First few days in Chongqing

Finally, this saturday, we arrived in Chongqing, we got a tiny glimpse of the Himalayas, which was a pretty nice view. The first thing we did after arriving is go to the apartment, which are (by Chinese standards) pretty nice. It's on top of a mountain so I have a view over the entire city from my study room, that way I can see the row and rows of building that are out there. Because of the smog you can not really look very far but just imagine a forrest of buildings. There is no heating like in The Netherlands, so the airco has to fill the room with warm air which is immediately absorbed by the cold tiles on the floor. But the airco will be useful when the temperature rises, in the summer 40° is not uncommon.

The sunday we went to walk around to see a small part of town, and some areas of interest. I overslept even though the bed is harder than wood. We also went to see the school where we will be teaching. It's all a little old and dirty (especially the toilets, which is just a hole in the ground by the way) :D
Because Chongqing is build on a mountain there are a looooot of stairs, and roads are always going up and down, very tiring but eventually it will benefit me!

My stomach is not yet used to the food here, there is always something spicy in it so that is something I have to get used to. It can also be the jet lag because my rhythm is totally off.

Yesterday I had my first day of teaching, which was interesting. I think because I prepared till late at night on sunday I did pretty good. So after a whopping 4,5 hours of sleep I started my first day. I met my translators, Chris and Ivy, which are really friendly and helped me a lot to help me get acquainted to the customs and way of working. The great thing about teaching here is that you can make your own plan, exercises and way of teaching.
I speak English to the class and the translator will translate it into Chinese for the students. They are around 20 years old and most of them are around 1,5 meter tall. With my 1,92 meter I really tower over them which does not go unnoticed, even on the street I'm being looked at more than anywhere my whole life. Apparently I'm considered very handsome by them, which I've been told numerous times already. Really flattering of course but also something I have get used to. :D When I walked into my fathers classroom during a break yesterday, some students started to make (sneaky) pictures of me with their phone.

The chinese are gossipy people, they will spread rumors very fast. That's something cultural I think. The community is very important to them so they appreciate the opinions of their peers but never will speak up with their opinion. They will almost never say that they are very good at something. Which is pretty interesting as they are doing an education in which you really have to stand out from the crowd.

The other foreign teachers are also very friendly and open, which makes everything easier for everybody. Today I had a combined class with two other teachers (Kym (NL) and Penny Lee (UK)) which we decided to combine just yesterday evening. So we had 75 students in one classroom which was really fun, instead of telling them what to do (what they are used to) they had to come up with questions. The class was about Information Gathering and they had to gather information about the teachers. In the beginning they were really quite and only a few dared to ask questions. Again, because they are not used to giving their opinion because they are being judged by their classmates they are really reserved. Eventually when we put 3 random students up front and then we (the teachers) started to ask them a little bit weird question they started to laugh a bit more and loosened up. Which was a small breakthrough, these things I hope to see a lot more!

This weekend I hope to go out into the city and do some photography, there are so many interesting things to see here. But also I need to take it easy because I still have a jet lag and almost 4 months ahead of me, so no rush!

Till next time! :)