Getting settled in.

Well, I've been back in Chenzhou for several months now. I haven't started my new permanent job yet, but that's supposed to start next week. Right now we'll just be doing demo classes. That means we teach a class to prospective students for free and the parents decide if they want to send their children to our school. To be clear, this is a 'training school'. That mean that students come to our school after their regular school hours to learn English. In Chenzhou, their regular school is free up until the 9th grade, so the parents pay money to send their kids to these training schools and they want to know that their kids are going to learn English before they pay. Chinese parents are quite different in this regard. They don't drop their kids off at the training school and come back when classes are over. They sit outside the classroom waiting on their kids to finish the 1.5 hour lesson, sometimes even standing at the door to peer into the classroom. (Classrooms always have a window.

More importantly, it's Spring Festival! The New Year begins on Saturday and the town is gearing up. I passed a fireworks display on the street the other day, Probably just a test run, but that's what will happen on the holiday. I missed New Year in Chenzhou last year because I was on holiday in Vietnam (they call it Tet there and there was an impressive fireworks display in Hanoi). This year I will be spending the holiday in Chenzhou. I've had a couple of different friends ask me to spend the holiday with their family, so I will be having a traditional dinner for the New Year. I know there will be a lot of fireworks and a lot of food for the holiday, but I'm not sure what else will be happening. I'm interested to see it.

The New Year in China begins the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival is the big holiday time in China. I'm told the city will be empty by Friday because most people in the cities will go to the countryside to spend time with family. While foreigners use this time to travel ( I have friends going to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore this year.), Chinese use this time to spend with their families. Some will only stay with family a few days, while others will stay a couple of weeks. Chinese cities have grown substantially over the course of the past few decades, so the majority of people in them have family in the countryside, where they come from. That means that most of the businesses will be closed over the holiday, so that will be interesting as well.

By the way, I realize that late January, early February is not spring. The Chinese do not seem to have caught on to this. I'll attempt to post some pictures over the holiday when I see something interesting.