Ed’s in China!

Hello from China.

I’ve been here two weeks now, on an adventure and to avoid too much boredom in the wilds of the far western part of Virginia — having overcorrected from downtown Boston a few years back.

 I came over to teach college — not English like any number of people, but management stuff — in English which is certainly good for me and probably questionable for the kids subjected to it.

Judy is ok so far (easy for me to say), and will be here in a couple of weeks which will be a good thing, especially for me. She’s visiting over the Chinese National Holiday which closes school here for a week.

One of the first things to strike you here in China is the friendliness of the people.  All the people.   I was looking for some stuff in a grocery store in Jimei, the suburb of Xiamen and was deciding between a couple of brands — apparently looking confused. 

A woman came over and pointed to one of the two giving me the “thumbs up.”  I doubt she was a sales person for the brand she pointed to.  In any event I thanked her (shea, shea), she smiled and nodded and that was that.

In another shop, I needed some stuff, including a couple of cases of a popular orange-juice like drink.  I gestured enough to convince the shopkeeper to deliver, a feature pointed out to me by a colleague.  So two young people from the shop and I carried a bunch of stuff back to my apartment.  I thanked them. They left. 

Some fifteen minutes later, the shopkeeper knocked on my door, apologetic that he had overcharged me what turned out to be about three bucks.  He adamently refused a tip or splitting the difference and went on his way. (And this was all in sort of a broken sign language). 

That doesn’t happen any place else I’ve ever been.

These are some of the kids in one of my classes.  Fourth year students in the “Overseas College.” 

I’ve got two classes of about 60 kids each.  The course lasts six weeks so we meet for ninety minutes three or four times a week which changes depending on if the week is an even or odd week of the sequence of six.  I wrote it down.

The

kids are pretty much kids once you get past a couple of cultural things and the language.  They’re trained to shut up and listen to their teachers, so getting a conversation going or an interactive anything in a group setting is a little tricky.  I do this in English which means they do too.  They probably understand more than they let on and are pretty reticent with spoken English.  But think about that for a minute………How many US college kids would take courses in Mandarin?

Where am I? 

I am in southeastern China, on the coast, right across from Taiwan.  It’s a city which with the burbs is probably over 2 Million.  The main part of the city is an island, Xiamen, and I am sort of in Queens or the Bronx……over a causeway on the landside. 

If you want to see my building exactly, figure out how to get to Google Earth and when you do, my coordinates are 24 degrees, 34 minutes and 54.09 seconds north by 118 degrees 05 minutes 30.77 East. 

Plug that in and you’ll be looking at the roof of my buiding on the campus of Jimei University. 

Or you can just tell Google Earth to take you to Xiamen, China and you can fly around the island, go up the causeway just north of the airport to Jimei and I’m on the left.Try it.

What time is it? 

With daylight savings time on your end, I’m twelve hours ahead of EDT on the East Coast which means I never had to change my watch when I got off the plane.

That was different too.