Alive in Jiangxi

After little debate, I have decided that the proper course of action for me to take in this new town is to attempt to establish some sort of mythos. No, not by going out and doing dumb stuff, but by doing slightly odd things in a visible way. Or maybe that's stupid because anything that I do will draw attention, so it doesn't have to be weird and people will still probably tell stories about me. Yeah, that's the one. We all took a stroll through the main street in the city, and people would come running to shop windows to look at us just walk down the road like normal people, and I ate KFC under the intrigued eyes of many locals.

If you couldn't tell, I'm finally situated in my long term placement here in Fuzhou, Jianxi, PRC, and as of right now, things are pretty, pretty good. I get my own room, which means I have my own twin sized bed, a TV, desk, my own bathroom, air conditioning, and oddly enough, a beer fridge. However, the room also comes with what appear to be a fairly substantial number of cockroaches, and a general odor of mold that I plan on investigating. All and all, pretty damn good. Oh, and I have pretty nice internet access now all the time, so Skype away, people.

The school seems pretty nice, and if it isn't actually nice, it most certainly is sprawling. It's larger than any school I've ever been to, with buildings that just kinda seem like they go on forever, and a real moat on the outside. Plus, it has a pretty nice track, so I'm going to start running again with Vang. The food here is awful, so I think I'm going to have to work up an appetite to get myself to not wither away entirely, so hopefully at least some good will come out of this for me physically. All of the staff is super helpful, and I shouldn't have any problems with dealing with them in the future. Teaching with them might be significantly more difficult, because I'm teaching way more kids than I ever thought I would be in my life. How many? Oh, 50-60 in every standard class, and an unknown number in the 'international' classes. Plus, we set the curriculum for the international classes, and we know precious little about their skill level. So far, the only thing I know I'll be doing with them is journals. More on that as I develop it.

The town is also better than I was anticipating. There are a few shops around the school that have the inventory equivalent of an American convenience store, and a supermarket about a mile down the road. We're about a 15 minute bus ride from the heart of town, and there's a lot of shopping to be done there if you're into that kind of thing. Google says there's a couple of bars around up there, and you can bet that if there's a bar here, I'm going to find it. Other than that hope that Google is correct, there's not a whole lot else to do here. Good thing there's enough bandwidth for Nexflix and Hulu in my room. I've got some stories from travel that are worth typing up, but not now. Traveling for two months and finally getting to a place that I can consider home in some strange way has drained my enthusiasm to write much other than an extended status update. Lord knows I'll get bored soon and write a bunch of them down. Maybe I'll do a reflection on my two months of travel. That actually sounds pretty neat.

-Cooper