A Quick Look at My Day-to-Day

The view of the Pearl River from my balcony at sunset - not bad!

Sorry for the delay, folks. Going to start getting into a better blogging habit, as I (foolishly, it seems) promised before I left for China.

It's hard to believe that this is my three-month mark. There's no way I've been in Guangzhou for three months already! No way that it's been even longer than that since I was last in Tampa! But the date is probably more reliable than my perception of time, so I'll trust it.

I certainly feel settled now, and have some semblance of a routine. My days off are Tuesday and Wednesday, for those looking for the best times to Skype with me, although I try to fill my days off with adventures around the city or much needed errands.

The Initial Introduction, The First Class

So yesterday was a milestone for us DukeEngagers - the first day at our St. Andrew's sites. Let me sum up my Monday: I left for Ana al-Misri at 8:30 in the morning, and, besides the 1 hour break between Ana al-Misri and my St. Andrew's site, did not return until 9 at night. Ana al-Misri was much less stressful than that first day, but was still draining. And, it's about an hour drive from here, past the pyramids (yeah, that never gets old). But I was in art again, and most of my time was spent with only a few younger kids who taught me the colors in amiya and took turns picking colors for me to use as I was drawing. I'm going to really enjoy my time there, I think!

But on to the new stuff. The first day was... exciting and intimidating and absolutely rad. We had twenty students come to register, some of whom were not on our list (which was expected), and which was many more than went to the other sites. Fernando and I had not planned a lesson, since we had no idea to expect, so we just chilled in our classroom, did some brief introductions, let them ask us questions, and explained our expectations for the class and how it was gonna work. We came back that night very tired, but super excited.