Whoa China

What a whirlwind of a first week. I survived all the travel and have made it to a small town outside Baoshan called Changning or 昌宁. This is in Yunnan province, my fave in China, where I hope I'll ultimately be placed for the full two years. It's super beautiful, and since it's at such a high altitude, the weather's always perfect. It might be monsoon season right now, but whatever.

Obviously everyone here is the coolest. All the fellows and staff are super down-to-earth and have some pretty amazing stories to tell. There are ~60 foreign fellows and ~150 Chinese fellows. My roommates are all Chinese fellows and have been really sweet to me despite my rusty Chinese. Last night we were discussing how to pronounce astrological signs in English. The girl who sleeps on the bunk below me, English name: Sugar, looked up her's and was horror-stricken. "Cancer? Cancer?!??" I just about died.

Nowadays my schedule goes something like this:
5:40am-- wake-up
6am-- go running along the river with some second-year fellows and staff
7am-- shower, eat breakfast, etc.
8am-9:45am-- Foundations of Pedagogy class (lofty education theory)
10am-11:45am-- English as a Foreign Language Pedagogy class (teaching us how to teach)
12pm-1pm-- Lunch
1pm-2pm-- Chinese class
2pm-3:45pm-- Foundations of Pedagogy class (reprise)
4pm-5pm-- Group meeting with our Project Manager
5:30pm-- Dinner
6pm-8pm-- go for a walk, buy some fruit, or general hangouts
8pm-11pm-- Venture to the "wifi building" to do homework but mostly revel in the comforts of social media
12am-- Perhaps sleep

Needless to say, I'm pretty exhausted, and a little overwhelmed. We start lesson planning this Friday, and our first class is on Monday. I've been assigned rising 9th graders at the "third best middle school." The hope is that since these kids are coming to an optional English class in the summer means they're pretty nice and pretty smart. Of course, this doesn't make them better in any way, just that it may be easier on my nonexistent teaching abilities. I'll be teaching them for three weeks to test run all the tools I have and will learn.

They're literally turning off the lights in the wifi building. Goodnight.