I Should've Gone to English Corner...

My first couple of weeks of teaching are in the books, and it's gone better than I had thought it would. My students are incredibly nice and very anxious to learn. I teach seven classes a week; 3 on Wednesday, 3 on Friday, and 1 on Saturday morning. I spend about 11 hours a week in the classroom, so as you can tell life is still rough for me over here in China. I can hardly handle all the pressure that is on me. Even my body is falling apart from it all. If you didn't catch that, I was only kidding. Well except about my body falling apart. Read more to find out about that. Fantastic story. Anyway, I have an extremely limited amount of pressure on me. Really, if pressure were measure on a scale from 6-26 (6 being the lowest amount of pressure), I would be around a 7. Yeah, my job is pretty kick-ass. I see most of my students only once a week, but I do have one class I see twice a week. Those students are employees of a local chemical company, so their age range is between 22-27. Their English is ok, so it is a little more difficult to get them to understand some thing. We're making progress though, slowly but surely. My other classes are first-year students, and some are with third-year students. They all seem pretty excited to have an American as their English teacher, so let's hope that excitement lasts all year long. My first meeting with all my classes I just did introductions. I showed them pictures of family and my house. They enjoyed those very much. They thought Kristin (my sister-in-law) was my girlfriend, so when I told them she was my brother's wife they seemed a little disappointed. Oh well, can't win them all. They asked me many questions about why I came to China and what I thought of it so far. They also asked me if I like Chinese girls, to which I replied,"The Chinese people have been very kind to me so far. They have also been super helpful." Question successfully avoided. My second class I taught them about some American music. We talked about different genres and different artists. I even was able to play some songs for them, which they enjoyed for the most part. Gold Digger by Kanye West, however, was not one of their favorites. I did explain what a "gold digger" was, so at least they learned something from the lesson. They really run a tight ship around here. My employee class is the only class that actually has some sort of textbook, but it sucks so I barely teach out of it. My students tell me what they want to learn and I come up with lessons based on that. I will do some lessons about business because some of their majors are business English. They want to learn a lot about America and how people live so that will be quite fun to teach them those things.

Now the story about my body breaking down. I broke my foot. My left foot to be exact. The outside of my left foot to be even more exact. I lied. It's more of a fracture than a break, but it still hurts. As some of you know, I had surgery almost two years ago on my right foot for a stress fracture on the outside of my foot. Well, my left foot had started to feel similar for the last few weeks to how my right foot felt. Then, I was playing basketball on Thursday night and made a cut to go left and felt my bone crack. Since my pain tolerance is so high, I could barely feel it. No, but seriously, it hurt like something that hurts really bad. I knew it was broke right then (just like I knew my ankle/wrist/foot/arm/stomach had been broken/messed up in my past). I've had too many x-rays to count in my past, and very very seldom have had anything too seriously wrong with. One stress fracture out of countless x-rays. I was really hoping I was right about this one. I know that sounds bad, but if I was a baseball player I would have already been demoted to Triple A. By me having an x-ray and something actually being wrong with me puts my break-percentage up quite a few points. Fritz, kindly enough, took me on my mo-ped to the hospital and I got a cast put on and also got some quite comfortable crutches. Really, though, they suck. Big time. Especially because I live on the 4th floor. Things could be worse. Now to explain the title of this post. I was asked earlier that day to go to the campus where I teach (which is 40 minutes there and 35 minutes back) to partake in something called English corner. This is where I just stand around and talk to students for a couple of hours. I agreed, but later decided I really didn't want to go because I would be there late and had to go back there early the next morning to teach. I then called my boss lady back and made up and excuse as to why I could no longer go. I think someone had a birthday party if I remember correctly. Then I broke my foot. I should've gone to English corner...

Pre-broken foot I was able to do some hiking and rock climbing around Guilin. The pictures in this post are from earlier in the week. The mountain we climbed was quite high, and the view from the top was pretty remarkable. Guilin really is a beautiful city. Sitting at the top of this mountain really made me appreciate this opportunity I've been given. It also helps to remind me to take the time to take everything in and be thankful for all I have. Although me breaking my foot takes away many things I love to do (namely playing sports) away, I know that I still have it pretty dang good. For that, I am thankful.

I hope this post finds you all well. I miss you all very much. I love hearing from you guys. Don't be afraid to email me or message me on here to let me know how you are doing and what's new in all of your lives. Life is good!


-Kevin


P.S. Big win for Mizzou today. Hopefully the Chiefs can get back to winning tomorrow.

Hello! Hello? Hello.

I have been super busy lately so I want to send my deepest apologies for lacking on my blog posts. Actually, I haven't been doing too much so I don't have much of an excuse except for that I'm lazy. Still, my apologies. I am in the middle of uploading all of my pictures onto Facebook, so if you want to take a look at what I've been up to then look on there. I will try to also post some pictures on here for those of you who do not have Facebook.

The title of this blog comes from me not being able to think of another clever title for a blog post, so deal with it. The story behind this title is as follows...
Whenever I'm just walking around and a Chinese person sees me and recognizes that I probably speak English, or at least know what "hello" means then they will shout, "Hello!", "Hello?", or "Hello" at me. Each time I have a good laugh when they do this. Sometimes it seems as though they are shouting at you. Other times it's as if they are asking a question, and then sometimes they are actually greeting you with a "hello." Lately I've been getting tired of answering in English, so I will either say, "Ni Hao" (Chinese), or "Hola" (Spanish, duh). Sometimes this will confuse them which I find to be a little humorous. Maybe you're different and wouldn't find this funny, but that's what makes this world great, right? Anyway, that is really all I have to say about the title of this blog. So, you're welcome.

The much needed vacation I went on was a very good time. We went to a couple of villages and the local people were very kind to us. The first village we went to was called Ma'an, and it was a village of the Dong people. Around 90% of the people in China are Han Chinese, and the other 10% are a different type of Chinese I guess. Anyway, they look similar to me. This village was beautiful. We went on a hike up a mountain very close by which gave us a fantastic view of the entire village. It really was quite gorgeous. (Side note: The power just went out for a bit, and now it's back on...end of side note). The picture to the left is of the village from where we were hiking. We spent two nights there so we just did a lot of exploring and what not. We ate at our hostel, which was overpriced, but oh well. One of the nights we played soccer in the street with a couple of the kids. That was a good time. The picture below and to the right is of me playing soccer with one of the kids. After we left Ma'an, Kaitlin, Carmine, and I went to another village called Ping'an. This village is known for its rice terraces, which I hear are pretty amazing. Unfortunately, when we went it was quite foggy so we didn't get a great view of them. There is a picture below of what we had for dinner that night. Quite tasty actually. I want to get back there though, because I hear it's a "can't miss," if you are in this area. On the way back from Ping'an, we kind of had to beg our way onto a bus to take us back to Guilin. We ran out of money and thought that we could get some out of an ATM, but all of us were unsuccessful. We somehow explained to the lady taking the money for the bus that we would find an ATM in Guilin and pay her for the bus ride. Going against her gut feeling, she finally let us on the bus. We held true to our word and paid her when we got to Guilin. After all, we were thankful to make it back without any money.

That following weekend I had my first "side" job. Fritz heard through this guy who heard through this guy that some company needed some foreigners to help them out. This is actually quite common practice around China. Many Chinese companies like to have foreigners promote their company because it brings a bit more prestige to their company. Now, I didn't need anyone to tell me that I could bring prestige to their company, because, well, let's be honest. But in all seriousness, it was hard to take myself or anyone else serious during this expo. We had to dress up in a cap and gown like we were graduating. This company was selling apartment buildings and the place was called, "Harvard something or other" (I added the "something or other" in case you didn't catch that). We just stood around handing out pieces of paper to interested people. Hell, even if they weren't interested I still gave them a piece of paper. Many, many, many people took pictures throughout the three days. Sometimes they tried to be secretive, like standing 10 feet in front of us while crouching down so to get us in the background. A couple times I would notice this and walk a couple feet to the side to get out of the picture, because after all, I didn't want to ruin their picture. We all got paid 1,000 yuan for the three days, which I was pleased about. I was so pleased that I went and bought another mo-ped. New. Freaking awesome. Alarm on it. Can lock front tire. Big lock. That's all I'm saying about it (don't want to jinx it). But seriously, it's kewl.

After the much needed vacation, I had a few days to sit around and ponder what I should do next here in China. A couple of days went by and the thought of thinking too much about what I should do was really getting to me, so I took another vacation. A couple of friends and I went to this place about an hour and a half away called Lingchuan Jiuwu. It was this little place tucked in between the mountains and we had to cross this rope bridge to get to it. It was a super relaxing time. We just sat around and ate, drank, and swam in the river. The bridge went over the river so of course we jumped off of it into the river. It was about 25 feet high, so kind of scary, but very fun. The picture to the right is of Fritz and I jumping off. I tried to pose, but, well you can come up with your own joke. We jumped off many, many times and it never really got old. I still can't believe that I could get myself to jump off a bridge that was 30 feet above the water. I thought about maybe doing a dive or a flip off of it but I figured 35 feet might be a little too high to try one of those stunts. Anyway, we only stayed there for one day and one night. We had three meals, many drinks, and obviously stayed in the room for a night and it cost us 100 yuan each. That is approximately $15. Awesome.

I had my first day of teaching yesterday. I was a little mad that they put me to work on a Friday, but I guess they thought maybe I should start doing some work. I teach on Wednesday's, Friday's, and Saturday morning. I'm not too happy about having a Saturday morning class, but given the fact I only work three days a week, I guess I really can't complain. I will talk more about my classes in my next post. It's always important to leave your blog followers wanting a little more. That way they will come back. You know what I'm saying?

I always appreciate hearing from all of you. Know that I miss you all very much and love you very much as well. I hope all is well! Life is good!

-Kevin

P.S. Kyle and Scott...My electricity went out today while I was talking to you. Maybe I should've bought a little more. Next time my friends, next time.

P.S.S. Kevin - 4*, China - 2.
*=New mo-ped, vacation to Ping'an and Ma'an, vacation to Lingchuan Jiuwu, and haven't lost in soccer (football) since our first loss.