note: February 28 is my third anniversary of teaching in China. At 8:25 am GMT +8, Feb. 28, 2005, I walked into a Chinese classroom…

I didn’t sleep very well. I was still jet-lagged. Add to that I was in a new bed, in a new apartment, in a country I knew very little about. I went through my morning routine trying to come to grips with the strange shower configuration and attempting to shave in a nine-inch-square mirror. With bad instant coffee in my belly I waited for the knock on my door. It was February 28, 2005.

This was to be my first day of work as an oral ESL teacher at private school in Shenzhen (China). There was no training or school tour, I arrived a week later than the other new teachers. I was about to be launched, successfully or otherwise, on unsuspecting Chinese students.

I sat at my desk with a growing sense of dread. I thought about vomiting but in the end managed to hold that bodily function in check. Forty students to teach for 40 minutes? I must have been mad. I decided that introducing myself would be the best course of action. I made some quick notes in a little notebook that became my best friend over the coming months.

I was late as I searched for grade 6, class 12 on the third and fourth floors of the north wing of building two. A teacher in the hall waved me in. After introductions she asked, “Would you like me to stay in the class?”

“Oh, no,” I replied like a seasoned pro, “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. It must have been the nervous perspiration on my brow that gave my otherwise faux-confident persona away.

“Yes.”

I took a deep breath and walked into the class. There was a podium on a raised platform and a blackboard. I set down my bag and looked at the class. Forty young, smiling Asian faces stared at me. They were silent.

“Good morning.?!” I ventured. Read the full story

I don’t remember much about that Sunday, looking back after three years. It was cold, I recall, much colder than I thought it should be in a sub-tropical area. I huddled in my apartment, on the thin-padded wooden sofa. The television broadcast programs in an unintelligible language. I watched infomercials for breast enlargement creams and drank instant coffee.

My boss, an aged, chain-smoking, New Zealand crone, met with me twice and explained my schedule. I had arrived a week later than the other new teachers. They had had training, a welcome dinner, and a tour. I, on the other hand, was shown around the local area by a disbarred lawyer from New Orleans who talked about his adventures in Asia as a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, and the prices and etiquette related to prostitutes.

My boss was kind, she gave me local currency as I hadn’t converted any. In between drags on cigarettes so cheap even beggars wouldn’t accepted them she explained the times of each period. Her laugh reminded me of a rasp being dragged across a rusty piece of metal. There was no explanation as to what I should teach the following day, only a schedule. The phrase, “thrown to the lions,” echoed through my head.

I ate instant noodles and hot dogs, the only items I’d recognized in the grocery store. It was scary place: Tanks of live fish, eels and turtles filled a wet corner. Cages held chickens and rabbits, watched over by a man in a stained white coat, a giant cleaver in his hand. I could only identify foodstuffs by the photos on the labels. I hate instant noodles, the result of a long year at college and consuming them twice a day.

The Martha Stewart biography movie starring Cybil Sheppard was on the Hong Kong station that night. I watched it absently while thinking about returning to Canada. I would have called an airline if I’d known how to use the card-based telephone system.

On a precipice. And my footing was tenuous.

note: this is an excerpt an unpublished article written for The Toronto Star (after numerous drafts the editor decided she didn’t want it). It’s apt considering my third anniversary in 中国 is today.

I knew I was in trouble when the first taxi driver approached me. It was February 26, 2005, just before noon, Beijing time. I sat outside the Shenzhen ferry terminal, Guangdong Province, the People’s Republic of China.

Taxi was the only word I understood. The sentence that followed was a melodic sing-song that made as much sense as radio static. I couldn’t understand, or explain I didn’t. He smiled from a dark, weathered face at a freshed-face newb, surrounded by a curious assortment of cast-off luggage. With a shake of my head he was gone. I had been extremely naïve. I had told myself: Of course people speak English in China. Maybe half of them do. Right?

In a moment of absolute and numbing fright I realized I was in way over my head.

I don’t know what I expected. A new life? I had traveled 7,838 kilometers to a country I knew only from research. I was on a precipice and it was a long way down.

Under contract as an English teacher at a prestigious private school, I thought a drastic change might make a difference and give me both perspective and insight. My life in Canada had become stagnant. Given my age, slipping slowly from 35 to 40, I wanted an adventure. I had never had one.

… I was crashed out in Hong Kong’s Sheridan Hotel, in cough-syrup induced coma, after a flight across the globe. A new adventure was about to begin. Thirty-six months flies when you’re having fun.

I wanted to get some shots of the Spring Festival decorations before they came down. I was too lazy busy during the holiday to do so. Last night, at a loss for what to do, I grabbed my camera and headed out. aside: Why can’t cameras have cool nicknames? A guitar can be called an axe. I’d like to be able to say, I grabbed my (insert cool name here).

The gate to my community is the largest residential gate in China (everything in China has a size designation of some sort). I unintentionally captured some ghostly vehicles racing by. I’ve always wanted to try the cliche headlights/taillights shot. Voila, I have one without trying.

I apologize for not reading many blogs. School started last week and I have been tai mang le (very busy). My class of Grade 1s is the cutest. I may have to reconsider my dislike of male children.

The guns were plastic, but the determination was evident. Guards at the Tomb of the Last Nan Yue  King, in Guangzhou, PRC, practiced their skilled as I spied.

Captured: May 2006 (When I visited GZ to get my marriageability affidavit from the Canadian Consulate.)