First day in Guiyang

I get up at noon, after having slept for five hours only, I feel perfectly fine. No jet lag, no hangover, no headache, no pain at all. Although when I opened my eyes a few hours ago, I didn’t know where I was. This happens quite often when you travel around. And I have been travelling around for the past month. 

My housemate is still sleeping, so I go in search of food. I try to retrace the steps from last night and manage to find the shopping centre. There I stroll through the entire area and discover many restaurants and small eating places, many clothes shops, a mobile phone shop and some jewellery and watch shops. I enter the supermarket and go from aisle to aisle. There are shop assistants everywhere who are ready to help. Because I don’t understand a word and want to buy only a few specific things, I smile shyly and politely and walk away. The adventure begins when I reach the food section. So many things I’ve never seen in my life, so many things I don’t know what they are. I approach to what seems to be a bakery, but in reality it isn’t. It’s the pastry section. There are all sorts of things that look like food, but in reality it’s pastry. (Photos in a later post). Walking through the fruit section makes me wish I had a pictionary with me. Besides apples and pears and a few other fruit, I see many I haven’t seen before. Fish is alive and in water tanks. Flour and many other things are not packaged, but in small mountains heaped up and you can use a shovel to bag as much as you need. I discover some fridges with drinks, but a closer look reveals that they are not plugged in and the drinks are warm. 

Wherever I go, people stare and smile at me. I smile back and greet when greeted. I can hear some mobile phones clicking. People take photos. 

I retrace my steps and find my house. A few moments later my principal knocks on the door to pick me up and drive me to the school. He wants to give me a tour of the building and show me where everything is and most important the way to the school. The school is not even ten minutes walk away, which is quite handy. 

There’s a gate we have to go through. There are security guards at the gate, because many pupils live on campus and the buildings are 24h open. Each member of staff has a staff card with which the gate can be opened. There are two doors to go through. Next to it the pedestrian gate is the gate for cars, mopeds and bicycles. In front of us is one of the two courtyards. The school is four storey high and quite a labyrinth. There are corridors, teachers rooms, class rooms, offices, loos, labs, etc. I notice that there are no numbers on the doors of the rooms. But it says what class and grade is inside the room. That doesn’t help much. There’s no real system in it. Primary is more or less gathered in one building, but middle and high school are spread over in the rest of the buildings and floors. They are not even in ascending or descending order. I guess it will take a while until I learn where everything is. The pupils dorm is on the top floor and only the kids have access to it and I guess the cleaners will have keys too. No teachers or parents are allowed up there. The library is located in a separate building but it is being refurbished at the moment. There is a sports field, an auditorium and a sports hall. 

The tour ends after an hour and we leave the premisses and walk back towards home. We actually go to the KFC at the shopping centre where we meet the Chinese guy from yesterday who came to pick me up at the airport and some other colleagues. We’re going to get SIMs for our phones. 

This is where the tricky part is. China has some ridiculous laws and it doesn’t allow foreigners many things, even though they have a legal working and residence status. That’s why we need a Chinese. The other reason we need a Chinese is, because nobody here speaks foreign languages and they even have difficulties understanding sign language. Thanks to our office clerk whose one of the jobs is to help the foreign staff, we get our SIMs on his name. Because he’s allowed up to four SIMs, we have to go to different service providers. But not everything runs smoothly. I don’t get 4G on my phone, but only a crappy E. The SIMs don’t work on the phones of some colleagues, so we have to try various providers. It’s due to either locked phones or different frequencies. After several hours we all manage to get a SIM on a semi-contract basis. That is something between a contract and a pay as you go. You choose a plan and have to top up every month for a year. After twelve months your plan expires and you are free to choose a new plan. If you leave the country before the end of the period, you’ll have to pay for the remaining months. It’s good packages for little money. Mine is ten Pounds Sterling and I get 750 MB of data and 400 minutes to all networks. The first three months I get an additional 1gb of data.

We are driven home and I spend the rest of the evening with my housemate. Tomorrow won’t be my first day at school, because I have to go for a medical examination in order to get my resident permit. 

 Welcome to Guiyang Concord College of Sino-Canada

                     Flags (Canadian, Chinese, School)

    Bike shelter

   E-Scooter parking with power station

   One of the two restaurants

 
    Gate (seen from the courtyard)

    Path toward the building I teach and my office

   The various buildings connected with bridges

    second courtyard

    Hall and wall of fame

    English department staff. Left the in the centre the Chinese principal and around her the most experienced Chinese staff. Right in the centre the Canadian principal and around him the most experienced foreign staff. I'm in the top right corner.

    Administration office

   Auditorium

    First courtyard with restaurant on the right and entrance gate at the back

   Primary school wing

   Primary school class room

                      Sign.

    Primary school artwork

    Tower Bridge

    One of my two class rooms

                      Some deep thoughts on the way up.

 
    Sports field

   Library

    Sports hall

    Our office

    School at night

If you would like to read more by me, here are my novel and my diary from Ar'ar, in the northern Saudi desert. Both available on Amazon as soft and hard copy.