Today was the first “real” week of school here at TFSU. Last week, the third year classes started, but this week, all the freshmen and sophomores have begun classes as well.

I had my first two classes this morning. Fortunately, four of my classes this week are for the same level, same class. So I can repeat my lesson plan quite a bit. I felt bad for my first class today, because I can definitely see my lesson plan improving each time I use it.

As much as I tried to plan out, there are just little things that are tough to anticipate. For example, I thought students wouldn’t like speaking in front of the class, that they would feel scared and intimidated. So when I was trying to explain our game today, in the first class, I used myself as an example. They sort of understood, but not very well. Then when I started handing out the materials, the first person to receive them stood up in front of the class, because she thought I wanted each person to talk in front of the whole class, instead of with partners, like I had said.

In the second class, I was ready. I asked for two volunteers (who were slightly reluctant, but it only took about 30 seconds of waiting before I got two) , and I had those two demonstrate the game instead of pretending to do it myself. That class understood a lot better after seeing the actual game process acted out in front of them. (It was the game where you wear index cards on your forehead of a famous person, and then ask “Yes/No” questions to guess who is on your card.)

I had also planned some quieter, individual activities (journaling and exercises from the textbook), and they definitely did not seem to enjoy that as much.

It’s tough because the class is technically “writing,” but they all want to practice oral English much more! After today’s experience, I realize that I need to include much more emphasis on oral activities in the classroom and give them all opportunities to do a lot of speaking in class. Hopefully along the way, we get enough writing done to justify the fact that it is a “writing” class

We have been in China for officially 8 days now, although it feels like a month. Initially, the culture shock hit us like a bus running a red light (a rather common occurrence here). Now that we’ve been here for a week now, things are starting to sort themselves out, including our couch situation.

On Wednesday, I taught my first class. They are 3rd year English/International Business students and started classes early because they didn’t have to do their military training (1st and 2nd year students have to do a couple weeks of training before the school year starts). There, I met Eric and Arthur, my class monitors. Their role is, basically, to help me survive. Really, it is. Arthur and Eric toured me around campus, showing me all of the mysterious buildings I hadn’t entered. They showed me the best lines to take on the bus (1 yuan as opposed to 9+ for a taxi). They introduced us to the small, tucked away cafeterias sprinkled around campus. Basically, they helped us feel like locals instead of tourists. Which is good, because we can’t afford to be tourists.

Most importantly, they helped us find our couch! Yes, when we moved into our apartment we found a disturbing lack of comfortable seating. The best advice we got was to check out the Beijing Ikea. We looked online, and the prices are “foreign goods” prices. For a basic futon, it would run an entire month’s salary! So, when Eric and Arthur asked me, “Is there anything we could help you find?” I had my list ready.

Both of them took their Saturday afternoon to help us shop. The first mall we checked out had prices comparable to Ikea and looked more like couches for the Nouveau Riche rather than the Nouveau Middle Class. Leaving that mall, we got a tip from the taxi driver to check out a warehouse-type mall. This is the kind of place that you only can find if you (or someone else you know) has been there before, i.e. we would never have found it on our own. After snaking through a Chinese open air grocery store, we happened upon the warehouse mall, or, what I shall now refer to as waremall. At the waremall, the building was packed with beds and couches, so much so that only two narrow passages allowed shoppers to get through. After finding prices within our budget, we shopped and found the perfect couch! Check out the couch in all of its plush glory:

This couch is so much more than a couch. Like Batman is the symbol of justice, this couch is the symbol of a big step in our acculturation. We had locals help us find this place. We finally found something we wanted at a good price. It makes us feel like we can not just survive, but live here.

As we’re experiencing textbook culture shock right now, we’re having many experiences that are worth blogging about. Unfortunately, the internet in our building was out for a couple of days, so we couldn’t share these experiences with you. Now, the internet is back in business, and here is the first of many “WHAT??” moments from China.

As you know from our last post, our apartment was dirty as all get out when we moved in. It took us almost a week, but we have finally gotten most of the dirt/dust cleaned up. We swept, mopped, washed the curtains, taped up cracks in the balcony door to try and keep more dust from coming in… we really went all out.

But one thing was standing in the way, the obstacle of the bedroom. At first, our plan was to give the bedroom a cursory cleaning in case we ever had guests who wanted to stay in the room, but otherwise, use it as a storage room and never go in there. We thought we could buy a futon and a couch for our living room and just sleep in there, have our dining table in there, basically do everything there. (It’s a pretty huge room, and while it would be cramped, we thought it would be easier to do that than to spend hours cleaning the other room so it was clean enough to sleep in every night for the next year.)

Then we ran into trouble buying a futon or couch (neither of which we have at the moment, even after a week here). We looked at a couple of places, but they were WAY more than we wanted to pay (like $500 US). On our meager salaries of $6000 US for the entire year, a $500 couch or futon is out of the question. So we slept on the very dusty twin-size beds the school provided for the first several days and decided we would make the best of it with them.

Yesterday, it was finally time to tackle the bedroom cleaning. Every other room had been adequately swept, dusted, and mopped. So we put on our cleaning clothes and got to work. One of the first things we did was to strip the beds of their sleeping pads and wash them. Our first day here, Matt had washed the sheet set and tablecloth sheet (as mentioned in our last post), so at least the top layer of our sleeping area was clean. But we knew there was probably a whole lot of dust underneath that. Since Matt is allergic to dust, we figured we should do as thorough a job as possible of getting the sleeping pads cleaned out.

Once we stripped the beds, we realized that instead of two mattresses, we actually had one mattress and one box spring. So Matt, it turns out, had been sleeping on a box spring with a couple of sleeping pads on top of it. (Angel had no idea since the box spring was cleverly disguised with the sleeping pads on top of it, but apparently Matt had noticed and was not a fan. He just hadn’t said anything because he’s too sweet to complain and he had been hoping our futon dreams would work out.)

We made our best attempt to wash the sleeping pads (2 of which are made just of foam, the others are made of strange cotton material that apparently gets super nasty and flaky when you wash them). Washing the pads seemed to make them fall apart a bit too much, so we thought we’d just run to the store and buy new ones. How expensive can foam be, right?

Well, maybe not expensive, but it’s very hard to find. We spent about three hours walking to the two stores that are in walking distance to the campus (Tesco and Century Mart), only to find that neither one sells plain foam sleeping pads. They both sell 300 RMB premium sleeping pads (about $47 US). So we could have spent almost $100 US on huge, thick luxury sleeping pads. But that’s not exactly in our budget. Particularly when we haven’t gotten paid yet.

So we walked dejectedly back home last night and determined that we would make the best of it. We put Chinese exercise mats down on the box spring (which actually look more like blocks that kids in the US play with in the bathtub) and hoped that it wouldn’t be too unbearable. Matt laid down on it first. “Okay, this is not comfortable at all,” he said.

The exercise pads, not a comfortable option

“Alright, I’ll try it,” Angel said. She thought about how Josh Okerman slept on a box spring for years after college and decided she could handle one night.

One night was enough. Today, we went to our FAO (Foreign Affairs Officer) and asked him if the school could give us another mattress.

Our FAO doesn’t speak a lot of English, and we don’t speak a lot of Chinese, but with the help of one of the other staff members at the school who speaks a little more English, we thought everything was worked out. They made a phone call and told us that someone would come with another mattress after 2 pm.

Since our internet was broken, we had to go find some free wifi to finish lesson planning before our classes on Monday. (Angel starts bright and early at 8 am, so she desperately needed to get some printing done today, since the printer room isn’t open over the weekend.) While we were at a cafe using the wifi, they came to “deliver our mattress.”

Now we have another box spring and no mattress

Wood doesn't feel so good on your back

Two more dirty pads to add to the growing collection

When Angel got home shortly after 3 pm, she discovered that instead of bringing a mattress, they had taken the original mattress and replaced it with a new bed frame (that granted, was in better shape than our old bed frame – which looked like it might fall apart at any moment) and…another box spring. So now we have two matching bed frames and two matching wooden box springs.

No mattress at all anymore.

We waited for another hour, thinking maybe they had to go back and get two nicer mattresses and are on their way with them now.

Nope. At 4 pm, we went back to the FAO and tried to explain what we want. Not two box springs, but two mattresses. We don’t want to sleep on wood.

He seemed to understand and made another phone call. He told us they would bring another mattress.

Just now, they delivered two more dirty mattress pads. The kind that get nasty and flaky when you wash them. So washing them is out of the question (they’ll just fall apart), but inhaling dust while you sleep isn’t exactly enjoyable either. It’s now 5 pm, so everyone is probably leaving for the weekend and we have little chance of getting a mattress before Monday. If ever.

We met one of our colleagues yesterday, a Japanese teacher from Tokyo who lives below us. They gave her a Japanese style apartment, so her bed is a thick Japanese style bed that is meant to go on the floor. Her bedroom looks quite clean. And we are wishing we had Japanese rooms (and mattresses) right about now, instead of wooden box springs with dirty, thin mattress pads to go on top.

Here’s hoping our foam pads dry out soon…