glad for this week to end

10 vaccines later

Why is that when my stomach is loopy, odd animal parts appear on the dinner table? It's been rabbit parts dinner for the last 2 nights.  The grandson, who sits next to me, gets to eat the head, and until he gets around to it, that head, with those big carrot eating front teeth, looks right at me.  When I feel better, I'll describe the head eating process, maybe.  

For some reason, despite my best efforts, it was my day to feel sick to my stomach all day.  Could it be the 3 immunizations I got the other day?  Could it be the water?  Could it be that it's really hard to keep hands clean because of a lack of soap and paper towel? Could it be the sharing of community germs at dinner when everyone's chopsticks go into the "serving" dishes?  Bleh.  It's not stress; this was worse than stomach stress.

Definitely, it was a stressful week.  Today, model school ended, and the kids had a great time playing verb bingo, and other American classroom games.  I'm glad for the experience because I have an idea about what I'm getting into teaching English as a foreign language, specifically speaking English.

A fun calligraphy and culture lesson

my chinese name in characters

Another stressor was our "placement interviews," a 10 minute conversation with one PC program director and the 4 province program managers, who together will determine our fate.  There are 80 university positions and 72 Volunteers.  They gave us the interview questions in advance, but it's still intimidating to sit down for a 5 on 1 interview.  For our group of experience teachers, they had a few more questions about specific teaching assignment preferences.  I'm trying not to infer too much from their questions or their body language. I don't know enough about the culture yet to do that.  We learn next Thursday where we are going and the job.  Then, the follow week, we go to the site for a 5 day visit and to meet school officials.

"bridge beers"

On the way home, we sometimes stop for a beer or ice cream from one of the tiny shops on a walking path.  There is a drainage canal with a bridge over it, so this spot's been named "bridge bar." Those shops have the cheapest beer, at $.50 for a 20 oz bottle.  Price matters; we're on a tight budget.

The locals strolling by usually stop to give us a good looking over.  Staring is culturally acceptable and expected, but it's still hard to get used to it.