Rescued by a taxi from the bicycle lane under Yan An Lu
Sometimes, aren't you so tired that you can feel energy draining out of you like oil from the engine, like oxygen from the air? I'm too tired and thoroughly exhausted - but happy - to work on the perfect metaphor.
After the unprecedented historical event of not getting a cab to get to work on Monday, I was greeted at my door by a taxi arranged the day before by the Dean's assistant. Very hip and friendly presence, which means more relaxed and easy-going than most people I meet in Shanghai. The driver even called my mobile phone, which was off! Last night I was so drained like oil from the engine, oxygen from the air, that I had forgotten to put my phone on the charger.
The friendly young man drove me to school and my arrival was so early that I walked into the lobby and found a working outlet in the Hotel, where my university currently houses their offices. These are things a foreigner can do here. Where in the U.S. can you walk into a hotel where you're not a guest, plug in your charger in the lobby and just explain what you're doing?
The 7AM bus left at 6:45 AM, leaving conscientious colleagues in it's wake, to taxi out for 120 kuai ($15 is an enormous fare here) with the Dean.
Okay, Mr. F. needs to use the computer and I could write as I dissolve into another arrangement of mass onto the floor. It was a good day, a tiring day which I wrote about by hand waiting to proctor students taking exams that will determine their level for the appropriate class. If, dear reader, you are reading this weekend, I had most interesting interculturally informative exchanges that portend good things in the future.
On the bus ride home, suddenly the Dean suggested we look at the map, "lo and behold" we were just getting off the highway by the new road down the street from my home, a road we used to sneak across last year, now a freeway exit with walled sides. The driver dropped me off not far from Carrefour, yelling at me with the door open, "Zoe, zoe!" I think.
I was jogging down an empty bike lane, momentarily free of traffic, but seeing no break in the railing between bike and sidewalk, now covered with ivy and no longer easy to hop over, when a taxi honked and scooped me up. I was on my way home!
Got home to an unusually high amount of unusual and interesting e-mails. If you think it is easy here -- that our experience with ne'er do wells is about us, well, one savvy educator who has been in China for at least eight years, brilliant, even he got scammed by an English school madperson and had to strategize the retrieval of passport to "get out of Dodge," as he put it.
Then, just in case this fantastic person is one of my readers, heard from one of my favorite people, a unique and extraordinary person, exceptional educator who has impressed me by example and observation, her intuitive and informed way of working uniquely and effectively to nurture very different people who are her students, and of course her support and empathy with my struggles to write, even when I really could have tried harder.
And now I am an English Composition Lecturer. May my students never find my blog out!
After the unprecedented historical event of not getting a cab to get to work on Monday, I was greeted at my door by a taxi arranged the day before by the Dean's assistant. Very hip and friendly presence, which means more relaxed and easy-going than most people I meet in Shanghai. The driver even called my mobile phone, which was off! Last night I was so drained like oil from the engine, oxygen from the air, that I had forgotten to put my phone on the charger.
The friendly young man drove me to school and my arrival was so early that I walked into the lobby and found a working outlet in the Hotel, where my university currently houses their offices. These are things a foreigner can do here. Where in the U.S. can you walk into a hotel where you're not a guest, plug in your charger in the lobby and just explain what you're doing?
The 7AM bus left at 6:45 AM, leaving conscientious colleagues in it's wake, to taxi out for 120 kuai ($15 is an enormous fare here) with the Dean.
Okay, Mr. F. needs to use the computer and I could write as I dissolve into another arrangement of mass onto the floor. It was a good day, a tiring day which I wrote about by hand waiting to proctor students taking exams that will determine their level for the appropriate class. If, dear reader, you are reading this weekend, I had most interesting interculturally informative exchanges that portend good things in the future.
On the bus ride home, suddenly the Dean suggested we look at the map, "lo and behold" we were just getting off the highway by the new road down the street from my home, a road we used to sneak across last year, now a freeway exit with walled sides. The driver dropped me off not far from Carrefour, yelling at me with the door open, "Zoe, zoe!" I think.
I was jogging down an empty bike lane, momentarily free of traffic, but seeing no break in the railing between bike and sidewalk, now covered with ivy and no longer easy to hop over, when a taxi honked and scooped me up. I was on my way home!
Got home to an unusually high amount of unusual and interesting e-mails. If you think it is easy here -- that our experience with ne'er do wells is about us, well, one savvy educator who has been in China for at least eight years, brilliant, even he got scammed by an English school madperson and had to strategize the retrieval of passport to "get out of Dodge," as he put it.
Then, just in case this fantastic person is one of my readers, heard from one of my favorite people, a unique and extraordinary person, exceptional educator who has impressed me by example and observation, her intuitive and informed way of working uniquely and effectively to nurture very different people who are her students, and of course her support and empathy with my struggles to write, even when I really could have tried harder.
And now I am an English Composition Lecturer. May my students never find my blog out!
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