china so far.

Wow, this past week has been absolutely crazy. I have finally arrived at the English Village in Nandaihe after my 6-day separation period, along with 18 other interns from all over the world, including Poland, Dominican Republic, Morocco, and the U.K. Turns out I was the only one who had to go to a podunk city in the middle of nowhere alone and bored for 6 days. Some, like these 2 British girls, were sent directly to the hospital in an ambulance upon arriving because of a swine flu scare; others met up and travelled all over China; one unlucky guy had to sleep on the same bed as the company owner for a night.

Even though we are all a bit miffed that we ended up in this small city rather than in Beijing as the job description originally promised, the town itself is on the beach and our apartments overlook the river. Unfortunately, beautiful scenery seems to be the only thing this town really offers…the entertainment side is quite sparse, as we traversed several blocks the other day in search of a bar. The other interns are really chill, and I love that we all get along and have lots of fun together!

We met some of the other teachers that are here too, and well…they aren’t really like us. They are all uber religious and older than us, so we are convinced that they are trying to “teach” both English and religion to the Chinese students. Apparently, one of the teachers was on the phone and said: “What has Jesus done for you today?” We also have Chinese teacher assistants and they are adorable, with cute names like Leaf, Cola, and Forrest. All of us have to perform for the opening ceremony tomorrow and the TAs are doing high school musical hahaha. We decided to do a group dance, because none of us actually want to do solo performances in front of 350+ people.

Some pictures:


Chilling at the beach, which is pretty nice. As you can see, because of all the pollution/smog, you can’t really see the sky all that well.


The beach at Beidahe, a little north of where we are staying. In the U.S., girls wear tiny bikinis while guys have conservative knee-length shorts. Much to our dismay, the men in China wear tiny speedos while the women wear more conservative bathing suits.


Beidahe is where all the government officials go on summer vacation, as well as Russians. The buildings were so Western looking, and most of the buildings had both Russian and Chinese.

- Willa