they want more than that.
Well, more later. We don't have unlimited reliable internet yet, and even if we did, we don't have a lot of time for social networking.
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