World China Hebei Qinhuangdao

Gis & Joan back in China

My birthday Apr 9, 2010

So it is Friday here and still Thursday back in Canada. We will celebrate my birthday by going out with other foreign teachers. When we are able to find our way around a bit Gis has an IOU for jewelry. Gis had a meeting with the I.T. instructors at E & A College this week and sat in on a class. Because the topic was so familiar he actually understood what was going on - evedn though it was conducted in Chinese. He doesn't think he will attend another two hour class because he was frozen sitting there for that length of time. We finally found out that there is heating in the buildings in the winter but it was turned off because it is supposed to be Spring. We wondered how everyone survives when the annual average night time temperature in January is -14 degrees. We were invited for lunch by three of the I.T. instructors. They live in the same building as us but where we have two complete apartments they have one for four people. It was a lovely lunch and we had fun with their meagre English and our meagre Chinese. One dish that we have seen quite often has scrambled eggs and stewed tomatoes. I know how to say the egg part in Chinese but seem to be pronouncing the tomato part incorrectly. We asked Vivian for lunch on Wednesday so that she could show us how to find a restaurant and how to order some dishes. She ordered a dish for me that was scrambled eggs and onions in a mild sauce. Gis had a dish with mushrooms and eggplant. You wouldn't believe all the stuff he eats here! We have been cooking more ourselves on our own "stove". Actually we have two stoves now that we moved both hot plates into one apartment. So we have had such feasts as pasta with stir fry, rice with stir fry and a home made soup with boullion cubes that I brought from Canada. One of the foreign teachers invited us along for his weekly grocery shopping tomorrow. He apparently has found a grocery store that has a few Western style groceries. He had butter, a can of tomato sauce and cans of beans. Hallelujah! We are going to buy a toaster oven too so that we are able to toast sandwiches and make toast. It is much easier if you aren't trying to figure out just what is in the food that you are ordering especially when I am off meat. I really got my feet wet with ESL this week. One of the other foreign teachers told me that I should have the students choose English names so we did that this week. That certainly makes things easier for me. I'm starting to figure out who is who. I have one girl who insisted that her English name is "Lemon". She wouldn't change her mind so Lemon it is. We have had fun this week with present perfect and past tense with two classes and adverbs of frequency in the other class. I have one girl who regularly comes to class but isn't actually in any of my classes. Go figure!

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