Mike In China

This week has been our first week teaching students. Its not too bad. I think I will like it more when I have a text book to teach out of instead of having to go home and make pictures every night. It is also pretty difficult becuase we always teach different students and its hard to know the level of the students before you actually teach them. For example we are told to teach animals. The know many animals and its pretty hard to randomly find the few animal words they don't know. Apparently tomorrow I go to the school where all the boys are obnoxious, so I'm not too excited about that. I guess I will just have to show them who's boss! Our first visa expires on Sunday so we are going to Macau on Friday. Macau used to be owned by Portugal but they just gave it back to China and so it is sort of part of China and sort of it's own thing. Either way it counts as leaving the country. We hope to tour the city, hit up the dog track and the casinos. I'm excited to learn how to play craps and Phoebe says she will teach me so that should be cool. As my days are coming to an end in Zhuhai I feel like I should give a more accurate description of how it contrasts with the U.S. Here is a picture of the chickens for sale outside when I leave my building. Can you say bird flu? Zhuhai is apparently one of the cleanest cities in China, however people still feel it is perfectly find to piss or crap anywhere there is grass. Infact, infants pants have slits in the crotch so all the have to do is squat when they need to go to the bathroom. We have seen many a child with their pants down at a bus stop and many a strange old lady coming out of the bushes along a busy street and don't worry when we walk past the area smells like poop. The city itself would be really pretty except for one thing. There are bars on all the windows of all the apartments. We have yet to figure out why they need bars on the balconies and windows of a 20 story building. The main thing that screams communism is the fact that everywhere you go there are TONS of people "working" in a store but none of them are doing anything. Communism gaurantees everyone a job, that doesn't mean they have to actually be useful. There is an electronics store we past most days and the store itself is maybe the size of a living room and dining room put together. Our record number of people we've seen working in that tiny space is 11. Can you believe that?! Here is a picture in a department store we were in one day. Try to count the number of workers standing around. I was sort of mad becuase two of them starting putzing with that sign as soon as I took the picture, but I think there are still nine women in the picture. Time for bed.