The Beginning...and the last 6 months...

Hey everyone!

It is time to start this blog up. Alright..let's do it..If you don't know already, I have been in China for just over 6 months now serving in the Peace Corps. But here in China, we don't call it the Peace Corps. We are U.S. China Friendship Volunteers. In Chinese: 美中友好志愿者 (Mei Zhong You Hao Zhi Yuan Zhe). Why we have this name, I don't know, but either way it doesn't matter..because if we tell a Chinese person "Peace Corps", they don't know it and if we tell them "U.S. China Friendship Volunteers", they don't understand it. So here we just say "We are volunteers." In Chinese: 我们是志愿者 (Wo Men Shi Zhi Yuan Zhe).

Now that the short history lesson is over, let me give you a recap of the past 6 months and then a short glimpse into the future.

After the long process of applying for the Peace Corps (a dream of mine for a long time), I finally got accepted, but I had a decision to make. They said you can serve in Eastern Europe or do a "special" application to serve in an Asian country (which remained unnamed). It took me all of 2 seconds to respond: "Asia!" In Chinese: 亚洲! (Ya Zhou!). No offense to Eastern Europe, but Asia suited me much more. And after the "special" application, I got my letter and it said "Welcome to Peace Corps China!"

So after a brief time waiting, I ended up in Washington, D.C. for "staging", which lasted about 3 days. I got to meet the other volunteers in my group and we had 2 days of sessions, where we learned about Peace Corps and Peace Corps China. The best part was of course getting to know the other volunteers in my group and sharing stories. Our group had a large number of "transfer volunteers", which means that they had just finished serving in other countries, and because they liked it so much (or they weren't too pumped about returning to America) they decided to serve for 2 more years..These people were very helpful because they knew a lot of what to expect, especially from the Peace Corps Policies stand point.

After "staging", then it was off to China. D.C.-Beijing: around 13 hours..which went surprisingly fast because I sat between 2 other volunteers from my group, Brad and Mark, who I am good friends with now. The coolest part was that we flew over the North Pole, so the entire plane ride was sunny and if you looked out the window, it was blindingly bright because of the reflection off the ice.

After landing in Beijing (in Chinese: 北京), it was straight to Chengdu (成都) in Sichuan Province(四川省) to start our training. At this point, we are not official volunteers, but instead we are called "trainees."

A quick overview of training. It was tough. Monday through Friday we had sessions that went from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. We had sessions about Peace Corps China policies, Safety and Security training, Health training, Chinese culture, and of course Chinese language classes. Some sessions were interesting and some were pretty boring, but I think it's safe to say we learned at least one thing from each session. Some sessions were taught by the Chinese staff, some by the American staff, and some by volunteers from the year before. Sessions done by current volunteers serving in China were the most helpful because they could give us a lot of advice about what's worked and what's failed for them. My favorite part was of course learning Chinese. It is a really difficult language to learn, but it is a lot of fun to speak. We had language class everyday and we had some great teachers. Most of our language classes centered around different scenarios we will come in contact with. For example: buying train tickets, buying food, bargaining, and asking for directions. Some days learning the language was frustrating and other days you felt like you accomplished a lot. Best advice I can give: The more you speak, the better your Chinese will be. I got nervous a lot speaking, especially at the beginning, but you just have to realize you're going to embarrass yourself and make mistakes..so just go out and have fun with it.

The best part of training though was living with a host family. They were awesome and I learned the most from them. I had a mama (妈妈), baba (爸爸), didi (little brother) (弟弟), and my favorite person: meimei (little sister) (妹妹).

I know the picture is a little difficult to see, but here we are all. One thing you might notice about this picture is that I am a lot fatter in it. If you've seen any of my recent pictures you can see a steady loss of weight as the months go by. This is not because I'm not eating (because I eat plenty), but it's just a different diet here. Ok..back to the family. I had a great time with them. They best part was getting to see what a Chinese family did. Most things are similar to American families (eat, sleep, read, tv, etc...), but they have their own style of doing things. For example: meals are always together at the table, after dinner a long walk with a possibility of badminton, and always showering at night. The thing that took a bit to get used to was showering at night. I'm a shower in the morning kinda guy, but China changed that real quick, especially living in Sichuan and going through a Sichuan heated summer.

My favorite part about my host family was that they couldn't really speak English. The mama could say a few sentences and words, but real conversations never happened in English. This basically forced me to always speak Chinese with them, which was good, bad, and embarrasing. I just always had to remember to take my dictionary wherever we went. So I learned the word for dictionary (字典) (zi dian) real fast. As I said before, my mei mei (little sister) was my favorite person. She is 12 years old and her goal during my time with them was to spend as much time with me as possible. She was great and I learned a lot from her. She was always happy to help me with Chinese and we spent most nights watching tv, movies, or reading together.

It didn't take long for our training to end and "swear in", which is where we officially become Peace Corps volunteers. In total, training last 2 months and the first week of September we took our oaths as PCVs. The swearing in ceremony was good overall..one nice part about it was the Director of Peace Corps came to swear us in. His name is Ronald A. Tschetter and he formally served in India (I think during the 60s, maybe the 70s). He was a nice guy and shared a lot with us about his time serving in the PC and his plans for the future.

Shortly after Swear In, we all headed out to our sites, which will become our homes for the next 2 years. It was sad to say bye, but everyone was excited about getting started teaching.

So now for my site: I am in Guiyang (贵阳), which is in Guizhou Province (贵州) in the southwest of China. My city, Guiyang, is also the capital of Guizhou and if you look on the map it is pretty much in the dead center of the province. I love my city. There are 9 other volunteers in the city, including my sitemate Dulce. The other 8 are at different colleges in and around Guiyang. They are all excellent and have been very helpful. Aside from me and Dulce, the other 8 are China 13s, which means they have been here for 18 months. Me, Dulce, and the rest from my group are China 14s and have only been here for 6 months. So we are able to learn a lot from the 13s. I won't go into a lot of detail about Guiyang, but my favorite part is that it is a big city, but it also doesn't have a lot of foreigners..I rarely see any and if I do, it's another PC volunteer teacher.

Now a short intro to my school and students. I teach at Guizhou Educational College (贵州教育学院) and we now have a brand new campus. Before we had 2 very small campuses (one building each) in different parts of the city, but now we have a real college campus. It is not finished yet, but it is still 1000 times better than the previous ones. The only bad part about the campus is that it is a 40 minute bus ride there. But it's ok because the school provides a bus and we are able to get to know other teachers at our school a lot better during these rides. We started teaching at the new campus in November and it was like night and day compared to the former ones. And me and Dulce also share an office, which we have turned into a real office (before just two desks in a plain white room). Our school isn't set to be completed for a while, but it's cool because everyday we go there, there's something new finished.

And now about my students. They are amazing people! I taught Oral English, Writing, and American Culture to freshmen and junior students this past semester and next semester I will teach Oral English to the freshmen and writing to the sophomores. I won't go into great detail here because I know I will write more about them in future posts.

And now to the present. I just got back from a trip to Sanya (三亚), in Hainan Province (海南), which is a small island off the southeastern coast of China. It was exactly what I needed. Warm weather, the beach, and relaxation. I went with 3 other volunteers and if you want to read more about our trip, check out Phil's (one guy who I went with) blog. Phil is a China 13, so he has a lot more knowledge about China than I do..and he is also an avid blogger and was a big inspiration to me to start writing this blog.

Now for the future. This Saturday I will be headed to Chongqing (重庆) to celebrate Spring Festival (in America we say Chinese New Year) with my Chinese host family. I am pumped about this because this holiday is supposed to be Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years all in one. After that I am off to Yunnan Province (云南) with some teachers at my school. And then to finish off February I am going to Thailand for 2 weeks with other volunteers. So the rest of this month and February also will be crazy, so I'm not sure when the next blog will be, but it will come.

Last thing before I finish this first blog. What does "Surongguang in China" mean?. Surongguang is my Chinese name (苏荣光). To pronounce it: the "Su" is pronounced just like the English name Sue. This is my family name is Chinese. "Rong" is pronounced similar to "wrong" (not exactly but close enough). And "Guang"...I don't know how to explain it because we don't really make this sound in English. In Chinese names, the family name (Su) always comes first. And I'm almost positive family names don't have meaning when they're used as names. The second (and sometimes third) names are where the meaning is. So "Rong Guang" together means glory/honor (it's actually "Guang Rong" that means glory/honor, but apparently it sounds better as "Rong Guang" when it's used as a name). My Chinese teacher gave me this name when I started learning Chinese in Chengdu. I love this name and most people call me it here. So no Patrick Sansbury on this blog. Only Surongguang.

So I will see you guys later and any questions or comments, let me know..take care.