Mike In China

Today I had my orientation sessions and moved into my apartment I will be staying in for the next five weeks and luckily, I have internet! I found out later that the only reason I have internet is because my roommate is a teacher at the school, so I scored pretty big with that one. My roommate is 32 and is a teacher at the school and he is originally from Ohio. He is very nice and very willing to help me out with any questions I have or anything I need. The apartment itself isn't too bad. Not super nice, but I have a/c and an internet connection in my bedroom so that’s all I need to be happy. I decided that I will be eating out all meals because David (my roommate) informed me that the roaches only come if you cook stuff. Seeing as how prices here are RIDICULOUSLY cheap, I think I will just eat out. The first week of my program is simply Mandarin Chinese lessons, which I am pretty excited about. We spend the morning learning Chinese and then the afternoons on "fieldtrips" to local sites to use the stuff we learned in the morning. It seems like a great way to learn and experience some of the city. By the way I am staying in Zhuhai (pronounced Jew-High). It is a "small" city in China of about 1 million people, that I guess was only a small fishing village ten years ago. There are going to be six people here in my program through the LanguageCorps. Two of the girls I have met already and the other girl and two other guys are coming tomorrow. After the first week we will be joined by about 12 others who are just here to get the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate and they will be in our class for the remaining four weeks. So far everyone has been very nice and extremely helpful. The girl I met at the airport, Michele, happens to have been to China twice already and speaks decent Chinese so it is great "exploring" with her because she can do some of the talking. We have a free day tomorrow so myself, Michele and Chi (born in Hong Kong, raised in Canada, went to school in Boston) are going to explore the city some on our own. Hopefully tomorrow night I will have some pictures to post. Please email me when you have the time, I always love to get emails.