May Day

4/30/14

I was required to put down a two month deposit on my apartment, which, by the way, was not three months because my school talked them down.  The school loaned me money to pay it, and this month I pay it back out of my salary.  It’s all very nice, but it makes the second month in a row that I will be short of money.  It’s an interesting situation, because the cost of working here is so high up front.  But I guess that’s the way it is.

Actually, people that work for the public schools just get their housing provided for them and they don’t have to go through this process.

5/1/14

Today is International Labor Day, and May Day, and we have the day off work.   I walked to a nearby section of town called Thames Town, that is modeled after a village in England.  It was an interesting experience.  It actually has apartments and residential sections, but the village shops and everything are a tourist attraction.  It is interesting seeing the English style buildings combined with the Chinese people, food and customs.  I took a lot of pictures.  I took one of the British red phone box, with Chinese Telecom written on it, and thought of my daughter, who is a Dr. Who fan.

It is common for Chinese people to take sort of dress up and posed photos, so there are a lot of “brides and grooms” posing on the grounds of the church and hotel.  But I know this is not their wedding day, just a photo opportunity.  One photo has four couples posing in it.

The weather is getting warmer.  Today was 27 degrees C.  It was still pretty comfortable walking around, but I know the hot weather is coming next month.

5/5/14

In one of my classes I had two young women who were university students.  The practice exercise was for them to interview each other and make a “presentation” style speech, where they introduced the other one.  Their homework exercise had been to write about an achievement from their own life that they were proud of.  One young woman had studied hard to get a first prize in a math contest in high school.  Then she explained that she was studying Business English at the University and would not have to take any math classes in college.  In fact, she said, she didn’t like math and wasn’t good at it, but she had wanted to make her parents proud, so she had worked hard at the math contest.   The other young woman was studying financial management.  They were both from cities in the interior of the country, but they were in Shanghai to go to University.

It is times like that in class that make me realize that I have “the best of the best” young people in my classes.  They are smart and ambitious, and they work hard at what they want to accomplish.  They study English as an extra-curricular activity because it will help them achieve their goals.