Wenzhou

The trek to Wenzhou from Shanghai started with a crammed van to the train station and a 5 hour train ride with the three other teachers going to the city. Shelly, my school coordinator, picked me up from the train station and told me about the school along the way.

The school is a military school, where students board from Monday to Friday and go home Friday night to Sunday night. It’s only 10 years old. I am the only foreign native English speaker teaching, and the first American to ever come to this school. Puts a lot of pressure on me :)  I did not expect to be the only one. Past have been from Australia, New Zealand, Cameroon, and pretty much everywhere else they speak English.

So the part of Wenzhou I am in doesn't see too many foreigners. Some students were at the school canteen when Shelly got me a case of water. I said Hi and shi-shu, which is thank you, when the girl put the water in the car and she smiled very excitedly. Shelly then told me the girl was telling her friends how beautiful I was. Haaaa. Whaaaaaaat. I know right.

Here are some pictures for your visual pleasure of my fifth floor apartment:

This is my kitchen, they don't do ovens here.

This is my living room complete with previous tenant graffitti! The tall thing is an air conditioner.

This is my bedroon, it also has a desk and small dresser. Outside the window is a little porch for hanging laundry, because dryers are another thing they don't do. Also, mattresses are mostly nonexistent. 

Then going shopping, or even just sitting in the car driving by I get a lot of stares. The toddlers giggle as I wave at them and the rest of the kids smile and nervously say hi. The adults are much more uncouth and just stare opened mouthed and smile a little much, whispering "laowai" (foreigner) and asking Shelly where in the western world I'm from. 

There is a four story mall within walking distance that was just completed in November. The part of Wenzhou I am in is all new, all built with in the last 10 or 15 years. This city is an up and coming industrial powerhouse, with factories everywhere.

What is especially weird now is that my brain knows I need to be speaking another language, but the only other one in there is Spanish. So sometimes I have been accidently saying stuff in Spanish when I'm trying to think of  the little Chinese I do know. 

But most of the time I'm thinking:

The food here is okay. I don't ask questions, and that has been a good strategy so far.

This is the view from my kitchen window. It is the school garden with the main part of the city in the background. Mountains completely surround Wenzhou. Because of this, their dialect here is very distinct.

Already I miss training week with my fellow teachers and having more westerners around me, but I'll be fine. I'm guessing I'm going to be learning a lot more Chinese than I originally thought!