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.