Recently in Work Category

So, my time in Changchun has finally come to an end... I've been here for an entire school year, and now it's time for me to go home. It was sad saying goodbye to my students this week, but they've given me great memories that I'll cherish deeply. I took photos with most of my classes, and I promised my students I'd post them to my blog. Well, here goes!

Class 1 Sophomores

Class 2 Sophomores

Class 3 Sophomores

Class 4 Sophomores

Class 4 Sophomores

Class 5 Sophomores

Class 5 Sophomores

Class 7 Sophomores

Class 8 Sophomores

Class 2 Juniors

So, I've been here for a good 3ish months now. During my time here so far, I've noticed some things that I've never seen back home as a student. These things might only apply to the city I'm in right now, but nevertheless I find some things really amusing. I feel a lot like Barney Stinson 'cause I'd see something amazing, take a photo and go.. "That's totally going in my blog!" Well, without further ado...

1. Cutely packaged everything

This is milk, in a plastic-ish bag! I finally found a place outside Ontario that sells milk in plastic bags!

Heinz ketchup :D Katelyn loves ketchup and when we actually found legitimate ketchup (pretty rare I tell ya), she was so excited! We found it in a really cute squeeze-me bottle.

2. Using tape as white-out

Most of my students use regular tape as white-out. You basically apply the tape and then rip it off the paper quickly... It's pretty creative, though I personally prefer using the regular kind we have back home.

3. Girls holding hands everywhere all the time
Call me ignorant, but I was pretty taken back when I saw girls holding hands everywhere... To classes, back to their dorms, on the street. Back home, it's common to see girls linking arms, but holding hands is usually off-limits. Apparently it's pretty normal here as a sign of friendship. I've done it a couple times and it's feeling more and more natural now, haha.

5. Interesting delicacies
I thought eating dog meat was just a stereotype that people have of Chinese people. However, in the city I'm at now, it is actually really common. Mind you, not everyone eats it, but I have seen dog meat shops downtown. The Korean restaurant on campus sells dog meat too.

Our boss took Ahmed & I to a restaurant where you can choose whatever "seafood" you wanted to have. We saw turtles and huuuge toads...

...and whatever these are. These things remind me of the Worms video game... Our boss asked us if we wanted to try it. We kindly refused. Maybe next time!

6. Seat warmers

I find this really cute too. A lot of my female students would bring these little seat warmers to all their classes.

7. Take-out in plastic bags!

Back home, we have take-out in white styrofoam boxes. But here, no matter what you order, they give it to you in little plastic bags.

Well, that's it for now! I hope you found these as interesting as I did. I do get easily amused though, I admit ;) I've been pretty these days.. My boss gave me two extra classes to teach, so I teach a total of 17 classes each week now. It's double the workload of most foreign language teachers, so it's not easy. But I'm a workaholic, so... We'll see how it goes!