For Wednesday, I am told to take a taxi at my normal, 9:30 time so I can teach English from 5-7 p.m. Vivian, her Chinese name Zhang Jin Li if I didn't write that earlier, wrote a note for me to hand the taxi driver and all I needed to do was get a receipt to be reimbursed. Sounds good.
Wake up Wednesday as usual and notice it's raining. The Chinese HATE rain. Even if there are a few drops here or there, the umbrellas come out. One man offered me a brand new umbrella Tuesday night while I was waiting for the bus because it was "raining". A very nice gesture, but for the amount of rain that was coming down, unnecessary.
I figured I would give myself an extra ten minutes to get to work to allow for the weather. Sure enough, the majority of the trip was pretty slow going. I can't imagine the Chinese trying to drive in the snow. I doubt anything, or anyone for that matter, would move.
We (the taxi driver and I) made it to LG for just over 54 Yuan, just over what Vivian had suggested. I told myself right before we pulled up to the gate not to forget the receipt. What did I do in true Elena fashion? Forget the receipt. Guess I'm going to eat that cost.
The first part of Wednesday was to finish up what I had started on Tuesday: an online survey about Dehumidifiers. I spent most of the day Tuesday taking the questionnaire one of the previous interns had put together, which I adapted late last week, and turned it into something more user friendly. Because LG ETA (the LG in Tianjin , China) R&D had not done a survey of this sort prior, the idea needed to clear a few stops before I got the go ahead. I completed the first part of the survey Tuesday and finished the second part of it before lunch on Wednesday, and with it, most of my work for the week. The only other thing was to get it sent out. Normally this wouldn't be too difficult, but I managed to make it very difficult! I would type up a long, descriptive email, only to have ALL of it be erased when I went to check an email I was entering. Awesome. That happened multiple times, on multiple emails, for a multiple of different dumb mistakes. I was tired! All of the interns were when we didn't really have a reason to be. We wrote it off as the change in seasons which thankfully didn't go back to hot and muggy after the Typhoon hit Japan.
With all those emailing errors, I didn't have much time to prep for my intermediate English class. It was going to be rough. Right before class I printed off a little conversation assignment only to find the printer completely occupied for the 20 mins. I had other activities to do after that, but now my lesson plan was messed up. Oh well. I should have been more prepared. Shortly into the lesson, Kyle-one of the other interns-steps in and tells me we are having dinner with the Indian visitor Muhesh @ 6:00 p.m. It was 5:30 and I was just now finding this out! Guess it was a blessing in disguise since it was probably going to be a teeth pulling lesson. My students want to talk a lot but not be taught English. However, they don't have the vocab to hold long conversations...this is my problem. I've been working out some different tactics and ways to approach the situation, so hopefully I can start making some progress with them. The advanced class is going really well... I think. I've been hearin mixed results with what I'm hearing from the amount they're talking and still hearing feedback on wanting to converse more. Don't know if the messengers telling me this know who is in which class, but I think that class will be much easier than the intermediate. We discussed Politics, the Economy-both U.S. and China-the house crisis. I tell ya, it was a pretty heavy conversation!
Anyways, 6:00 p.m. rolls around and I leave my class sitting in the classroom not really knowing what to do with their extra time. Kyle and I pile into the van with Muhesh and another member of LG here in Tianjin, and head to the hotel to pick up Samuel, the third intern, and Kyle's wife and son Charise and Damon. Anna, Samuel's wife would meet us there. We had back to Muhesh's hotel, right next to the Olympic soccer field!, where there is an Indian restuarante he wants to take us. So far my stomach hasn't had any problems so I figure I'll be okay. Muhesh orders dish upon dish upon dish to give us the full "Indian experience" we eat as much as physically possible then roll ourselves home. I foolishly said that I drink and since it was basically Muhesh and me drinking, I drank more than I wanted too (three glasses as opposed to none). I felt crummy! I think the last rice dish may have had egg in it. I'm pretty sure something did. My stomach was killing me by the time we got back to the hotel. I was so tired and so uncomfortable that I went straight to bed.
The next day I had to take the bus into work. It was too hard to role out of bed at 5:00 a.m. to do exercises, so I slept in until 6:00 a.m. when Anna called to wake me up since I left my cell phone at work. I was still so full and uncomfortable from the night before I got on the bus with a piece of bread and a small Chinese bun thing so I wouldn't be as nausiated riding the bus to work. In some aspects, I like riding the bus that early so I can see the other interns, but for everything else, I like going to work later. I had to take the bus early Thursday because I was going out for Thai with the group of people who had been working on the dehumidifier. So, I missed another English class.
This is Vivian (Zhong Jin Li). She's basically the person in charge of me. She and have been getting along very well and she makes sure nothing I eat when we go out has Egg in it. Needless to say my Thai meal was much less painful than the Indian meal. Oh, and I found out the hard way that Ice cream here has Egg in it, or at least the type I ate does. Thursday, after I had mostly recovered from my Indian night, I go to lunch with Vivan as usual. It was a nice day so she offered to get ice cream and show me the little convenience store next to the Caf. By the time we walked from the Caf back to our office I was already feeling it. Unfortunately, I thought it was my stomach being sensitive to eating again. Maybe ten minutes laters my whole body started hurting. It's a great feeling. I spent most of Thursday researching Window Air Conditioner and Dehumidifier units in the U.S, and after lunch spent a few minutes trying to figure out what foods have eggs in them. Turns out I can't eat much at all. Especially if it has a sauce with it. Oh well. This will make China a little more/less interesting. I also presented my intial survey results to the Indian Consultant. He gave me a bunch of ideas to move forward with, but I'm not entirely sure that they are something we are ready to move forward with, or ideas that I, in my position should tackle. I will look into them more after the National Holiday is over.
Dinner with my co-workers is always nice. This dinner was a little more mello than the first dinner I had with them, but they are all very careful about my egg allergy. By the end of my time here I think the whole company might know about it! What's funny, and I guess appropriate, is the first Chinese phrase I understood..."Elena can't eat egg", lol. I was pretty excited when I understood that!
Friday was another early and hard to get out of bed day. I tinked around at work most of the day, had my first Interns check up meeting and missed lunch to a crazy cool ping pong tournament the factor workers held. I ended up missing lunch to watch the event, which was worth it, but come dinner I was straving! This is terrible, but all I had for lunch was a cola given to me by one of my English students when I corrected his English for his powerpoint presentation. I also spent some of the day chatting on gmail and looking up jacket and dress designs to have tailor made here. I'm pretty excited about that, but I think I'll wait for the weather to cool off a bit.
I hopped on teh 5:00 p.m. bus with the other interns, then Kyle, Charise, Damon and I all headed down to the Brazilian BBQ place they know of. It was an experience!
This was my first time eating tongue and heart... wow. (and yes, that's the tip of a Pickled Ox Tongue) Surprisingly not too bad. We had type after type of meat on giant skwers come around. I don't even know all that I tried! But, again, something some where had egg in it. I wasn't feeling to great when we left. On the way home the three of us wree suddenly surrounded by this massive shapes that came up behind us. Turns out there are tall people in China! Three extremely tall Chinese men walked by, with two more following right behind them. It was hillarious! I tried taking a picutre, but it was too dark and they were too far away to get on that wasn't blurry. I debated on running up and asking if I could have a pic with them, but thought that might be too much. However, Kyle pointed out it would only be returning the favor since so many people take pics of us, whether or not we know about it.
For whatever reason, I wasn't tired last night and preceeded to stay up til 1 am talking with mom, Cyndi and Genevieve on Skype. I also got to talk with Ginger, a cousin who is studying in CHILE! Had a perfectly clear and extremely fun conversation. I figure, by the time we both get back to the States with our languages combined we'll be able to talk to more than half the world! She knows Spanish and is learning German, and I have bad Spanish, Italian and even worse French and Chinese. lol. What a thought!
So that was extremely long winded, but that's up to the end of my second week here. Happy anniversary me!
Love you all and more later!
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