Day 5: “ENGLISH!”

Day 5: “ENGLISH!”

 This morning was very exciting--we had a conference for all the teachers in the program. The meeting was held in a huge, beautiful conference room. Because I love being a teacher, I felt really emotional…a large room full of teachers who traveled from America, Canada, and England to China to dedicate 2-4 weeks teaching. My heart swelled with smiles because I get to do what I love all the way across the world. Throughout the morning we heard speeches from all the educational leaders who are in charge of the “Jiangsu Education Services for International Exchange”. We also met our individual directors from the schools we were assigned.

After the conference, we traveled with our director and a student, Jenny, to our final hotel where we will stay for 2 weeks. The hotel is about 1 hour from Nanjing. We have a really nice hotel room, even if the carpet has noticeably not been vacuumed for quite some time. I believe our hotel room really is the best of what our school could afford…it’s a suit with a living space on one side and a bedroom and bathroom on the other side. Hallelujah there is a western toilet!!!

To welcome us to our district, the director, Mrs. Li and Jenny had dinner with us. The director also brought her son. Nathan and I are just amazed at the way people in China order food. In other words, people order lots of food, several dishes, then the waitress/waiter delivers the food to a large lazy suzie that’s in the middle of our table. Everyone proceeds to eat out of all the dishes, rather than putting the food on their plates. Yes, we have plates, but they are really just to help us with the food that might fall from our mouths!

After dinner Nathan and I walked up the street to a supermarket to get hangers, a big plastic bowl for us to do laundry in, and an umbrella. We got many stairs…people in Zhenjiang have not seen many “foreigners” if any at all. One family sent her little girl (maybe 10 years old) to talk to me. She said “hello, what is your nationality?” and “Do you know where is the toilet?” Of course, she did not need to know where the toilet was located…she just wanted to speak in English to us.

In the mall/supermarket, dogs and cats are free to roam. Kinda weird because in American if we saw an animal inside a store it is attached to someone who is handicapped. We also saw several puppies and cats on the street on the way to the store. I looked for some shoes for my niece at the store. The women in charge of the shoes talked to me in Chinese, and I simply shook my head no and said “Sorry, I speak English”. They continued to talk to me in Chinese as though I would eventually understand…I just kept shaking my head no before I finally made a circle around my face with my first finger and shouted “ENGLISH!”