Hello! I’ve been in China for almost a month and a half now, so I think it’s about time that I write a little bit about my life here, what I’m up to, and what I’ve learned.
My Apartment + Neighborhood
I’m living in the center of the Tianhe District in Guangzhou, which is a pretty busy and populated area. It’s also very fancy and the people here definitely have money to spare. The apartment that I’m in is super nice and in a great location. My building is in a little gated “community” of apartment buildings called Jiayu Mansion. There are five or six buildings in the complex, each about 32 stories high. These kind of large apartment buildings/complexes are everywhere in Guangzhou, which constantly reminds me how densely populated China is. I love my little complex. It’s gated so we scan our cards to get in, and there’s a circular path that leads to all of the buildings. In the center there is a pool and a tennis court (neither of which I have used yet). There are always lots of kids outside playing and enjoying the year-round warm weather.
Then I have to scan into my building and scan my card in the elevator before heading up to my floor. So I am definitely very safe here! The entryway in my building is beautiful. There are pretty marble floors and a giant crystal chandelier. My apartment itself is awesome. As I mentioned briefly in my last post, I have two roommates – Clint and LiYen, who are married and teach tumbling/cheerleading at the gym. We have a private little mudroom with a washing machine and some storage for our empty luggage, shoes, and frequently used umbrellas. We have a nice big living room where we like to hang out on the couch and watch TV together after a night at the gym (we just finished watching America’s Got Talent and MasterChef!). Our kitchen is pretty tiny, but Clint and LiYen don’t cook much so it doesn’t get too crowded in there. Our fridge, however, is so so tiny and very cramped. We also have a little balcony, which I love! We’re on the 16th floor and overlook a pretty busy street so we have a great view of everything going on down below.
My room is right off the living room, and I love my little space here. My bed is super comfy and I have the BEST view. I love that my entire outside wall is a big window, and I keep the curtains open at all times for a few reasons: 1) the view is just really pretty and I never get sick of it and 2) in the hopes that the natural light would help me wake up at a decent hour (it did at first, but not anymore, so honestly it may have been due entirely to jet lag and not at all to the natural light but I’m just gonna pretend it helps). The buildings outside my window turn on really cool colorful lights at night, and I just love it! I also have a nice closet that is the perfect size! Clint and LiYen are in the master bedroom, which has an ensuite bathroom, so I get the hall bathroom to myself.
My apartment is in a really great location too! I’m about a 5 minute walk from the nearest metro station, but there are lots of things in walking distance too. About a block away there is a big open area that overlooks the river and is surrounded by lots of attractions like the Guangzhou Library, the Guangdong Museum, the Guangzhou Opera House, and the Mall of the World (an underground complex full of restaurants with cuisine from every place in the world imaginable). This open plaza also gives an awesome view across the river to Canton Tower. The big thing in China (and apparently in a lot of Asian countries) are malls, and they are EVERYWHERE. From my apartment there are malls on 3 of the 4 surrounding corners. I stumbled upon a really cool mall right next to my apartment one day when I was seeking shelter from some unexpected rain. It’s an art mall, so the whole mall is set up like an art exhibit. I don’t really know how else to explain it, but it was the coolest thing! I’ll put some pictures down below. So it’s safe to say that I’ll never run out of shops or restaurants to try out.
There are also tons of American chains near my apartment. On my way to the metro station, I pass a Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, and a Subway so there are plenty of options if I’m craving a taste of home. There is also a big street one block over that is full of cool restaurants and bars. We went to an Italian restaurant there a few weeks ago with some of Clint and LiYen’s friends, and it was very good! I also found an acai bowl cafe that I am OBSESSED with. It’s farther from my apartment, but so worth the trip. It’s so yummy, and the cafe itself is adorable. The staff all speak English pretty well, AND they’re so nice about accommodating my request for no nuts due to my allergies. All of the acai bowls on their menu have nuts, and the granola has almonds. The first time I went I asked for no nuts, assuming that they would just leave the almonds in the granola since it’s pre-made and that I’d just pick around them. But these girls… bless their hearts… they pick out all the almonds from the granola for me BY HAND every time. I’m looking forward to trying everything on their menu.
It truly does just feel like any other big city here. It doesn’t necessarily feel like I’m in China until I look around and realize I’m the only non-Asian person in sight. Guangzhou is supposedly a big hub for expats so there are tons of other non-Asians living here, but I rarely see any. I did run into a man from San Diego on the metro the other day. I was wearing a Chicago Blackhawks T-shirt, and we started talking about hockey (apparently there was recently an NHL game in Shenzhen, which is about an hour from me!). It’s nice to have a conversation with another fluent English speaker (besides Clint and LiYen) when everything else around you is in Chinese.
To be honest, I had thought that there would be more English speakers here than what I’ve encountered. Let me tell you… it’s very awkward going to the cashier at the grocery store when they start talking to you in Chinese, and you just have to awkwardly smile and nod hoping it wasn’t a question. Like are you asking me if I have a membership card? If I want a bag? Just saying hello? Who knows! So it is a huge relief going somewhere where I can speak English and be surprised when I hear English back. It’s the little things 🙂
The weather here is a blessing and a curse. Before I came here, the weather was described to me as similar to Orlando, Florida in the sense that it’s warm all year, which is great! It’s also VERY humid though, so I’m constantly in a state of dripping sweat. One day I went out exploring, and it was 91 with a “feels like” temperature of 105. I typically don’t sweat through my clothes so I thought I looked fine but just with a very wet face… so I was quite embarrassed when I stopped in a public bathroom to find the entire back and part of the front of my shirt soaked through with my sweat. That was just awesome. Loved it 🙂 But at least everyone is hot and sweaty so no one judges because we’re all in the same boat! It also rains here all the time, which I actually love because rain is my favorite kind of weather! I’d say it rains almost every day for at least a little bit. So I never leave the house without my umbrella, just in case. I do need to invest in some rain boots though because the sewage systems here are not very good so the streets all turn into rivers when it rains! There was recently a typhoon that hit Hong Kong, which Guangzhou was put on warning for. Everything was closed for a few days and quite a few trees along my street were blown down by the winds. Apparently typhoons are not that uncommon around here, but the one we just had was the worst of the year.
My Job
Now for the real reason I’m here! The facility I’m working at is called Varsity Cheerleading Academy, and it’s a tumbling, cheerleading, and dance gym. It was originally started here by Varsity Spirit (which is like UDA’s sister brand… I think… I don’t know the technicalities of it all) about 4 (?) years ago. Varsity isn’t involved here anymore so we’re kind of just doing our own thing with their name on the gym (which is a little sketchy but whatever…). The gym is actually just a little way down the street from my apartment (you can see it from our balcony), but it’s about a 20-25 minute walk or 1 metro stop away. I always take the metro there, but some days I walk home if it’s not too hot.
The gym is open Wednesday-Sunday, so my weekends are Monday and Tuesday. I’m not teaching as many classes as I thought I would be because we had a lot of classes scheduled that no one registered for (we are working a lot on our sales/marketing department and getting our numbers up and keeping them there). So I only actually teach Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but on Wednesday and Thursday there is still a lot to do. We have our weekly staff meetings on Wednesdays at 2pm, and then spend the rest of the afternoon/evening doing business-y stuff around the office and prepping for class. Thursdays are mostly the same, but I tend to spend a lot of my time on Thursdays working on choreography for my classes/teams that weekend. So Wednesday-Friday I’m typically at the gym from 1-8pm give or take. Saturdays and Sundays are our long days at the gym where I teach from 9am-6pm. To say I’m drained at the end of the day would be an understatement.
I teach technique, Jazz/Pom, and Hip Hop classes, in addition to coaching all five of our competition teams. We have three dance teams (Mini, Junior, and Senior), which focus on Jazz and Pom and are separated by age group. Mini Dance Team is ages 4-6, Junior Dance Team is 7-8, and Senior Dance Team is 9 and up. We also have two hip hop teams: Youth (7-8) and Senior (9 and up). There are also two cheerleading competition teams that Clint and LiYen coach.
On Fridays, I teach two technique classes. They’re both very small classes (2-3 kids each), but it’s nice because they are all beginners and really need the individual attention. On Saturdays, I teach a Beginning Jazz/Pom class and a Beginning Junior Hip Hop class in the morning. In the afternoon, I have rehearsals with my Junior Dance Team and my Senior Hip Hop team. On Sunday mornings, I have rehearsal with my Youth Hip Hop team and my Mini Dance Team. In the afternoon, I have rehearsal with my Senior Dance team and a small group of girls that I am coaching for a school talent show performance (funny side story – found out the day before our first rehearsal that they were planning to do the dance on ROLLER BLADES….. which would have been good to know before I choreographed an entire dance for them which was NOT meant to be done on WHEELS).
Most of the kids here speak English to some degree. A lot of the kids go to American or British international schools so their English is really good, but it also depends on their age. Obviously my older students have better English than my younger students. It is funny though, because sometimes the kids just don’t respond at all, and I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing or what. But when I first got here and didn’t know the kids yet I’d be talking to them and they wouldn’t respond and then later in the day or week they’d say something in English… and I’d be like “oh so you DO speak English! You were just ignoring me then, huh?” So that’s cool. But of course, it really all depends on the kid. I have some students where I’m literally begging them to respond to a yes or no question for the sole purpose of not feeling like I’m talking to a wall for 2 hours, and I have some students that can never seem to shut up. So I get a little bit of both!
The biggest language challenge is definitely with my younger classes just because they are just SO young. To make up for the language barrier, they learn by watching and imitating, which can make it hard to correct them or redirect my students who get off task. If I’m at the front demonstrating a stretch and some girl in the back is doing it wrong, I have to brief them by holding my hands up and saying “stay there! stay there!”, but the second I get up to go fix her all my little nuggets stand up too, and I’m like “no! stay there!”. But they can’t understand me so it’s just a big challenge that I’m still working on overcoming.
I have so many stories about these kids that I could go on about for days. I might have to make an entire post with my favorite stories about these kids at the end of my time here. They may drive me crazy, but I always leave the gym with a good story.
Honestly, my feelings about this job change every single day depending on how things are going, which classes I’ve just taught, and which kids I was with so I truly can’t give a definite answer on how I’m liking my work here. Some days – like when I’m dealing with my 7-8 year hip hop boys who never stop screaming or sticking their hands in their mouth or touching each other or making faces in the mirror – are really challenging and I am miserable. Some days – like when I’m in the middle of teaching and a 4 year old shouts out that she needs to go poo-poo – are just plain frustrating and make me question why I’m here. But other days – like when I’m with my three sweet older girls on senior dance team who are actually *relatively* good and are so eager to learn and actually talk to me – are good and it makes me excited to go to the gym. So I still don’t know.
A big part of my struggles here are related to the hip hop classes/teams that I teach. I am ~clearly~ not a hip hopper, and I have really been struggling to teach it. It’s one of the reasons why I have had so many bad days at the gym because I feel like I’m not doing a good job, which is very hard for me to deal with as a perfectionist. The gym has been struggling to find a coach that is strictly focused on hip hop for a very long time. Our focus at the gym is jazz and pom, so hip hop has always kind of been a side gig that we do because the kids want it. It has also been hard because these kids have had 3 different coaches since April, and we all teach hip hop differently. We had a group of kids decide not to come back to the senior hip hop team for a handful of reasons that have been culminating for a long time, and it has been really hard not placing the blame on myself. We have a new coach coming to the gym to focus only on hip hop, so I’m hoping that the kids will respond well to her. She will be starting the second weekend of October, and it will be nice to have the burden/stress of my hip hop classes taken off my shoulders knowing that they are in the hands of someone much more capable of giving the kids what they want.
But in happier news, we are going to two competitions with our teams this year. These will be the first competitions that our gym has ever attended, so it will be new for all of us! Our first competition is here in Guangzhou on November 17-18. Our second competition is in Shenzhen, which is about an hour away by bullet train (right near Hong Kong), on November 30-December 2. I’m excited for this one because it’ll be a little weekend work trip! I just started working on competition routines with a few of my teams this past weekend, and I think they’re going to be so cute. Since no one at the gym (including staff) has been to a CCA (which I assume stands for China Cheerleading Association – honestly am not sure…) competition before, so we don’t know exactly what the judges will be looking for. From the research we have done online, it looks like the routines are typically VERY simple. So we will either do very well since our kids will be doing more advanced/complex routines or we will not do well because it isn’t what they are looking for. Either way, it will be a fun experience for everyone.
So that’s what I’m up to! It’s been a rollercoaster so far, and I’m sure it will continue to be for the rest of my time here. I just have to keep reminding myself what a unique experience this is, and that it’s only short-term so I need to enjoy every good moment and not dwell on the bad ones because they’ll be over before I know it.
Starting Saturday the gym will be closed for a week for the Chinese national holiday. I’m taking full advantage of my time off and will be going on a solo trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Singapore! I’m super excited and will write all about it when I get back 🙂
Eva Around the World 