Enroute to (actually in) China

It's my second day here.  Morning is foggy, but it clears up quickly. I try to make some eggs, but the electric cooking device that Megumi so graciously lent to me doesn't work with my materials.. I nearly destroy a stainless steel bowl in the attempt. (it bends itself from the sudden heat and starts to stink) Coffee will have to do for the meal.  Diane is waiting for me already when I manage to leave my room and we make our way down to the school. This is my second visit and it's already starting to feel familiar. We wait around a while and I meet a filipina, Gloria, and her husband Manuel. She's a kindergarten teacher at the school, and more importantly, she speaks the dialect I grew up with in the Philippines. !!

Mrs. Lee arrives at the school and has a moment to give the proper directions for my medical stuff.  Apparently, if I'd brought the forms from the US with me, they'd be able to just transfer them to a legitimate Chinese document, but I was not informed that I should bring them. I was simply told that I would be getting another physical examination upon my arrival.  So!  So Gloria has some time available and takes me to the medical place for the exam.  She's so delighted to have a cebuano speaker here and takes the time to tell her story, though she talks so fast, and the bus we take (for only a yuan/ 60c) is so noisy that I only get the half of it.  Her Chinese is understandable to the people at the medical place and so we get properly directed to all the various offices for the form.  It's very very quick.  This is also the first time I've ever gotten an ultrasound.  I'm a boy! Heh, but they didn't find anything interesting.  I think the only test I failed was the vision test, and that was pretty obvious since I had to do it without my glasses.

We head back to the school and there's a tumult of cleaning, moving desks and books and otherwise rearranging of spaces.  I help out a bit, but reach a point of feeling "in the way" and also particularly tired.  My first meal of the day finds me somewhat ravenous and I readly partake with the others in enjoying some Kimbab (california rolls or "korean sashimi").  It's so good!  Afterward, I help out a bit more here and there, but then make my way back to my room and for a nap. Three hours later and I'm already being woken up for a dinner engagement at Gloria and Manuel's house, with Lily and Diane.  Manuel is from Illongo, an area of the Philippines which is renowned for it's excellence in food making, and the pancit (noodles) and chicken (adobo) do not disappoint.

Soon after we eat, a couple filipinas arrive who Gloria had told about a "new filipino" coming for dinner.  They're so surprised to see that I am that filipino, and that I can speak cebuano as comfortably as I do.  It's not perfect by any means.. and I noticed myself erring in using words that are closely similar.  But it's beyond merely understandable.  The other filipinas are from Bukindon (the mountains above the area I grew up) and Surigao (a surfing place on the eastern side of the island).

We talk for a long time, and another filipina arrives, adding to the conversation.   Isabella, from Kenya, also arrives and is supremely patient with all our indicipherable chatter.  The Filipinas declare possesively that I belong to them and their community.  Gloria (and Isabella and G&M's daughter) walk me home and are a great encouragement. They seem very well centered and polished to shining by many trials.

What a day!

As it stands, it looks like I'll be teaching a semester of US History, a semester of Gov't.  Probably not economics.  6th Grade math. PE. Lead an after school study once a week.  Maybe a science.  NT letters and Rev. (over the year).
Thursday! The third day.

I had some coffee last night before returning home and it kept me up quite a bit. The long nap didn't help much either for my sleep-fulness, and this morning I kept being surprised that my alarm hadn't gone off already.  I still have a very 5:20am wake up impulse.  Breakfast... is coffee again.  Gotta get a steel pan.

I'm scheduled to go to YUST orientation at 8:30am, but I have a couple passport photos that I should have left at the YIA office, so I set off early to there.  Done. And now for orientation.  It's interesting and boring at the same time.  They allot 10 minutes each to various department heads, but some only take a few minutes while others take 20.  On the whole it seems like the department heads are agreeable people with a sense of compassion towards us foreigners. Not a whole lot more to say about this stuff.

They give us a long lunch break and I manage to find a little wifi spot in the adminstration building.  Handy!  I only use my iPhone at the point though.. otherwise I would have posted this whole mess up.  You'll just have to wait, like me.  I do log in to Skype and immediately get a call from Grandma!  We have a nice talk, and it doesn't seem like there is even much lag on the line. So sweet.  I manage to update all my news apps, but there's not much intersting news.  Something about Steve Jobs stepping down.  And Libya stuff.  And Euro-zone instability. Probably could have waited a few days and gotten about the same.  Sending email doesn't seem to work, and the email I try sending seems to have gotten lost. Ah well. (and creepy)

In the afternoon we have more orientation and it becomes clear that we need quite a few copies of our passport and multiple multiples of our visa photo for various bank, library, internet, personnel card, etc.. Also quite a few yuan (RMB) to get all this done. 

Evening plans for dinner are ambiguous, so I end up hanging around my room until no one shows up to get some food.  That's alright.  I'm getting some of this writing down, anyway.  And some attempts at quieting my mind a bit.  This transition has had it yelling almost non-stop, especially about leavings and such. Shush. The time has also been good to go through my exhaustingly large photo library to find pictures I'd like to make "real".  So far the count is at about 27, but I'm sure it'll grow larger every time I give it a chance.