I eat most of my meals at my school. The students board there during the week, and they and the teachers all eat in the dining hall next to the main building.
The dining hall (left), opposite the main building
A typical breakfast consists of a hard-boiled egg, a couple of diced vegetable dishes, some watery rice (called congee), and some kind of biscuit. The ones pictured here are my favourite. They're baked to a golden brown. The other teachers go more for the other usual offering, which looks like a cinnamon roll. Except it doesn't have any cinnamon, and it's not baked but steamed. The consistency is kind of like raw dough, so I tend to avoid them.
After breakfast I head up to the third floor where the International classroom is situated, and gather my materials for that day's lessons. I teach History, Geography, and ESL, and I have a fourth class that is an extra helping of one of those three. So I have two classes in the morning, and two in the afternoon.
There are three other teachers in our staff room, plus a supervisor, and we all (except the one who is teaching) head down for lunch about 11:30, just before the student body.
Lining up to be served lunch
Serving up the food, noodles in this case
Utensils: wooden chopsticks, a spoon, and a wet cloth
Selecting sauce for the noodles
Lunch: a Chinese version of spaghetti and meat sauce
This is an unusual lunch, as we more often than not have a variety of Chinese dishes to choose from. I think they do this lunch for me. The cook asked for a list of food that I like, and this was one of the things on my list. It's pretty good, but I always wish for a fork when I eat noodles. I can use chopsticks fairly well, but I prefer a fork and a knife.
I like a little salt with my food, too, but my supervisor Linda looks askance when I bring out my salt shaker and keeps telling me it's bad for my health. I tell her that life needs a little extra spice to make it more interesting, but she's still dubious.
The students line up to eat
The dining hall
Dirty dishes: one big bowl for the soup bowls, another for the utensils, a garbage pail for leftover food, and stack the metal trays at the end
After lunch, I take a half hour walk around the school's athletic running track. If no-one walks with me, I listen to a Chinese language (Mandarin) learning course, and practice the words and phrases. I am getting a little better at it, and what I have learned has turned out to be very useful when I have to communicate when I am shopping or banking or whatever.
I also have a room where I can go to lie down if I want. Sometimes I listen to my language course a second time, but most of the time I just read. At 1:00, it's time to get ready for afternoon classes.
I head down to the dining hall at 4:30 for dinner. I have to eat early because the bus leaves just before 5.
A typical dinner is three or more of the six or seven dishes there are to choose from, a generous helping of rice, some soup, and a piece of fruit.
Like I said, there are a lot of stews on the menu, whether it is stewed vegetables or something with meat in it. There is a lot of pork and chicken. Beef is more expensive, so it is a rarity.
It's not usually very spicy, but sometimes I run into these pieces of a bark-like substance that is like to burn my tongue off if I bite into them.
The serving of rice you see here is considerably less than most others take. They really pack it away.
The soup is usually a clear broth with some vegetables or an egg stirred into it. And the fruit is usually an apple, an orange, or a banana.
On the weekends, I either eat out or make something for myself at home. It is then that I indulge my craving for western style food. But I haven't eaten at a lot of restaurants as it is still early days. There's a place near my house that makes fresh dim sum that I quite enjoy. You can get a plate of about 20 dumplings for about $2-3 Cdn, and a bottle of beer to go with is about another dollar on top of that. Pretty good.
I have seen western restaurant chains here, too: KFC, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut. Sigh. It's too bad that these represent us to the rest of the world.
I wanted to show you some pictures of the smog that enveloped Harbin a couple of weeks ago. It was a real pea-souper that literally shut down the city.
The dining hall from the main building. The smog was a bit clearer in the middle of the morning, but got worse as the day went on
Looking towards the athletic field
As less than half of the students had shown up that day, classes were cancelled, and we were given the next day off, as well. We had to make up those days we missed on two successive Saturdays. At least we would have, if on Friday the power hadn't gone out. They figured they couldn't get it repaired in time, so yesterday was a day off.
About the middle of last week, I felt an odd shaking as I was sitting at my desk. It was kind of like some sort of construction was causing the building to vibrate, but I later learned that there was an earthquake in Mongolia (just to the west of Harbin), and I had felt the tremor. It was a very odd sensation.
So there have been a few "disasters" here, both natural and man-made. I hope that that's as severe as they get.
This week coming up is going to be a short one for me, as I am going to Hong Kong on Wednesday to sort out my visa. The one I'm using now is only a temporary one, as this job came up so near to the start of the term they decided to bring me over as soon as possible rather than wait for a regular visa to be approved.
But that's a story for another time.
Great pictures and description. It provides me with a clear picture of what your day is like, what you eat, etc. One thing not mentioned is the staff relationships - another topic?
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