Talking about my family

Today was my first day at my work. The next two months I will be working at an Autism center in Beijing. I had to get up this morning at 6.30, which was why to early since I am still a bit jetlagged..

We took the bus, which was oke. Crossing the street however, was more of an adventure. No stopsigns and more than 6 lanes to cross.. The teacher that lives with us took us under her wing. She is really nice.

After the public bus, we got out and had breakfast. The teacher bought a kind of egg pancake for me. With lettuce in it and some spice sauce. It was quite nice, but a bit too much for my empty stomach. We arrived at the school about half past 8 and class starts at 9 o'clock. I got introduced to a few people and to another teacher. I was going to join her class today. Well.. class isn't really the right word for it I think, because they are not really teaching the kids. They just make sure that the children are taken care of and play with them a bit. In the morning I meanly watched and played with a few children. One of them was really sweet, but he already got all the attention from the other teachers..

I had lunch with all the teachers and they tried to ask me a few questions. The language difference is quite a problem. Their English is as good as my Chinese, or worse.. The teacher that we live with speaks the best English of them all. I was lucky that Kaho is here. She is Japanese and she can read most of the Chinese characters. So they write a lot to explain everything.
After lunch we got back to class till 4 o'clock. I played with almost all the children. Did puzzles with them and played with the blocks. The children are easier to communicate with, I just speak Dutch to them. They don't even seem to notice the difference. That is why I love working with children. The rules and discipline in the class are quite open. So sometimes a child gets punished for one thing, the other time they do nothing. I think this is quite difficult, because I don't know what the rules are.. Hygienic is also different from our ideas about that. Here they let the children pie in a bucket, without washing their hands afterwards. And if they pie their pants, they just let them dry for a while and put it back on.. Reminder to self: bring desinfecting soap to work!

After work we cleaned up and mobbed the floors. We went back to our street and to a market. The teacher that we live with had invited to colleagues and one of them brought his wife as well. So we had dinner with the six of us. The market place was quite surprising as well. They have all kinds of food there, stalled out. It looks really great.

The teacher bought all kinds of food and we went home to prepare it. The dinner was wonderful. All sort f food and most of them were really nice. I didn't like the spicy things, but they also made sweet chicken and there was stuffed bread and some kind of pizza-like-things. They even had cucumber and little tomatoes. I really ate a lot. The male colleague asked me if I would like to try a beer. I thought to myself, what the heck.. let's try a Chinese beer. And I have to say: it tastes better than Dutch beer, because it is less bitter. The man kept toasting with me and saying 'Cheers' so that I would take another zip. It was quite funny. The people here were very nice and they tried to speak with us as much as they could. They even put on their computer to use Google Translate. They asked me questions and I could type answers and questions back. For example they wanted me to show them Dutch money.. But I didn't bring money with me.. But they also asked me about my age and my family and my home. So this was when the picture was made. I showed them the wonderful photoalbum my boy made for me ^^
They were really enthusiastic about it and looked through it several times! They also asked me about marriage. When I was going to get married and what age is normal in the Netherlands. Those two questions were not quite easy to answer. But I did tell them that my boyfriend and I are together for almost 4 years. I think they thought that was quite long.
The rest of the evening was very nice. We tried to communicate with was all very funny :) One of the girls told me that she thinks I look beautiful. Which I think is ready funny because my skin is a bit red around my mouth.. When they went home I got on to skype with my AIESEC-buddy Monica. She is taking us to the Forbidden City tomorrow.
I am really looking forward to that and I will show you a picture of it tomorrow.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!