Guanghua School

Here are some pictures I took of the school grounds.  

The students singing the Chinese national anthem

My new best friend

The entrance to the school on the right and our residence hall on the left

The entrance to our building on the second floor

The hallway of our dorm

My room is the first two windows on the right

One of the student dorm buildings on campus

A random sidewalk on the school grounds

The playground and basketball courts

The Chinese love their ping pong!

The building we teach our English classes in

The First Week-

I have been here for a week now and I am enjoying myself immensely and I feel that I am almost over adjusting to the 13 hour time difference although it may take me a while to get used to the fact that everyone is a day behind me.  As I am going to bed, you folks are all still a few hours away from waking up.  The only positive aspect of being jetlagged is that I have been waking up around 5:30am every morning and going for a run on the track that is just outside our building (which means I am usually in bed by 9:30 or 10pm).  Our group of 11 people are living in a small building on the grounds of the Guanghua boarding school.  Our rooms consist of a bedroom, a living room and a bathroom.  Due to my delayed arrival to the school, everyone had paired up with a roommate and I was the odd one out so I am lucky enough to have a room to myself.  The rooms are pretty nice and the thing I am most excited about is that the shower and hot water work really well so I will not have to endure any bucket showers this time around in Asia!  

My bedroom

My very own water cooler 

The view from my bedroom window

The living room which includes a delightful internet hook-up

I felt it was necessary to include a picture of the bathroom

The Amazing water heater which allows for a solid 10 minute hot shower

We also get 3 meals a day provided by the school which have been delicious so far.  We usually get eggs, warm soy milk and fried bread.  Lunch and dinner usually consist of rice with 3 or 4 entrees to choose from and either a banana or an orange.  I am pretty sure I may never want to see white rice again when I return to the states but I think I can survive for 4 months. 

Breakfast

Wontons!

Eggplant, rice and duck  (or that's what we wanted to believe it was)

Here is the usual setup for our meals and my new friend Danielle

Arrival in China

I arrived at the Shanghai airport on February 6th around 2:30 by surviving a rather grueling 15 hour flight from Chicago.  I was not on the flight with the other 10 people from my ILP group due to the fact I left out of Dulles.  I was told earlier in the week that I was to hang out, outside of customs until about 6:30pm when the rest of the group would be arriving.  I waited and waited and at about 7:30pm, I was worried that something had not gone according to plan.  I was fortunately able to find an info desk that allowed me to make international calls as well as use the internet.  With help from my dad and Alex, they were able to contact the directors of the program and figure out what had happened.  Apparently, a few weeks ago, when the city I was suppose to teach in got switched, they didn't make the switch on my head teacher's list so I wasn't on her list at all.  To make matters worse, the group arrived in a different terminal than the one I was waiting in.  The group had already left the airport on a bus and were on their way to the city of Hefei (a 7 hour drive).  After 9 painful hours at the airport, I luckily was set up to stay at an amazing Ramada hotel close to the airport by ILP and was relieved that I would not have to sleep at the airport with all of my luggage.  I slept rather well that night in my deluxe suite and around noon the next day, my head teacher and a very nice man that works at the Hefei school, came and met me at the hotel.  We then took a train from Shanghai to Hefei and I arrived safely at the school that evening.  Let the adventures begin!

The room at the Ramada hotel in Shanghai