Week One in Dalian...

Today marks the end of my first week in Dalian. It has been quite a week full of pleasant and not so pleasant discoveries. Dalian truly is a beautiful city and it is a very young city. I believe that it is only about a hundred years old. When I arrived here I was greeted at the airport by the woman who coordinates the EIE program at Liaoning Normal University. EIE is the English learning program at the University. She was very gracious and they brought me back to the apartment I am staying in for the next month. The inside of the apartment is actually quite nice and it has been really comfortable so far. I am living with another guy who is from Canada who is studying Asian Studies and is quite proficient in Chinese. Then there is a woman from Chicago who has a one bedroom apartment close by. I feel bad for her because her apartment does not have any air conditioning. We lucked out with an awesome air conditioner in our apartment!

The second day I was here I met a bunch of English speaking people from the west and went to this game night at a local bar that caters to expats. It was really fun and I actually met a gay couple who have really helped me get acquainted with Dalian and have been very helpful. Our school treated us to a huge meal with an important and high ranking official in Dalian. There was so much different and strange food. Luckily I was able to say I was a vegetarian and I ate an egg and tomato dish with broccoli and egg drop soup. It was delicious and we had a ton of leftovers! The food part has perhaps been the most difficult thing for me to adjust to. I am not an adventurous eater but luckily I have figured out how to make it work and I have found some local foods that I really enjoy. My roommate has helped me out a bunch because he is able to tell me what everything is.

This past week we completed training for our program which really just turned out to be marketing for the EIE program at the school I am teaching at. It was ok and 5 out of 6 of the classes we taught were very well behaved and the students were really cute, sweet and super smart. The last one was shockingly badly behaved and there was a handful of really defiant kids in the class. In China this is unusual because they are taught from such a young age to be so respectful to their teachers. We taught science projects to middle school aged students and it was fun for the most part. There have been a couple of things so far that have been extremely disappointing about the teaching aspect. I am not sure if the program I went through is aware of it but what was communicated to me through them and the expectations I had are completely different then what is actually happening here. I thought that I was going to work 4-5 days a week for 20 hours + 2 office hours. What the school here has actually done though is set it up so that we have to work 6 days a week and our schedule is super inconvenient with them having us work Monday-Friday from hours spread out between 8:30am and 3:30pm (for example I work 10:30am to 3:30pm with a two hour break in the middle) and between 6 and 8 hours on Saturdays. I need to contact the agency I went through and see if they can contact the school and communicate that I am not going to work more than 22 hours a week. As long as that is the case then yeah it sucks and I am disappointed but I can try and make the best out of the situation. Luckily I have a lot of travel time before and after this and I know I can still have a great time here.

Outside of school so far I have explored a bit of the city and gotten three massages so far. It is amazing. A full body massage for an hour and a half costs about 9 dollars. I am going to try and get a massage every other day while I am here! Today I hope to go explore the beach and a Buddhist temple in town. I will write more next week!