Merry Christmas!!!!

I had a wonderful Christmas with a group of expats and Chinese at a pot luck. We ate and then learned some Scottish dances. The pot luck was a array of food. I took some mini sandwiches. There were mash potatoes, broiled chicken and duck, brochette, spring rolls, rice with spicy stir fry chicken, banana bread, and a Christmas cake. I asked about the cake and in China, people buy Christmas Cakes which i would think would be logical if they were celebrating Jesus' birthday, but as you know, most are not Christians. There was also going to be a white elephant gift exchange, but only two people brought gifts. So that just left more time for Scottish dancing.
So in America, families and friends exchange gifts and you get lots of presents. Well, here people have a wide assortment of wrapping plastic in which they put an APPLE. So i got apples for Christmas. Everyone exchanges apples. The story is that apple (Pinguo) sounds like Christmas in chinese. That is the story. It is something that has recently come about.
I met a nice couple from the fellowship who are going to be apart of the character club team.
So another way i can tell i am getting used to the altitude. I live on the 7th floor. And when i first arrived here. I would be winded when i got to about the 4th floor. Well, now i can make it all the way up to the 6th floor before i get winded.

Final Adjustments and more

So I have officially adjusted to the altitude. For those of you who don’t know Kunming is at about 6500 feet above sea level. I did not really notice it when I first got here except for one instance. So when I first got here, I went down below and got some dumplings on my way to my soccer game. So I was walking along and started eating them…..Well, after a while, I was out of breath. I guess the walking and eating was out of the question and I stuck to that philosophy. Well, yesterday, I decided to try eating and walking at the same time because I was in a little bit of a hurry. And guess what, I did become out of breath. This is how I know that I have adjusted to the altitude.
So I have moved all of my stuff into my new room (pics below). I live with a couple (Australian guy and Chinese girl) and then there is a spare bedroom upstairs in which we are looking for another roommate.
So I got my first rash the other day. The vehicle that we used to move my stuff had something in it that I must have been allergic to. Well, the vehicle went up into the mountains to go to plantation. I think that what ever they went to see is what I must be allergic to. I have been spend lots of time showering and washing all my clothes to try and get whatever it is out of my life.
Christmas: I am attending a pot luck with a bunch of expats on Christmas night which will be Christmas morning in the US. It should be a good time.

New Place

Update

Classes are going really well. I was reviewed by a colleague to see how I was doing. She said I was doing very well, and the kids really enjoy me. Which is good for the English classes and very good for the character education clubs. The more the kids like me the more of a chance they will join. We are currently moving right along with the curriculum. Right now, we are trying to find Chinese related stories of people who show the characteristic. We have activities and lessons. It is starting to get really exciting. We have not set an official date on when we are going to start though because we want to be fully prepared like finishing the curriculum and find individuals who share in the vision and have the talents to work with children.
I am MOVING!!!! Our lease was going to be up at the end of December, and I was kind of glad because one of my roommates moved out and sold the washing machine a couple of weeks ago. And then we lost our frig this week. Apparently, those items were no apart of the apartment (apart, apart, apart). So I am happily moving to a place that is fully furnished. My personal room is about three quarters of my current room, but the rest of the apartment is worth it. We have a rooftop which is surprisingly spacious…A great place for a grill an’ chill when it warms up. It has a full kitchen so I can start cooking at home instead of eating just chips and sandwich or noodles at home. (I have been eating out for most dinners so don’t confuse this with me just eating sandwiches and “Ramen” noodles)
So my entire sleeping outfit changed. Did you know the weather changes overnight here? It was in the high 60s last week and now it is rainy, cloudy and cold…the 3 c’s of winter. Well, back to the sleeping outfit. All the buildings are made out of concrete here, so if there is no sun to warm the concrete, then the entire building is cold. Also because all the walls are made out of concrete, there are no vents. No vents…no central heating….Now, you can buy electric space heaters everywhere, but they only warm like a 4-5 ft radius. Back to the concrete, when there is no sun….it is 5 degrees warmer outside than inside. Back to sleeping, I have a comforter and sheet, but I still need to wear my long underwear, sweat shirt, socks, and PJ’s just to stay warm through the night. On the plus side, when the sun is out, it is 15-20 degrees warm outside. I try not to stay in the house anyway especially when it is cold.
Also, outdoor soccer in the winter is awful. IT WAS SSSSSOOOO COLD DURING THE GAME….but I scored so it was KIND of worth it.

Moving

So this past week, I have been frantically looking for a new place to live because my current situation was not going well. So, when i moved in, i thought it was going to be a fully furnished apartment. Well, there was a bed and desk for me and a washing machine and frig for the house. And that was it. Well, one of my roommates moved out a couple of weeks ago and sold the washing machine. Apparently, he owned the washing machine. So i have been without a washing machine for about three weeks now. So i was a little peeved about having to wash my clothes by hand except for my soccer clothes. See kunming has an abundance for floral so with my athletic wear, i just hang it up outside for a day or two and let the smell from the floral of the city and the sun do the work. That way i dont have to hand wash those clothes. It actaully works, kind of. But i only wear those clothes during basketball soccer or running. So it is not like i need to smell delightful anyway. Well then, late last week, i get a text from a previous renter who tells me that he is moving the frig out of the apartment this week. See, i can wash clothes by hand, but i cant keep food cold by hand and it has been in the 60s here so i cant even keep my food outside to keep it cold. Before i knew all of this, i was going to wait until we were required to move out in the middle of Jan. But no worries, last night i found a place. It has everything. Bed, washing machine, frig...and that i all i pretty much need. I am moving in there next week. And dont worry...i cant still fit everything in my two suitcases.

So i have a new teaching schedule that started in December. I went from teaching five classes to nine classes and still the two hours a week at the Korean School. So i teach every day expect for Tuesday. One of my new classes has 24 students in it.

Rules to Live by.......in China

1. Try to keep you eyes in front of you
       -spitting is a real problem here. Almost every one spits, but instead of spitting in like the grass or dirt area around a sidewalk tree. The people spit right on the pavement. So if you turn around and walk backwards or are talking to someone with your head turned....then you might step in a nice "pile" of spit.
2. Watch out for babies and puddles
       -So there are no such things as diapers here (for babies and adults). What the chinese do is they cut a slit where the crouch is on the baby and you know babies. They just go whenever. I was walking along the other day and there was a baby just walking and pissing. Which brings me to the puddles. Most of the time the parent will make the baby go. They have their way. But usually they go anywhere. Which is why you never step in any kind of liquid. You see what might look like water but it is is baby pee.
3. Fearless in crossing the street
      -At major intersections there are crosswalks in which people follow the signals, but in most areas in town you just have to jaywalk. Pedestrians do have the right of way if you are fast enough. Cars will not stop if they see you are trying to cross the street. You just have to find a gap between cars and go. Most of the time cars will swerve around, but you just have to trust that you will not get hit. Also, if you are walking along and here someone honk at you, it is just because they want to let you know that they are there. As if you dont look both ways before crossing the street.
4. The honk doesnt mean anything.
      -People honk here for no apparent reason sometimes. Sometimes it means here i am. Sometimes it means move. Sometimes it means i am bored.
5. FAKE, FAKE, FAKE
     -if you buy things that are in a bottle at local convenience stores, chances are that it the cheapest item they could buy and rebottled with a different more expensive label so they can sell it for more money. I have a friend who purchased head and shoulders shampoo, and it was actually some cheap chinese brand inside the bottle.
6. Never travel by bus during rush hour
     -notice i said rush hour and not a specific time. Apparently, there are a lot of people in china. Most people travel by bus. So the buses are usually crowded from 7-12:30pm and 4-9:00pm. I try to get out and do my shopping or travelling between the hours of 1:00-4:00. Otherwise, i walk. Side note. Even taxis do not pick you people at meal times because they want to eat.

Still working

Still working on curriculum development.
I received my new schedule this week at odies language school. I added on four more classes and then, one more at the korean school.  So i teach everyday now except for tuesday. I teach a class tonight and tomorrow night and they still do not have the books for me to teach out of. The class is in six hours. That is china for ya.

Community

So the fellowship that I go to has a young adults group that is going to start going to a youth center on Wednesday nights. So I am really excited about going to that.  I will tell more on Thursday after going to the youth center.

So the soccer league starts up this coming weekend which I am pretty excited about since we have been just playing friendlies and the competition has really been bad. Only the good teams join the league. We played the loas team yesterday and they we were hardcore. They all had matching custom made jerseys and socks and shorts. They had a coach and a translator. It was a little intimidating, but we still beat them 3-0. I scored. They were actually pretty good. We do not have the fast bunch of guys so that is how they were getting their chances. It is just we finished on our opportunities. They had a really nice ball that we used to play. I could kick that ball about 80 yards down the field. So the school that we were playing at was having their closing ceremonies for some month long event. So a lot of the participants came to watch our game. Ever time I went to kick a goal kick you would hear this ooooohhhhhh or wwwwoooowwww. It was like being in college and as our goalie (Dutch) would go to punt the ball and fans would do an OOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!! until it hit the ground. It was nice having fans.

Well, I got the craving….i had not had a hamburger since September and I was really starting to hunger for one. Now, when I was in the states, I never ate at McDonalds (except for breakfast), but I had been told that they had the best hamburgers in town. Got a nice big mac with fries and a drink. Here they don’t even ask you what you want to drink. They just give you coke or pepsi. I have a pop a couple of places and here they load it up with sugar. It is like eat sugar straight almost.

JACKHAMMER, JACKHAMMER, JACKHAMMER, JACKHAMMER. Still doing construction outside my apartment.

Joyous Song

So apparently yesterday, I guess someone decided that there needs to be two holes dug up outside my apartment window. Well, they apparently need to get through about a foot of concrete to get low enough to get to where they need to be granted the hole is only about 5x7ft. Luckily, they brought their own generator to power the jackhammer and saw. So the generator drowns out most of the noise that comes from the jackhammer. Also, they keep a pretty rhythmic pattern so it is like waking up to a church choir humming Amazing Grace.

So there is a strong enough community of Americans here that a couple of places are having thanksgiving meals. Pretty happy about that....Turkey, mash potatoes, gravy....and hopefully etc...

I sent out the newsletter so if you didnt get it and would like to then email me at jaredkprice@gmail.com requesting the newsletter. The next one will come out right before Christmas.

Great Day Today

I had an amazing day today and i really did not doing anything worth noting. I do not know why it was so great, but i feel like a million bucks. Day started off with waking up....you know typical day spend another hour laying in bed because i just wanted to.....Then off to the dumplings shop...where i eat a little breakfast.....after church it is off to the soccer fields where we play every sunday against some random chinese. We absolutely destroyed them by double-digits...I did get an assist and a goal so i was pretty happy. The one problem is that weather...It was like 65 degrees today, but when the clouds cover the sun...it gets down to around 50 degrees which is a little cold while standing around on the field especially when you have been sweating and the sweat feels like it is starting to freeze....Then i went and walked around cafe street because me and a friend are going down there tomorrow night for foreign game club (board games) at the game cafe. So it is always good to get an idea of where the place is before you go because usually places are hard to find. After walking around for two hours after the game...I made it back home by around 4:30 (our game ended at 2:00). If you are ever in China, never travel by bus on a sunday....IT WAS CROWDED....like i almost kissed three people because we were so close. Anyway, no worries...I am at home...I found a new place to eat though....pretty happy about it...just a 10 minute walk away. The biggest thing is that they served rice here. Remember they eat noodles in this area...well, i was kind of getting tired of fried noodles and boiled noodles...so this place...you get tea (obviously), rice, a meat dish, and 2-3 side dishes....So i will probably eat at this place like everyday and get tired of it and then move on back to noodles. Then there was a pastry shop next door to the eatery...so i walk in hoping for some chocolate bars or something of that nature....well, red bean paste is like chocolate in the America. Everyone eats it and it is what they put in their pastries. Well, I DO NOT LIKE RED BEAN PASTE!!!! but i did manage to find a blueberry cream filled pastry...it was good. After thinking about the great day, i think most of the happiness that i had today comes from teaching yesterday. I love the kids. Sunshine, butterflies and flowers!!!

Also, newsletter comes out this week…If you do not receive it by Saturday and would like to, then email me at jaredkprice@gmail.com requesting that you be added to the list.

Sticking to the main food groups and other

So i went on a little bit about eating in the house in the last post. Well, lets turn our attention to outside the house. So most people think that rice is the big thing to eat in China and in most areas it is the case. But kunming people eat noodles. There are wheat noodles and rice noodles. You can order either fried or boiled. I try to stick to the fried wheat noodles because i do not know where the water in the boiled noodles comes from.
There are alot of little places to get the noodles at, but that is for my other blog (chizhongguocia.blogspot.com). Fruits are a must but you have to be safe as they do not clean any of the fruit or vegetables. So i try to stick to bananas (with peanut butter), oranges, grape fruits, etc (fruits that i already have to peel anyway). There are also street vendors who sell hotdogs (not good though), meat on a stick, deep fried bread (something), deep fried potatoes. I am very reluctant to eat the deep fried food because these vendors change the oil about once or twice a year. I stick to the things that are over a charcoal fire. But dont worry, when i get my two week vacation, i am going to eat some of the food out of the oil which will give me plenty of time to recover if i get sick. Food is good hear.
American eats:
So the owner of the school took me out to eat at Papa Johns for my birthday meal. It was so good. We got meat lovers pizza which was spectacular. So then the next day i treated myself to KFC. I ordered a beef wrap meal and popcorn chicken. Well, The beef wrap was covered in a hot sauce which took me a couple of minutes to figure out where i had eaten the sauce before. Well, apparently they used the same sauce in the packaged noodles that i eat. It was definitely a step down to reality in China. Then i turned my attention to the popcorn chicken. Well, guess what, it tasted like fish. and the fries tasted like fish. Fish oil is big in china. So KFC deep fries all of their stuff in fish oil. Needless to say, it was not the best meal. Go in expecting KFC and walk out smelling like long john silvers.

off subject:
My blog is blocked by the chinese default proxy, so i can only access it when the free unstable proxy is up and available. If someone wants to set me up with a http port on a computer or server where i can access through a proxy that is always available, it would be great.
Thanks.

Oh Man!!!

I really am starting to miss having a personal vehicle. Waiting for a bus is boring. It is the worst when you have been waiting for twenty minutes for the bus and then it comes along and the bus drive cant open the doors because the bus is so crowded.
I have to slice my own deli meat. I went out an purchased a log of what i hope is ham, but dont worry, i put plenty of mayo and sliced tomatoes and peppers so that i do not taste the "ham". PB&J is a must everyday eat and i eat the packaged noodles and they are about 500 times better than ramen. There is also a steamed dumplings place below our building which is really nice.
The apartment that i moved into is not furnished at all. I had to go out and by chopsticks so that i could eat noodles. We do not have a plate or bowl or fork or spoon. We have no furniture. If i was here all day, i would absolutely hate it. It is tough to invite people over when i can not provide a seat for them. I am going to move here in the next couple of months to a place that is fully furnished.

Progress Character Clubs

So I presented the Character Education Clubs to a group of Chinese today. It went really well. They all loved the idea. Some of them had tried to start up their own clubs, but they were or did not go very well because they followed the Chinese way of teaching. In where, it is a lot of reading and writing and memorization. Kids are not interested in doing this in their spare time when it is just like a classroom setting. They said that they have been looking for an American influence to come up with games and activities for the children here. So there were two women that shared that they had started clubs. One woman did not like how it was going with her group so she basically handed her club over to me. The other woman had to shut down her club because she did not have time for it, but she said that she would give me all her resources (I am guessing that she meant contacts). So I have been here two weeks and I already have at least one club signed up, and another one in process, and I have only talked to a single group. Now I have to think of how many could start up when I actually start making relationships with parents of children at the school or present at fellowships. We are currently in the process of coming up with a curriculum that would be accepted by Chinese everywhere with a Chinese influence. A website is also being developed which I will post later on the blog. 

And teaching went much better this weekend. 

More information about my life in Kunming

So I joined the Kunming FC amateur team. They have an A and B squad. The A plays on Saturdays and the B plays on Sundays. So I went out on Sunday and played with the B squad. It was like playing with a high school boy’s JV team. We had a guy get a red card in the FRIENDLY.  They were NOT the cream of the crop. So I would be playing with the A squad, but their games are on Saturdays at 4:00 and I work until 4:40. So I am left with playing with the B squad. Right now we are playing friendly games so I am hoping that the season has a different schedule. At least it is a good work out. Kind of. It is an Astroturf field, but it has been played on so much that the turf has been flattened. I also play indoor on Tuesdays with a different crew. I  was asked to coach a kids team. I think that I am starting to stretch myself a little thin. I do not know how much of a time commitment it is going to be. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I am teaching ESL at the Korean Grace international School for an hour a day plus a half hour bus ride both ways. Then I play soccer on Sunday 4-6 with an hour bus ride both ways. Then I also teach ESL for 3 hours on Friday and 9-4:40 on Saturday with an hour bus ride both ways. I also will probably add on 2-3 more classes in January and then I plan to start the character clubs up. I got asked today if I wanted to start learning Chinese yet. I gracefully said no.

We are looking at starting two clubs. One at the Kunming odies language school and maybe another on at Korean Grace International School.  I am going to try to meet with the director of the Korean school next week to discuss a plan, but this week is about getting the business plan completed. I am going to post tons of pictures and videos.

Started Teaching

So I started teaching on Friday night. I only have two classes on Friday and three on Saturday. Next week I start teaching at the Kunming Grace International School on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then in December I will probably add two more classes at the Kunming Odies language school.  It went pretty well. I was not prepared as much as I thought I was. But it went okay. The school is about 2.5 miles away and it took me 40 minutes to get there by bus. The public transportation system here is awful. Saturday went much better. (30 minutes by taxi to this school) The kids are not as far along as I thought they would be. Their spelling and reading is great, but speaking is not near. They always want to read and just follow along in the book. I have them come up to the front of the class and try to have a conversation, and most of them freeze. There are three levels (Taking off, Gaining Altitude, Flying High) I have 2 taking off classes, 2 gaining altitude, and 1 flying high. One of my classes has 25 students in it so it is hard to keep control of the kids. If anyone has any ideas for games, could you email me them at jaredkprice@gmail.com.

As for the character clubs, we are currently developing the curriculum and schedule on how we want to proceed with it. We hope to start advertisement by the end of the month. We have one location on the southwest side of Kunming. And I am also going to talk to the director of the Grace school about seeing if he would let us start on at his school because it is on the north side of town.

Wo Jia (My house/home)

So I live on the 7th floor of the building and i have my own balcony except the washer is on the balcony so the other guys have to pass through my room to get to the washer.

Day Three - Saturday

It was a great day to alive. I am still not a good sleep schedule so I tried staying up until midnight and still woke up at 6:00 but that is an improvement as I woke up at 5:30am the previous morning. However, I went to sleep at 8:00pm the night before. But that is probably not interesting for you. Kunming traffic is horrible and the drivers are even worse. So I go to experience the traffic on the back of an electric scooter. WOW!!! What a ride!!! It was terrifying. There is no such thing as waiting for a gap in traffic so that you can turn onto the street. So you just start going and hope that the on coming traffic stops or swerves as not to hit you. Also, there is no stopping to let people into traffic. You honk to notify the driver of the other vehicle which side you are on so they do not hit you. I can’t wait to get my own scooter. I went to an orphanage outside of town in the mountains with some people from Costa Rica and Brazil. All of them spoke very little English so I had to reach back into my high school Spanish and between Chinese, Spanish and English we were able to have conversations. Well, this orphanage is probably one of the poorest in the area because it is so far outside of town, but the children were great. There were about thirty-five kids in the class. We taught them how to say hola, gracias, uno, dos, tres, adios. It was a beginner class for Spanish. It was wild and very loud. I hope that my students have more discipline then these kids.  If not, I will be cracking the whip. JK….I start officially on Friday night BTW. So after we had the class session, we went outside to kick the soccer ball around. MOB BALL!!! The Brazilians and I were just passing around them while they tried to steal the ball from us. It was fun. Also, because it was an orphanage, I did not take my camera along.  So while I was taking with the costa Ricans, it came up that I was a computer tech in the USA. Well, all of the sudden there was a computer problem that I was asked to fix. I can’t get away from it. Move to China and people are still asking me to fix computers for them, and it happened in the third day. Well, that was the extend of my day as I am still jet lagged and need to sleep so it is Saturday night and I will be asleep by 7:00 more than likely.  

Day Two

The next day I was taken to a Korean School. I am probably going to teach there a couple of hours a week. They use the A.C.E. curriculum. It is a self taught type of curriculum where there are no “teachers”. The children go through books and then when they get to the end of a section, the supervisor comes over and checks work their work. If it looks good, then they can more onto the next section. This program was actually designed by a father for his handicap son. About ninty percent of the students are of Korean descent and then the others are from other parts of the world. Because this is a foreign school, they are allowed to be a Christian school. Well, after the tour, the school owner wanted to take us out to eat. So we went to a very good Korean restaurant. Still have not eaten a Chinese meal yet and I have been here for two days.Who knows, maybe day three I will get to eat something.

Day One

So I arrived around noon on Thursday. From there we, luckily, got to ride in a private car to my new apartment (pics to come), and I do not have a closet. So I am going to live out of suitcases until I truly decide where I am going to live. I got to meet one of my roommates, and the other one only comes in twice a month. The next part was to go out and get some bedding at which I am thinking that I am going to have too look through bedding for flees and ticks, but no. Now a day, people go to walmart for their needs and wants. I went there once and have not been back since. The first meal that we ate was at a restaurant on the 4^th floor of the building. I am expecting to have a nice authenticate Chinese meal, but no. It is a steakhouse.

Culture

China has changed drastically every where I look. When I walk down the street, I do not get stared and people do not yell out “Foreigner”. When I was in China last, foreigners were considered to be rich, but that is not the case anymore. I am only considered middle class where as I would have been considered upper class fifteen years ago. I went to Walmart on my first day here instead of going to an open market. I still have beggars come up to me on the street though. There is little to no Culture shock.

Arrived

I made it to the other side of the world. There were no problems except for the fact that one of my suitcase’s wheels feel off in Dayton and I could have used a little more leg room on the flight from Beijing to Kunming. The Beijing airport was glorious!!! It was fast and efficient getting through customs and the security checkpoint. And I forgot to take my ipod out of my pocket so I set off the alarm…..Very embarrassing, but I did make it to Kunming okay and the administrator of the school was there to meet me.

October 5th

Leaving October 5th for China...Visa is in hand!!!!So EXCITED!!!!

WAITING!!!

I am not in China yet. I am currently waiting for the paperwork for the visa to come through so there is no offical date on my departure yet.