What's Up? (Videos and More)

So, as you might have noticed, I've been away from my keyboard lately --- I've been given an extra assignment by my boss which has kept me pretty busy these days.

She wants to demonstrate her "co-teaching" system to the Gansu Province Ministry of Education, so she's making me prepare a couple of special classes that she'll film and send to the Ministry. Basically, there's me and a Chinese teacher who teach a combined speaking/listening class. We take turns teaching, and we help each other out during the 2-hour class. I talk some, they talk some. It's a pretty neat system, and as far as I'm concerned, it's great!

Because this is China, they want to endlessly prepare and make everything as perfect and artificial and fake as it could possibly be. That way it'll look good. It doesn't matter if it's the real thing or not. If it looks good, it sells, you know? I'm fighting against that, and I made my boss a little unhappy with how I did things today.

We just had the first one today --- it went pretty well. She had a couple of suggestions, but I'm debating on whether I actually care or not about what she says.

My students love my class (80-90%, anyway), and my co-teachers love me, and that's enough for me to keep my job. My boss doesn't have to like me  hahahaha

I'll try to get a copy of one, and I'll make my own little video with splices of teaching in it. I hope you guys will enjoy that -- you'll get to see what I actually do for a living.

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Okay, now for a shock. I've started running, exercising, and "eating right" in a general effort to be healthy.
WHAT???? GREAT ODIN'S RAVEN, WHO HAVE YOU BECOME, AUSTIN GUIDRY???? 

I know.....it's a shock. I've been that person who always made fun of healthy people, but now I'm starting to possibly, maybe, sort of......be one.

I'm not gonna be vegetarian or vegan --- no freaking way, but I've had some recent health episodes that I don't want to talk about, and it's kind of scared me straight in the past couple of months, and I really just want to treat my body well. I'm only gonna have one life, so I should try to make it good and worth living.

...........Plus, it'd be nice if I could play Ultimate Frisbee or football (soccer) for more than 5 minutes without stopping for air.

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In my next post, there'll be a couple of videos, and I'll be talking about teaching and cultural differences! I've got a lot to talk about. I'll be traveling soon, and I've got some great news I'll be sharing sometime before my  birthday (January 31st).

Anyway, until next time!

Austin

Wuquan Mountain and National Day Video

All right! I finally put together my Wuquan (5 Springs) Mountain video! I have just been lazy, so I hadn't done it till a couple of days ago.....but here it is! Sorry for the nearly two week-long delay!


If you're having problems with the embedded video, click here to go to the original video page. There shouldn't be a problem on that page

Unfortunately, I've lost my USB Drive, so I can't transfer any more pictures of the place to this computer yet....so, sorry about that. I hope I can upload them soon!

The video will just have to do for now. But, luckily, this is in HD - I took the pictures and the raw footage with my iPhone, which, although is a little unsteady, does a pretty decent job in the HD department!

Anyway, yeah, Wuquan was a fun way to spend a morning, as well as Lan Mountain. What, mountains AND hotpot???!!! Fantastic!!! That's a recipe for win.

Sichuan, Air Pollution, and More!

Hey everyone! I'm in the middle of a promoting wave, so I'm trying to figure out how to best utilize my resources and make the blog better for you and everyone else! If you're got any suggestions, let me know!

I'm gonna be doing a combination of video and picture blogs almost every week day from now on. The internet changes and updates every day, so I should too!



About Sichuan - I haven't actually been there, but I've got quite a few friends from there - it's home to red-hot cuisine, and, apparently red-hot women. The weather is really hot (it's the Texas of China), but the countryside is beautiful: these two pictures are from Jiuzhaigou, a very famous national park/reserve

Sichuan is also home to Le Shan, the giant Buddha mountain - the largest stone Buddha in the world, I believe:

About China's pollution problem - it's a stark contrast to the natural beauty of Sichuan Province. Most Chinese cities are covered by a layer of smog and pollution all hours of the day:

It looks like simple morning mist, but it hangs around all day. In the afternoon, it lightens up a little bit, but not a lot. Some cities are worse than other - Beijing is pretty bad, Jinchang is terrible, because of its factories located within the cities, Lanzhou can have its really bad days, but every city has different officials and treats the environmental problem in a different way.

Every place I went in China, there was at least a little bit of the smog and industrial haze. It was sad, really, and I think that the Chinese government is realizing that as well as being good for new businesses, green technology is good for its citizens.

Mummies, My Time in Beijing, and Home Schools

So - chronological order! Mummies!

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-09/05/content_13620103.htm  

- apparently a villager in Jiangxi Province was digging and stumbled across a tomb dating back from the Ming Dynasty! There were 3 coffins and one of them contained a well-preserved body with hair, skin, fingernails and everything! Cool!



I have mixed feelings about my time in Beijing, at least the second time around. I stayed in 永泰小区, which is in the northern part of the city and has no English speakers and only 1 Western restaurant, McDonald's, which was about 3 miles away from where I stayed. The great thing about being in a non-English speaking place is that your language skills get so much better because if you don't speak Chinese - you don't eat. You can't do anything without speaking Chinese.

I did, however, get to go to all of the major tourist destinations! That was pretty cool, but had its downsides as well. Overall, I think I enjoyed my time.

So I went to a lot of the same places and established friendships with some of the waiters and stuff and met some cool people. It was okay, but I really began to miss speaking English. I called my friends Benjamin and Linda a couple of times because I really wanted to speak English. I called my dad a few times too. It was also lonely, because I didn't know anybody in Beijing - I just knew Guang Lin, who was the guy I was staying with in Linda's apartment (long story). He was cool, but he didn't speak English, so I had nobody to fall back on to speak my 'native' language.

So, really, Chinese became my native language and kind of already was because I practiced so much in Lanzhou (off campus). When I came back to America, I was overwhelmed with English - it was like learning my native language over again. The first couple of days were really hard and I was having trouble finding words like 'shelf' and 'overpass' in my vocabulary...it was weird.

And last (and....least...interesting?) is that home schools are on the rise in China - people just aren't putting as much faith in public education as they used to. Because China's schools are so big and impersonal, creative thinking, individualism, and innovation are nonexistent in the classroom. So, parents have started to personalize education (which I think is a great idea for Chinese kids) on their own.

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-09/05/content_13621268.htm

I'm going to try to integrate more daily events and stuff like that on my YouTube and tie it in with my blog - I really love doing this and I'd like to get it out there. I'd love to just do commentary on what's happening in China right now along with sharing my experience....it'd be easy and fun!

But the whole part of a salary...................yeah............oh well, a guy can dream, right?