A place to call home

Loyal readers,

I’m so sorry I was forced to leave you for so long without an update. I’m sure many of you assumed that I was just slacking, a sentiment not without reason, as I have a history of forgetting to update my blog for months at a time. This however, was not the case. Since I moved into my apartment 14 days ago, I have been without internet access. I’ve be going to a local internet café for my daily internet fix, but there’s something about filthy keyboards and nosey Chinese teenagers that just kills the blogging mood.

So much has happened to me over the past week. I moved into my first Chinese apartment, I met my liaison (a Chinese woman who will be guiding me through this year: part translator, part intermediary, and part local expert), I visited several surrounding cities, including the birth place of Chairman Mao, and started formal teaching. There is just too much information to put in one entry, as such an entry would be far too long for mere mortal readers. Though I know some of you have super human reading abilities, I have to think of my multi-level readership when I write these entries. So here’s the plan. This entry will be devoted to the city of Zhuzhou and my apartment. Sometime during the weekend I will write an entry about my school and my first week as a middle school English teacher. And in the not so distant future I will fill you in on my modest travels. So here it goes.

Zhuzhou is a bustling city of 3.5 million people located about an hour south of Hunan’s capital, Changsha. It is know for its industry, which means that the pollution level in this area is out of control by western standards. The best air quality day anywhere in China is far worse than the worst day in America, and Zhuzhou is among the worst in all of China on a regular basis. In fact, Zhuzhou ranks in the top 20 of the world’s most polluted cities. This means that while living in Zhuzhou one must completely change their stance on what exactly constitutes a “bad” air quality day. I, for example, now consider a day which I can see the sky a “good” day and days that the sky is completely blanketed with lovely gray smog “bad” days. I haven’t noticed many personal affects of the poor air and I hope things stay that way throughout the year.

My apartment is located on the campus of Zhuzhou Number Two Middle School (or Er Zhong). Er Zhong is the best senior middle school in Zhuzhou, so it is known by most all the locals. It borders Yandi Square, a large square devoted to the city’s patron god, Yandi.

One of the best things about the location of my apartment is that many bus lines run through Yandi Square, making travel within the city a breeze. The apartment complex I live in houses the families of teachers who work at Er Zhong and Jing Yan Middle School, where I work. Jing Yan and Er Zhong have some type of connection, which I have yet to completely figure out. At this point I’m thinking that Jing Yan is a feeder school for Er Zhong, but I could be completely wrong. In China, middle school is the school between primary school and university, thus it includes American middle and high school grade levels. Jing Yan has the equivalent to US grades 7-9 and Er Zhong only has grades 10-12, so together they make one middle school.

At any rate, my apartment is located on the 6th floor of my apartment building. The building does not have an elevator, which means I’m going to have killer legs by the end of the year. One of my site mates, Kelly, is on the second floor of my building, but I choose the top floor apartment for the forced exercise. There are days when I hate myself for that decision, but I can see the hard work paying off already. My apartment has a living room, dining room, kitchen, office, two bed rooms, a bathroom (with a western toilet) and a laundry/sunroom area. That description alone makes it sound fabulous, but you have to remember that I’m in China. My apartment is rather nice, by Chinese standards, but it isn’t what we would rave over in America. The windows are exceedingly drafty (as in doors have blown shut when the windows are closed), the kitchen sink is at mid-thigh level, the bathroom sink has a very good possibility of falling off the wall sometime this year, and there isn’t really what we would call a shower area. There is a showerhead on the wall of my bathroom and the whole bathroom serves as a shower.


And one of the more troubling aspects of my apartment is the lack of a mattress on my bed. There are simply 8 or 10 blankets stacked on top of one another. Granted, my friends who do have mattresses are hardly better off, I don’t even have one! The color of my bed and wardrobe almost make up for the lack of a mattress though.
Other than those few things, my apartment is just fine and compared to where other first year teachers are living, I have it very well. All things considered, I’m happy to call apartment 602 my home for the next year.

Along with all the interesting Chinese furniture, my apartment came stuffed full of items left by the previous inhabitants. I was hoping that the previous volunteer teacher who lived here would have left a few things for me. A hair dryer, a working electric blanket, and an iron would have been nice. While I didn’t find any of those things, I did find a piggy bank full of money, a large Mao calendar, a few racy magazine pictures, old underwear in a box, and pictures of what the apartment used to look like. Most of the things I’ve come across have been complete junk and so I’ve been doing the world a service by throwing them out. Other things have been very interesting/ pretty cool. I’ve yet to go through all the drawers and closets, but I’m excited to see what I might find next. There’s a large trunk on one of the upper shelves that is too heavy to lift down. I’ll keep you updated on what treasures might be there once I find someone to help get it down.

I think that will do for now. I hope you got your fill of pictures and stories from China through this post. Another will be coming the next several days detailing my first week as a teacher and my school home for the year.

Hope things are well in the states. Try and steer clear of all the hurricanes I’ve been reading about in the news.

Ashley