Henning in Asia

I'm terribly sorry it's been this long since my last update.

I sat down last week with the purest of intentions to update the blog. It's a very very long story, but to put it in short I accidentally ruined windows on my harddrive.
But thanks to a very helpful chief of computers on my campus I now have a brand new XP cd, key kode and he even managed to save all the files from my old harddrive.
So all pictures intact, thank God!

But anyways, life has been kind to me the last few weeks.
The teaching is working out fine, it has its ups and downs, but I am not complaining.
For the most part, I kill my free-time with hanging out with my friends here, watching tv-series (they are very cheap here after all) or playing games.
I've learned a very entertaining dice game, and Chinese chess. They are both fun, and I will surely bring them home.

I've become very good friends with a very nice Chinese English teacher at my school. His English is very good, and we learn a lot from talking to each other. I'm so thankful for having met him, it's my first proper culture exchange opportunity on this program.

This is us having dinner at a "hotpot" restaurant.

Anyways, the most exciting thing in my life these last few weeks is definitely this holiday, which I'm still on until Monday by the way.
I went to Beijing.
My friends here were very slow, and it was a lot of back and forth about how was doing what, so I halfway decided no to go.
But then it turned out that a Norwegian friend of mine (Patric) was coming to Beijing to visit a friend of his that lives there this very same week.
So it was done, I had to come now. (he even brought Norwegian chocolate!)

I booked my own hostel, and it turned out to be a bit away from where my friends from here were staying. So basicly, I saw them on the train going there, but not since. They never really bothered to plan out things so I had time to meet them somewhere, so after seeing the forbidden city alone after trying to find them for half a day, I decided to do things on my own from there.
Thankfully it worked out fine though. Patric and his friend there (Stian) were very cool to hang out with. It was very very nice to speak Norwegian again, nonetheless to eat "melkesjokolade" (the chocolate), something I've been missing more than I thought.

Me and Patric in a taxi.
Patric had a little bit of a jetlag, and after the two or so beers we had earlier I couldn't refuse the opportunity to abuse it.

After hanging out for dinner and checking out a few bars with them, I called it a day.
I lived at a decent hostel in WuDaoKou, a little bit outside the center circle of Beijing. A very nice street right outside, it's close to Beijing university, so it's a very international street. Lots of languages and food.

The next day, we checked out the silk market.
It's basically a huge building filled with just about everything. I just wanted to see it, but in the end I bought three sweaters.
The people there are pretty much..insane. They run after you, block people from leaving their stores, and not to mention their abuse of my beard/face. Some just point and laugh, some just comment on it instead of/whilst giving the usual "you are handsome, will you look at this", and some even jumped out trying to touch it followed by telling me how rude I am to prevent them from doing so.

BUT; you get a lot of cool stuff very very cheap, if you take the time to hassle properly.
I ended up buying three sweaters ofcourse.. But they were all awesome. The first lady hid the hundred Yuan I gave her behind her back along with the sweater, demanding five more Yuan for a few minutes before I got her to give me the sweater.
The second one refused to let me leave without buying something.
As I would only buy one sweater, and for no more than a hundred Yuan she trying to contain me there until I changed my mind.
When I said "bye" for the, I dunno 89th time?, and pushed here away to leave she agreed on the price tough.

Lastly, the Mario sweater was harder, as I actually really wanted it. So I had to go up to 225 Yuan. Quite expensive for the marked, but it seems to be in good quality, and dude.. it's a Super Mario sweater! I'm still so very very excited about it.

Before going home, Patrics friend showed us a cd store. On one of the walls in that cd store there was a bookshelf. That inself is rather suspect, but as it turned out to be a secret entrance to a rather cheap DVD store it was just perfect. So very very Chinese XD

At the end of the day we were all so tired we just watched some Seinfeld, ate some takeaway food and went to bed early.

No pics from the silk market sadly, I kind of regret that.

But anyways, next day, what had to be done; the great wall.
It was awesome.
I signed up for a 10km hike on my own. My skating shoes and Jeans were a horrible choice for the trip, but it was a lot of fun.
I talked to a Australian and a Swede on the way, and it's a day I'll never forget.
The wall is amazing.
(A whole lot of stairways though, so I was totally beat once we got to the end.)

Here are some pics:

Lastly that day I met up with Dennis, my friend from traveling in World Campus Japan.
He finally got a new job after the two tours we've been doing together, and seemed to be doing very well.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to eat, but after he heard I hadn't tried the bejing duck, it was decided. Apparently it's the great wall and the Beijing duck that are the two things one really can't miss in Beijing.
And it was truly magnificent, very very VERY good.

Me and Dennis having dinner together ^^

The next day, I checked out the "Lion King cafe" right outside my hostel together with a friend I met with TTC (my program) in Shenyang.
The cafe was nice, very japanese style. It had pretty much nothing to do with the lion king once inside though, to my enormous disappointment.

But anyways, home now, ready for teaching on Monday.
This has been a huge update, I'll get better with more frequent short updates.

There are a few more fun stories to share, but alas, they can wait.

For now, check my wall of awesomeness:

I finally got these posters, I've been dying to find them in Japan. Ironically I found them here.

Talk to ya'll laters!

So, it's been a while since I updated last.
Quite frankly, it's because there's not that much going on.
I'm not travelling, not that much apaption to be done, I'm just living.
So I find it hard to figure out what I should write about. I guess it's writersblog, or just lazyness.

Anyways, I've had the last week off, because my students were all in the army for one week.
What have I been doing you ask?
Well, I need to balance not spending money and killing time. Things here are cheap, but I don't really earn a lot of money either.
But I have to do some sightseeing. We've been to the forbidden city here in Shenyang, that was very nice. We all dressed up in old chinese clothes and took a group photo in a store there that'll be a great memory of the group.
(this forbidden city is the one the emperor lived in before he moved to Beijing, and made that one :3 )

Myself dressed up

I watched a few movies, as I found a Gibli collection for about 20 Yuan. Great movies..!
This weekend there's a moon-cake festival. So basicly, everyone hangs out with their family and eat mooncake. For us, that's just a day off in other words.
Except for the school giving me mooncakes. They're really good, and it was a nice treat. But now I'm eating cake all the time, wich is bad.
Not that many left now though.

Yesterday I learned a new game involving dice and a cup. It was awesome, great along with a few beers. I was pretty good at it as well, as it was mainly about bluffing.
Gambling is illegal here, so it was quite hard, but I finally found the game, it came with a pack for "kids games". Obviously getting it through a loophole or something. I also bought chinese chess, wich I intend to learn. My dream is to play with random locals in a park or something.
Now THAT would be awesomeness..!

Anyways, this is really all for now.
I don't think I'll be updating to often, so please just contact me if there's anything you're wondering. I will have updates now and then, whenever there's something noticable going on though. Not to mention, I have a whole new tour of Japan coming up, from March next year.
But until then, I'll be living here, taking life one day at the time, teaching kids and hanging out at starcocks buffee with my english and chinese friends.

At last, a pic from last thursday, when myself and Adrian went to a shrine-ish place whilst exploring the city hunting for PSP games.

I just love his expression, he wasn't aware he was in the picture. I just had to exploit that.

Hello Friends!

So, now I’m safely placed out here in Shenyang.
It’s a very very big city, the 4th biggest one in China I’ve been told. So that is definetly nice.
I’m supposed to have a internet connection in my room, and I did have one for a brief evening. But in the moment of writing, there’s none.-so if this is late you know why.

When I first arrived here, I was ready for filling out forms, getting instructions and atleast information.
But they just gave me my apartment (on campus) and told me to relax. And naturally, so I did.
The next day we met up at 13:30 to go shopping for things we needed. That was nice, there were quite a few things missing in my opinion. (trash can etc)

But still no information. So we just met up with the rest of the gang placed around the city. We are 11 people all together, and except for me and a German girl called Regina we are all british. (there’s one british girl in the apartment next to mine)

Finally, on Monday, we had a meeting with the vice principal of our school. The school itself is awesome. This is a school that focuses spesificly on language. I have the first junior highschool grade, wich is four classes. I have them all once every day for four days. (three days off in other words, Thursday and the weekends!)
They gave us a book and a lot of information I craved before we went off to prepeare our first lesson and later on celebrate Petes birthday.

The gang

The birthday boy and his significant other.

The celebration was very nice, allthough I was thinking about my first class a lot. Each class is 50 kids between 12-13.
I had no clue what their english levels were.

Right now I’ve had three out of four classes today, and the results have varied. My lessonplan was too short, and I had to improvise a lot the first lesson. Second lesson went quite well, and the third one was a bit difficult, because there’s a huge gap in the english skill of the students in that class.

So, for my last one, better structure and speak slower. (it’s hard to define, they need to get used to english speakers at their natural pace, at the same time they need to understand what’s going on as well.)

I’ll figure it out sooner or later though, no one’s an expert at their first day. (not me atleast..!)

But, there’s a lot of things to be psyched about now!
I have my own apartment. This is a first for me, it’s really just me in here!
So I’ve put up things I like on the walls, inpacked everything and washed the bathroom as best I can as it wasn’t that clean when I arrived.

I’m finally getting in touch with someone closer to native here.
There’s a japanese teacher on my floor, who is really nice. Hes english isn’t the best, but it’s better than my japanese.. and he’s very helpful.
In addition there’s a few chinese english teachers here.
(they use chinese people to explain grammar etc, we are here most for pronunciation and listening skills among the students)
I just talked to one for about 15 minutes after lunch, and he agreed to meet me to check out downdown. We also have a contact named Rice, who does is best to make sure we enjoy ourselves. That’s really nice, he agreed to teach me chinese chess (or something like that) next week. (I have the whole week off as my students are all in their yearly one week military camp)

I will also start up with proper chinese lessons next week. So that’ll be nice.

So, mixed feelings, this is definetly a challenge. I hope I’ll be able to do a good job, and that the students will learn as much as possible.
I do by the way, have an address now. I mind you, whatever someone might send me will have to be sent back when I go home, so please don’t send me random gifts. (It’s a really nice thought, and I appreciate that, but I really don’t earn much here, and I have enough clothes etc I need to send back already)

CHINA
SHENYANG
110179
Northeast Yucai Foreign language school.
HENNING RODTWITT

I was told that would do it, but don’t send anything particulary valuable before I have confirmed it a 100%...!
(this is china, and for some reason, simple matters like this do get lost in translation)

PS:

Check out our local café;
Starcocks Buffee XD

By the way, classes rocked today.
It's awesome here, I can do this for a few months!

Hi again!

So, the teachers course is coming to an end.
It’s becoming more and more of an every day life here, so there’s not too much for me to write about.
But ofcourse, everyday life also has plenty of higlights.

The most important thing in my career life was probably TP.-Teaching Practice.
We were placed in groups of 6 people, and we all recieved 4 x 30 min to teach over five days. (one day off in other words)
We got a class of 11 students between 11 and 13, even though we were supposed to have 14 year olds I think.
The explanation is as always “this is China”, and we dealt with it okay I think.
It’s very nice to actually have a class when you make lesson plans (a plan where you plan out lessons), as we got to know them and their level it got easyer and easyer for every day.
It was a great week.
I handled them very well, both when I ran out of material and when I ran out of time.
My planning skills ofcourse still need practice, but that will come once I start teaching I’m sure.

We’ve also finished all of our assignments. I had to redo a few, because me and a friend co-operated. (we were supposed to have classes of 60 min. And to make the assignments easier, we could use lesson plans from our TP. In other words, we needed both our halfs to make a complete lesson, wich from both of us would end up as two identical lessons)
I was quite frustrated that they told us this the day before the deadline, when I thought everything was ready.
I did redo them though, and passed valiantly with two “barely acceptables”.

My grades are up and down so far, but in the end a pass is a pass.-and I’m still not here to become a great teacher in four weeks.

On the social side, we’ve been having hoodles of fun. On Saturday we all went to a rollerdisco. With all the british people here we also needed to dress up.
For british people, that (for some reason) means we all had to dress up as girls.

Myself and Pete.

A very good night, I’ve found more people like me; who prefer talking over noisy annoying music when socializing. (talking over shouting) So we’ve been hanging out in “foodstreet” at nighttime, a street right by here where they sell all kinds of streetfoods and beer.

I still haven’t recieved my placement, even though I might be heading there already on Friday.
Hopefully I’ll have it by tomorrow, or even tonight if I’m lucky..

On Saturday though, we were supposed to have a community interraction day. From Japan I’m used to that being us actually talking to locals.
Here it basicly meant that we entertain the locals.
By putting us in an obstacle course.

We were divided into teams, from wich to contestants had to get up on one of those mechanical bulls. If both last 20 seconds, both could enter the obstacle course. (if only one or none, the one with the longest time could go)

Me on the bull fighting for honor and glory!

I represented my team with pride, and I won against my team-mate with my grand 7 seconds.

My time all together wasn’t as good sadly. It was horribly tiring. We had to run up a air-castle slide covered in very VERY slippery soapy water twice..
I made the whole thing in 1:10. The winning time was 50 seconds I think. I came in 5th or something, not that bad with over 10 teams, but still no medal.

Myself running on the matrasses on the way to the soapy castle.

Anyways, those are my higlights.
As this is our last week together there’s a lot of going out at night and planning to meet up again later on.
We are planning a grand trip to England and Wales, and one back in Norway for our English friends.
So this is a great experience in many ways, I really hope I come to an allright school.
Time will show!

Oh, by the way!
Photos of my room!

Michelle checking out a movie and Morgan chilling on the bed here..

Our well organized and clean desk.

So, it’s been a few weeks here now.
I’m starting to get used to the life at this hotel. (yeah, it turned out to be a hotel)

I was quite suprised with how different the food is here compared to Japan. People get sick all the time, and I barely eat from the restaurant here anymore. At the same time they tell us it’s probably better than the food we can expect at the schools we’ll get placed at.
Everything is soaked in oil or deepfried so bad we don’t really know what it is we’re eating. And sometimes it’s just not fresh at all.

So there’s been quite a few pizzas and McDonalds visits. Yesterday we went to a korean restaurant though, that was very nice. And they had dog on the menu. It felt like an accomplishment to finally see that myself. (but no, I did not try it..!)
I had a great day all together. On Monday our teaching practice begins, and I need a new wardrobe to look acceptable. I got two shirts, pants and shoes for about 200Yuan, or 180kr.-and that was in a somewhat expensive store, I didn’t feel like the markets as it’s a hassle in comparison.

Myself, and a british couple (Trish (I think) and Peter) at the korean place.

Later on we were hanging out in Harbin city. It’s very cool culturally, they have a guy standing on the 3rd floor or so playing the saxophone in the mainstreet. (a lot of shows and stuff going on as well.. and not to mention the olympics on big screens everywhere.)
We ended up in a “beertent”, huge markets where they sell beer and food. It’s great, we are all definetly coming back. There was a lady walking around selling tissues and garlic. After a few beers we ended up with a game where the garlic went around the table, on peoples heads. It had to be kept there until the “bearer” felt he/she was one with the garlic. Then it could be passed on. If it’s dropped on the floor, whoever dropped it needed to do a dance.
Everyone randomly went along, the inventers (myself and a englishman named Peter) were amazed how easily most people accepted the garlic on their head for 5-10 minutes.
Goodiegoodie joyfun.

I also saw a temple here. There pretty much like the ones in Japan.. :p

The teaching is working out as well. It’s a LOT more responsibility than I ever imagined. I’m really not sure if I’m cut out to do this, I thought we were going to help out or so. It turns out, if we end up at the right school, we pretty mutch need to make a small curriculum and teach it to them. After one month of studying I don’t feel up for that task. I hope wherever I do get sent atleast has a book the students work with or something I can use as guidance.

But I’m going to do my best, and if worst comes to worst I can jump out whenever I want. The part I payed for (the class) is over at the end of this month, so there’s no loss moneywise either. (and I still get a diploma that I passed.-unless I fail miserably ofcourse.)

Anyways, short update today. My days are mostly hanging out with friends here, studying and sleeping. A LOT of cool people here, and I love my roommate.
Hope everything is allright at home!

PS:
I HAD to share this sign.
As they don't seem to really fix things here, there's a lot of warningsigns all over the place.
This one says "caution; wet floor" (I think).

Just look at the character XD