January 7th, 2016

6:02am

I packed everything into my luggage, surprised that my laundry bag full of clothes could fit inside as well. Compared to the flight down I was much kinder to my backpack this time around. I guess having all my power cables in the luggage was a big help.

I trundled off after a last look at my little hotel room.

Oh well. *Burns to the ground*

Not really, that would have cost me my deposit.

The front desk people were happy to see me, but didn't seem to realize I was checking out, or what I wanted to do. I showed the receipt that would hopefully get me my deposit back. Success! Add a hundred yuan to my budget.

By the time I left my room it was almost 9am, which is bad because I needed to be at Roosevelt for 9 to get my new reference number before I could then taxi to Zhongshan Square to get that money.

But something I hadn't counted on was just how difficult it was to drag my luggage behind me. After a few steps without fail the thing would start to wobble like nobody's(should this be singular possesive? Or "Nobodies"? Is that a thing? I should get better at this) business. It was frustrating, and I kept having to stop and straighten my luggage out. I tried to just carry it, but no go, it was too heavy. All I could do was keep myself low, and walk a little slower.

But I'm trying to get to the Roosevelt Center in a hurrrrry!

I must have arrived nearly 20 minutes after 9. Again, who knows for sure? Oh, well, yeah, this should be the one time I definitely do know, there're clocks in the computers, so fine, I just forget then.

I hopped on hotmail to see what Jordan had to say. I must have confused him with my urgent plea the day before, because he just re-sent the reference number I already had, instead of what I needed. I went to facebook to send him a message, no immediate response. I flipped on facebook chat to see who was online. Crystal. Good, she can operate with some urgency. She got my dad online, who tracked down Jordan who was at the gym, but returned home to help after my insistent scream of NOW.

By the time he returned it was naturally too late for me to go to Zhonghan Square, which I explained to Vicky and, again, it seemed okay. Okay.

I chatted with Jordan for a bit, and he gave an angry call to moneygram on my behalf to fix the name situation- a much better solution than any kind of new transaction, considering the news that the Canadian dollar took a hit yesterday.

So I made plans to go to Zhongshan Square the next day (I'll have to head out soon after a shorter writing session today)- but Vicky suggested the #405 bus would take me right there, and she drew where I could find said bus. This attention to detail will become important later, merely to note its absence in another area.

With the next few hours unexpectedly free to devote to preparing for my classes (or getting breakfast, but I didn't end up making that trip) I looked at my schedule for the day and saw that I had my first ever English Corner. You may recall I was concerned about how this would go, so I wanted to be prepared to do a really good job. A riveting, thoroughly original statement, I know, I know. 

I wanted to do something a little unexpected, a little different, and I'm not sure why exactly I thought of this, other than I was specifically on the lookout for some kind of Canadiana, but I decided to look up "The Log Driver's Waltz" video off youtube to share.

First problem: the English Corner computer doesn't have access to youtube, how do I record this video onto my USB thing? Alona (which may be a misspelling, logging onto facebook, in the login/username section was "Alena"something something- are you trying to tell me that people in China got her name wrong? No! Impossible! I'll ask her how she prefers it to be spelled.) showed me a website that I guess captures a youtube video in much the same way that Simon showed me how to take a music file from youtube. (If it's any consolation, I think all the music I took was at least 3 years old...) 

Second problem: I need to print off copies of the lyrics and vocabulary list I created, how do I do that? Turns out the comnputers for us foreign teachers can't, I have to pass my USB to one of the teachers from China, in this case Stella, to plug into her computer and print off. I then followed her to a back room where it printed out- a part I only mention because I HAD NO IDEA THIS ROOM EXISTED HOW DID I MISS IT??

But, great, printed out sheet, photocopied 25 times for the upcoming crowd, yes.

I then got some pictures to lead up to my big reveal of the Log Driver's Waltz video- most relevantly, a picture of a cowboy, a picture of a cattle drive, then a picture of a log drive, for the purposes of explaining the concept. I wasn't really sure I had an hour of material, but no time for anything else, I had my first class of the day.

When I went to pick up my class sheet I was surprised to find only one person listed. "VIP" the ladies at the front desk said. I assumed they were kidding, like, "no one else showed up, so the only student MUST be a VIP" with a sort of joking wink, you know, that kind of deal. Uh, it seems they meant it rather literally, as this was someone who had specifically purchased a one-on-one class. When I found out I was all "what? Ahh, I should be doing something special!"

The Assignment for the class was to discuss auctions, and, according to the lesson plan, we were supposed to have an auction between students "buying" from a list of sentences. Fortunately, the lessonplan did account for the possibility of one student, suggesting a game show environment. There weren't really more specific rules, so I played it by ear.

What I did was I started the student with $5000, and they could wager however much they liked on a sentence, which they then had to determine whether the sentence was correct or not, with the goal at the end to reach $10000. I didn't know if that was too easy or not, since I didn't make any restrictions on how much you could wager. I did try to limit exposure to the next sentence before the wagering process, so that was something.

There were some ups and downs, and my student mostly played it safe with bets of 10,20,30,40, growing after getting each question right... which of course meant that any time she got a question wrong she was almost certain to wind up back at the start (at the 30 mark anyways)- but she fought her way back up to 5000, then to 5070, and on the last question she wagered 5000 and got it right! She seemed really pleased, it was nice.

That was about it for that lesson plan, so I talked about what I was doing in my English Corner that was coming up in a few minutes. It was helpful review for me (in theory) and my student seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

The English Corner itself... was a huge mess. It seems the projector wasn't working, and EVERYTHING I'd had planned involved the projector. Yeah.

So I talked about how it was awesome that they named themselves- I should have gotten some of them to tell me why they named themselves what!!.. oh, well, wait, actually I did ask the one guy that. But I should have asked more people!- then I talked about "Isaac" the bible story around it, and specifically the Swedish naming convention (do you know "convention"?) about taking a last name based on your fathers name, and it getting switched around every generation: John has a kid named Mark, who becomes Mark Johnson, who has a kid named Sven, who becomes Sven Markson, etc. etc. with my grandmother being an "Isaacson". 

Then I talked a bit about some provinces of Canada, before eventually realizing that I could still pass out the lyrics to "Log Driver's Waltz" and discuss it, it would just be a much suckier presentation that would deprive me of a decent plan for a future presentation. Screw the future! Save the me in the now!

I was asked to sing it, and I said it wouldn't sound good because it's a song for a woman's voice (at least, until I could maybe figure out how to change it, again, I wasn't prepared to sing this). The class took turns reading out loud, and I repeated after them, but then I got into it a bit and started singing the verse we were on plus the chorus. Whoops.

It was a rough time. And no one told me when I was done, so I was looking foolish for an extra ten minutes after the whole ordeal should have been over! Next time, have a projector-less backup plan.

The next time being today. Okay. (*Edit* I didn't have one today)

A two hour break between classes at this point, I was getting set to finally grab some food, when I was approached by the student Steve and asked if I wanted to go eat with him and talk comics after his class was over in an hour. Sounds awesome, I was down. For the next 45 minutes I wandered the facebook until I clicked over to an article about political correctness which I just finished reading as Steve returned to leave- b-but I still had the rebuttal article to read! Nooo I wanted to hear both sides of this! Maybe I can find it today at work.

Steve, Bradley, and I (briefly joined by Sylar, who loves Heroes, yes) went for dumplings. I asked about the prices and was told only that it was cheap, but also that Steve was buying. Man, it's one thing to graciously accept things, but it's getting to be a bit much. What is this, three days in a row where I've gotten free meals? Where's my pride?! (Ha, don't worry, my pride comes back...)

Steve and I talked comics (he's disappointed that I've already seen The Force Awakens, but I'll totally see it again when it comes out here.. especially for my own sake, I need to either confirm or refute my previous opinions about the thing. Thus far I've taken a rather hardline stance on it. Ha, I seem to have started talking about Star Wars again, didn't I?) and Bradley was interested in sports, and geography. He said he wanted to go study in Germany, which I think, wait, is this a controversial opinion? I think that's awesome!

Okay, it's 7:27am, and I have to get to Zhongshan Square, so let me put a pin in this. I'll keep writing on my break today, unless I have yet to prepare my English Corner for the day, in which case this may not get finished until the evening. Fingers crossed I don't mix up the details for today and yesterday!

It's 10:11pm and I'm back. I decided I didn't want to carry my laptop around, so no writing on my break. I was busy anyway.

For my last class of the day (maybe I had an earlier one still, but I forget, I'm tired okay) the students were really pushing back against my attempts to hold to the lesson plan, so I ended up just answering questions about myself. One student, who was witness to my English Corner debacle, said I wasn't a good singer, which cut me deep, so naturally I had to sing some lines from the Zephyr Song to refute this and get people back on my side. And I won over the crowd! So that's good.

Perhaps I was helping their English, but mostly I was getting a personal boost. 

Ugh, I'm really tired. Listen, I'll finish this in the morning and then do the next entry, I've gotta sleep - 10:21pm

8:44am and I'm back- so with work over I needed to find my apartment. Vicky gave me the directions of it being two bus stops away, but that wasn't particularly helpful because there are lots of bus stops along the road, so "two away" doesn't make sense. After the fact I learned that different bus stops have different routes, different places where they stop. So it may be that getting on the bus at the stop right outside work would drop me off in front of my apartment after two of its official stops, but for the purposes of finding my apartment by foot, the "counting two bus stops" information wasn't helpful.

I had no address, either in Chinese OR English, so I couldn't take a taxi to get there, and I certainly couldn't look it up on a map (were I to have a map). All I knew for sure was that I couldn't be further east than Xi'an road, it couldn't be farther west than the one road whose name I don't know, and because my apartment was on the 11th floor it had to be a building with at least 11 floors. There were a finite number of options.

So I'm walking north on Xi'an to scan for possible candidate buildings, rolling my luggage behind me. The rolling skill had improved enough that I didn't have to be constantly frustrated about keeping the bag upright. Not constantly, anyways. There's one building tall enough right off Xi'an road, but I discounted it for being to close to the borders I had mentally put up in my search parameters. When I had visited the other day there was no way we had gotten this close to Xi'an. I hung a left, walked over a block, and started walking south, beginning my sweep anew.

I seemed to be approaching the southern border, the mall with a Wal-Mart in it, much quicker than I expected, which had me worried that I hadn't walked far enough north... I had a firm barrier to where my apartment could be to the south, east and west, but the north WAS a question mark. This had me concerned. Also, I had expected to see the Youth Hostel on the eastern side of Xi'an to give me a place to stay in case I failed. Instead of seeing the Hostel where I expected to find it, there were only hotels. Which, yes, are also a back-up plan.

Without having a firm northern cap to my search parameter, I decided the systematic sweep couldn't be as "systematic" or "sweepy" as I needed it to be to succeed. As I was already near the Wal-Mart, and therefore nearing the start of the path that we walked the previous day to go see this apartment, I had to try and remember or feel my way along that way.

It's an unfortunate road, cobblestones and traffic. Then again, that describes so much here, so what else is new? I'm walking north, and there are the tree/posts encircled by branches artificially placed there. I reach a bend in the road I wasn't sure of, until I saw the Micheline Man and his collection of blue and yellow tires, a very positive sign. This whole time I'm searching I'm listening to my music, music which was designed to be "Get You Pumped For Adventure" songs (for the most part, the Goo Goo Dolls stuff isn't in the same vein, and Call Me Maybe has a violin, you know that's coming along...". One place had a sort of gated community vibe, and I definitely didn't remember that. 

At one point I double backed to check a building I had dismissed, because I had to be thorough, and that wasn't even a building with 11 floors, it was just on enough of a hill to look like it. So I climbed up that hill, and carried my bag down some precarious stairs on the otherside, and moved on. Finally I tried this one building, a little close to Xi'an road (I could see it down the alley) but the entrance looked like what I remembered, a sort of jutting out box with the blanket door (they have blanket doors everywhere here, like a car was for people, to keep heat in) and inside a nice lobby. The lobby was in the ballpark, but not quite there... access to the elevator wasn't blocked (itself a divergence from what I expected) so I rode up to the 11th floor. I discovered an interesting smell, but there was no unit 25. 

Returning to the ground floor, I walked over to another entrance further east, even closer to Xi'an road, and everything was starting to click together. "Dare" from the original Transformers soundtrack had started playing:

"Out of the darkness you stumble into light/

Fighting for the things you know are right.

Dare! Dare to believe you can survive/

The power is there are your command.

Dare! Dare to keep all your dreams alive.

It's time to take a stand- and you can win if you dare!"

Man, it was perfect. Listen to the song if you can, you'll get how I was pumped.

There's a fingerprint reader to access the elevators, but one of the girls sort of working the night shift at the desk (I assume they work there, they were actually just chilling on the couch, but were wearing matching coats) opened the door for me and blew a kiss my way. Thanks!

And yeah, there it is. Found my place, was super happy, didn't have any water so I opted to skip the teeth brushing, and set about unloading. I was really looking forward to sleeping on this solid bed (which I'm beginning to realize is just the box spring, isn't it?), using my laundry bag as a pillow, and the blanket I swiped from the Detroit to Incheon flight.

I was pleased with myself. A spartan existence is what I set out to find, and by gum I found it.

It's 9:43 am, and with that day finished let me get on with the next..