A Little About Zhengzhou

Despite being a large city, most westerners have never heard of it.  So here is a little about Zhengzhou.  It is the capital city of the Henan province.  The population is about 9 million people and is rapidly growing.  There are cranes and construction everywhere.  It is considered an emerging Chinese megacity.  Zhengzhou is a major transportation center for central China, which will be great for me when I begin traveling around the country.  It gets hot and humid in the summer and cool and dry in the winters.  I hear that it won't be as cold as Chicago winters and has very minimal snow.

A view from the front of my apartment complex.

A view of the back of my apartment complex (with the blue and red lights) at night.

Everyday at school I am becoming more comfortable in the new setting but there is still a lot to do and learn.  The kids are becoming more familiar with me and I'm not so much of the strange foreigner in their classroom.

I think we are singing about the weather.

Oh, the irony.

These kids are too cute.

Stretching it out.

Having a zen moment during recess?

Some of the girls staring down the gardener.

Maple Bear has 6 different campuses in and around Zhengzhou, with me being at the Eastern campus.  This past Friday I was able to go out to the golf course campus, which is outside the city and about 45 minutes from my school.  It is a brand new school in a very posh suburb that is being built up right now.  There are only 18 kids in the massive school and two foreign teachers.  To put that in perspective, I have 18 students in both of my two classes.

During our lunch break we went on a walk.  The buildings and houses near the school are very nice and very new and this fancy subdivision just sprung up from the wilderness.  We walked to this beautiful little temple, which is now very out of place smashed between the mansions and construction cranes.

I need to start taking more photos of the English used around the city.  I appreciate their efforts but sometimes it can come off as wildly inappropriate or nonsensical.  I'm keeping this a family friendly blog, so no posting the picture a student with a profane shirt.  If you want to see more of what I don't post then you can message me. :)

My local grocery store.

I should probably throw this away.

I went on a trip to a store called Metro, which is kind of like a mixture of Walmart and Costco.  It's on the other side of the city and so I had to take a cab.  Side note, since nobody speaks English, you have to either be able to speak Mandarin or have your destination's address written in Chinese characters when taking a cab.  Also, I'm getting pretty good at pantomiming.

The reason I wanted to go to Metro instead of my nearby grocery store is because this place has a large selection of foreign foods and they're actually not expired.  My grocery store has some foreign food but anything that has an expiration date has been expired for at least a year.  Apparently not many Chinese people buy jelly.  When I returned home I was feeling pretty good about myself and proud of my purchases.  I decided to take a couple pictures of my foreign luxuries to brag about to the other foreign teachers.  Well, you know what they say about karma.  While arranging my purchases I knocked over my honey and made a bit of a sticky mess.

Some of the goods.

Sad times.

Aside from the broken honey container, things are going pretty well here.  Outside of school, I am spending a lot of prepping, watching Prison Break, eating out with the other teachers, and generally hanging out with them.  I went on my first run today since I have been in China and will have to take some photos of my scenic river run route.  Anyone have music suggestions for my runs?

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