Thursday, August 21, 2014

July 31, 2013


Today was a great day!!  You could refer to it as The Day we went to Olympic Village, The First Day we Took the Subway (and all by Ourselves too!!), or The Day we were a sideshow in Beijing.
Today was another full day of training. We got a lot of “Nuts & Bolts” information today. The most important was finding out where to look up the pollution rating of the day, and banking information. We also talked for quite a while about phones. I do still have to get a China phone, and put the America one to rest for a bit. We had some classroom preparation time, which was nice.  At this point, I’m trying to get my classroom into an order that makes sense and it still tidy. There are some things that I want to replace and am trying to figure out how I want it all to look. Since the teaching theory is so much different, I’m also trying to wrap my head around what that will all look like in practice and in the organization of my classroom. I am very excited to see how it all works and the heights to which the students will reach using these methods! At this time, I have 11 students in my class, from all over the world: America, China, Korea, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and Germany. It’s quite exciting!!!
After school, I decided we were going to walk up to Olympic Village. We headed off after school, walking through the neighborhood around the school to get to the main road up to the Village.  We kept walking and walking and walking. It was getting really hot! Lucas had to go to the bathroom, so we walked into a restaurant along the way that was a train restaurant!! It was really neat, with different models of trains in the lobby area. Then we went back on our way. Along the way, there was an ice cream man, so we stopped and got some pineapple ice cream in a cone. Lucas was eating it as we walked, and when I looked up, I noticed a group of Chinese people who were taking pictures of us. We kept walking and eventually a man in a little tuktuk (that’s what they were called in Thailand, I’m not sure what they call them here. I said no thank you, and he told me it would take an hour to walk from there. SO I agreed to the 20 quai (about $3.25) and we got a ride. I discovered that with the way we were walking, it definitely would have taken that long. I later discovered the way we should have walked. We walked in and got closer and closer to the Bird’s Nest. We took some pictures (and again discovered others taking pictures of us). There was a couple that I offered to take a picture of, then asked them to take a picture of us. And they did, on my camera and theirs. We kept walking around the village with many people as we were walking taking our picture and asking to take pictures with us. I guess this is how it feels to be a celebrity. We were going to go into the Bird’s Nest, but it cost 80 quai each (about $14.50) and I hadn’t brought a whole lot of money to work that day, so we ventured on over to the Water Cube. As we walked, same thing, people were taking pictures as we walked, trying to sneak them so we didn’t notice, but also just outright taking them. We got over to the Cube, and took some pictures of ourselves, then a vendor offered to take our picture, and as he was, a group had gathered and were now also taking pictures of us. We round out that it is 200 quai (about $33) to go into the water cube, which I read they have turned into a huge water park. We went into the Water Cube store and looked around a bit, then found a bench to sit down for a while and ate some apples and Lucas had a PB sandwich.
After that, we started the walk back to Beituchung subway station. Today was going to be the day we took the subway for the first time. I’d heard it was very easy. It took about 15-20 minutes to make the walk down to the subway station. We got our tickets pretty easily, then followed the signs and the masses to the Line 10 subway. We got to a point where the signs pointed opposite directions and I wasn’t really sure which one to follow, but then I realized that they probably both went to the same train, so we picked one and walked down the stairs. There were subway trains on both sides, so looking at the maps, I found the right train that would take us to Sanyigong station. As it pulled up, I noticed how PACKED the train was!!! We got on, and once inside I noticed there was a map on the upper wall that had a blinking light to show which station you were at. That was my fear with the subway, that the announcement would be made so quickly that I wouldn’t be able to determine what they were saying and we would be riding the subway in circles and circles. But, this map is PERFECT!!! We made it off on the right station, then took a few minutes to figure out where we were once we got off. We were both VERY tired at this point. I had bad rubbing spots on my feet from my flip flops (!!! Yes, terrible walking shoes) and Lucas’ legs were hurting from all the walking, but we were SO CLOSE to being home!! Once we got home, I made dinner, then we went to bed, by 8pm.
It was a big day, we went on the subway for the first time, and made it to the right stop by ourselves, we obtained celebrity status in China, and we visited a site of Olympic History!!!

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