A new semester at Siyuan

My whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia has unfortunately come to an end. Returning to freezing cold and unnaturally gray Xi'an was depressing at first. However, since I've returned things have been going my way. Here are a few reasons why this semester will be better than the last:

I. NEW APARTMENT

Last semester I was promised a new apartment when I returned from winter holiday. When I returned, Siyuan made good on that promise and I couldn't be happier. My new apartment is more than twice as big as my old apartment. It has a bedroom and bathroom of the same dimensions as my previous apartment, but it also has a living room, kitchen, and balcony! Here are some pictures:

My kitchen

Full size fridge

The living room. Leather couch and chair

I have a TV

The view from my balcony. I'm thinking about buying a grill...

The bedroom. Much more spacious now that its not the only room I have to live in.

My home office.

Even the closet is bigger

II. NEW TEACHING SCHEDULE

Last semester I was teaching 22 hours/week. That is a total of 6 hours overtime (the contract is 16 hours/week), although overtime is not compensated at a premium as in America. This semester I am teaching 16 hours/week. The best part is that these classes are on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, giving me a four day weekend to do some domestic traveling.


III. TIMELY PAYMENTS

My contract states that I receive payment on the 10th of each month. However, Siyuan had not been to observant of this part of the contract last semester. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had been paid on March 10th for my work in February. This was especially welcome considering how low my funds had sunk over the course of my two month vacation...


IV. THE WEATHER

When I returned to Xi'an in late February it was...painful to be outside. Over the past few weeks the weather has significantly improved. I no longer need to wear my heavy coat outside during the day nor do I need to heat my apartment to keep from freezing. Also it stays light outside until 7:30. This is only the beginning. Soon I will be dressing like I did in Thailand!


DRAWBACKS

The only negative of the semester so far has been the departure of nearly all the other foreign teachers. No longer do I live with Colleen (Canada), Marc (UK), Sebastian & Pilar (US/Chile), Annabelle (Philippines), and Gerard (South Africa). I miss you all. I hope you are enjoying life after Siyuan.

As far as foreign teachers goes, only Chris (US) and I remain. There is a new teacher Matt (US), but he has a family and does not live at the university. I guess I will be spending a lot of my free time trying to meet new friends.

XMAS

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Over the past few weeks its been beginning to look a lot like Christmas...sort of. Very few Chinese are christians, but that has not stopped Christmas from becoming a holiday that is celebrated. Mostly the holiday has caught on through retailers who want to capitalize on the holiday's commercial success in the States. The following are some of the holiday decoration I've seen downtown.

CHRISTMAS IN XI'AN

A christmas tree complete with presents in the hostel I like to stay in

Stockings at the front desk of the hostel

Santa is on the doors of nearly every store in Xi'an

A modernist christmas sculpture

This apparently is Santa's favorite hotpot restaurant

Santa holding up an LED billboard

This christmas present is bigger than my apartment

What better to get the one you love for christmas than a couple bottles of tea?

Peppermint pillars

Christmas sales at the Time Traveler With Love store

More Santa on storefronts

A fairly large Christmas tree. Looks like they ran out of ornaments for the bottom right side.

Santa's Chinese name translates to "Christmas Old Man" 

Why not spend Christmas at one of Xi'an's hot springs?

SIYUAN CHRISTMAS CEREMONY

To celebrate Christmas, the International School at Siyuan University put on a special ceremony. Of course the foreign teachers were special guests, so we got front row seats for the two hour event. After watching the show, I fully understand why Christmas is and will always be less popular than in America.

Waiting for me at my front row seat were complementary seeds, fruit, and tea to be enjoyed during the performance.

Student musicians--playing the Sax, Trumpet, Flute, Piano, and two Chinese instruments I dont know.

Here are some videos of the performances:

MY CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

Here is my Christmas decoration, a paper snow globe that my family sent me. Thanks Mom, Dad, and Virginia; I love you.

Halloween in China

Happy belated Halloween!

Although Halloween is not a holiday celebrated in China, I certainly got my Halloween fix here. The week leading up to Halloween I gave a special Halloween lesson in all of my classes to explain the traditions of the holiday in America. For the classes that have projectors I was able to show a powerpoint with pictures to explain what witches, ghosts, candy corn, corn mazes, etc are. For the other classes I had to be more creative in my explanations. Fortunately American movies and TV shows are very popular in China. So between Twilight, Harry Potter, and the Vampire Diaries, explaining traditional Halloween costumes was actually pretty easy. I was surprised to find that most of my students watch the AMC series The Walking Dead--a post-apocalyptic zombie series that takes place in Atlanta. When I told my first class that zombies are dead people that walk, one student said, 'you mean like the walking dead'. At least one student in each of my classes had seen the TV series, but because it never uses the term zombie, none of them had ever heard the word before.

On Saturday I went into the City for an expat Halloween party/buffet. The event was hosted by Xianease, an expat magazine for Xi'an. It took place at a very nice Italian restaurant, the first I've seen in China, and cost 75RMB for the buffet. Unfortunately the event was underwhelming. Only about 30 people attended the event, and that includes Chinese nationals. The 'buffet' was only hors d'oeuvres and a few pizzas that we discovered hidden in the corner of the room. The highlight of the night was pumpkin carving, which was worth the 75RMB in itself.

I forgot how messy pumpkin carving is...

...or how dangerous carving pumpkins is with dull knives in a dark room

My Jack-o-lantern

Here's a shot for the Xianease magazine

On Monday the foreign teachers and I threw a Halloween party for our students. We each contributed 100RMB ($16) a piece for decorations and food. We were able to convince the manager of a local bar to let us use his space to host the event. The alternative was a classroom which lacks the sound system, dance floor, colored lights, and fog machine necessary to throw a real Halloween party. We told our students that we would provide candy and refreshments for free, but they had to wear a Halloween costume. Turn out was great. We had more than 100 students attending and about 90% wore costumes.

The one holding the bamboo is a panda

Waitresses at the bar

Chinese Princess, Burglar, Vampire

Vampire

I recognize that panda from somewhere

One of my students told me this was her first time dancing in public

It wouldn't be Halloween in Asia without at least one Anime character

My students are hard workers

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a video has got to be a dictionary's worth. This is my first attempt at uploading a video to my blog. I am filming from my second floor classroom in building K3. In the video I pan  across buildings K1 then K2 and the court yard of the international school, then into the classroom. You then see my students hard at work. Let me know what you think of the video by writing a comment below. I will try to post more videos in the future.

What chinese college students do in their free time

I've asked students in all of my classes what they do for fun in their spare time. The most common responses have been 'sleeping' and 'I have no free time'. But through weeks of careful investigation into the matter, I have found that students here do more than just study and sleep. Below is my list of the most popular activities among students at Siyuan University.

6 ROLLERBLADING/SKATEBOARDING

There may not be many students who can rollerblade or skateboard, but those who can usually draw large crowds of onlookers. There is only one small area of campus where these activities take place. It appears there are more bladers and than boarders because they often have exclusive use of the skating grounds. The bladers seem pretty talented, but I dont remember the last time I saw inline skating in the US, so who am I to judge. I've seen some of the boarders land jumps and olies, so they've probably been at it a while but are no Shawn White.

5 SURVEYING

Ok, well this one doesnt quite count because I doubt students are doing it in their free time. Unless there is a surveying club that I dont know about. But seriously almost everywhere I go on campus I see students surveying. I guess with all the construction going on in China (four in five cranes in the world are in China) that surveyors are in high demand.

4 PING PONG

Chinese students love table tennis. Although the school has supplied more outdoor tables than meet demand. There are several courts like the one pictured above around campus, but they usually have just a few games being played. The courts are not very well maintained as you can see from the grass coming through the concrete.

3 BASKETBALL

Basketball is by far the most popular sport here at Siyuan. Most guys here idolize Kobe and Lebron. At first I thought the number of courts on campus were overkill, but on weekends they do seem to fill up. I'm not sure what was going on in the shot above, but I think it was a tournament.

2 SHOPPING

This is number two because it is what most girls do with all of their free time. Because Siyuan is a private school, many of the students are rich and have money to spend after class and on weekends. Boys dont like shopping as much as girls do, but any guy with a girlfriend will be roped in to shopping with her. These guys are easy to spot because they are left carrying their girlfriend's purse.

1 COMPUTER GAMES

Without a doubt the number one activity among college students, even girls. When I pried at my students to find out why they had 'no free time', most confessed that they dedicate most of their waking hours playing video games. There are dozens of internet bars on and off campus that are literal caves packed with hundreds of computer monitors to meet the insatiable demand of the student body. I recently discovered that there is a special rate--8RMB--for an all night session from 11pm to 8am. And many students do just that. It is no wonder why so many come to class exhausted or dont come at all.

Wildlife of the hills of Xi'an

Siyuan University's campus is pretty far from the city center of Xi'an. It takes me an hour on an express bus line to get from Siyuan to the center of town. The hills of Siyuan's campus have maintained a pastoral character in contrast to the rapidly urbanizing valley below. Yet it has taken me three weeks to identify wildlife living on campus. Only after I changed my definition of wildlife was I able to spot any.

The typical wildlife present in the American countryside just aren't here. No rabbits, deer, squirrels, rodents etc. If these animals do live in China, they have been chased away by a different kind of wildlife--stray dogs and cats. There are packs of dogs that roam the streets of Siyuan. At first I thought they were pets of the students, but I have since learned that pets are forbidden to the students. Cats walk the aisles of the cafeterias in search of scraps. The only 'typical' kind of wildlife I've since are giant toads. And I assume they are around because the dogs and cats know they are poisonous.

Stray cat outside of my favorite cafeteria

Giant toad on the footstep of my building...most definitely poisonous

 Earlier this week while I was teaching a class, a stray dog came in and curled up under a student's desk. The dog was in the room for 15 minutes before I discovered it. I think the students were trying to hide it from me because Chinese teachers would not tolerate a dog in their classroom. They were quite surprised when all I did was take a few pictures and leave the animal be.

Is that a louis vitton knock-off?

Oh wait, its just a puppy.

I like to think he left my lecture with a better understanding of the English language.

The girls in my class seemed to really enjoy the dog. I asked them who owned the dog. They told me 'he's homeless'. I showed my pictures to students in my other classes. They were all pretty jealous that they had no dog show up in their classroom. One guy who I showed the pictures to was not as pleased. 'Dogs are forbidden. They are filthy and carry disease,' he told me. I asked him what he had against dogs. He grabbed his ankle and said, 'I was bit when I was a child'. I have to admit he's not wrong about them being filthy. Because all the dogs are homeless, most of their diet is made up of garbage. However dogs are not the only things eating garbage at Siyuan.

What's that pecking on garbage?

I really hope these guys are 'homeless' too...just to be safe, I'm not eating at this restaurant anymore.