Shenzhen: Facts, Observations, and Thanksgiving Celebrations

It’s been long enough that we are through the honeymoon phase of our move. We should be thoroughly into the “hating it all” phase, but remarkably, we’re fairly content. A few months time living in Shenzhen has given us a bit of perspective, and we’ve seen much of the city now (but not all of it by any means). We still find the generous greenery appealing. We still can’t believe there aren’t a million traffic fatalities every day. We have learned more about the city, and made more observations. Here are some.

Population: almost 12,000,000. Some estimates place the actual population, including those who aren’t registered officially, closer to 17,000,000. It’s China’s fourth most populous city, behind Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai. I figure it’s part of the reason traffic laws and crosswalks aren’t necessarily paid much heed to, but that maybe just because the cops in the vicinity don’t care much. I hear other districts have more rigid policing. Anyway, since Shenzhen is such a big city, it takes a long time to get around. Speaking of getting around…

Didi: it’s Uber, but bought out by a Chinese company. With a new English interface, Didi makes hailing a ride much easier. I set it up, in conjunction with the ubiquitous social app WeChat, so that our rides are automatically debited from my bank account. This leads us to…

WeChat: it’s China’s do-all social app, and it’s mind-blowingly convenient. I can scan a QR code to pay for food, taxis, bicycle rentals (something else very China), and the like, after linking my bank account. I can use it like Facebook or like Facebook Messenger. It’s a bit like Apple Pay meets Facebook and they have a baby. A really convenient baby. Now, back to observations–a drive, or indeed a Sunday afternoon stroll, could not be accomplished without witnessing…

Skyscrapers: lots of them! The Ping An International Finance center, designed by an American firm, was just finished this year, and it is the fourth tallest building in the world. There are high-rise apartments everywhere. Quality, if you’re wondering, doesn’t seem to be especially high in most buildings, though they are evidently safe enough. Speaking of super tall buildings, presently, according to CNN, there are 49 buildings over 200 meters tall in Shenzhen.

Newly completed, Ping An International Finance Center reaches 599 meters into the sky, making it the world’s fourth tallest building. It comes within about 10 meters of being the third tallest and is indeed impressive.

Style: still not much. On hot days, of which there are many, men roll up their shirts to keep their navels cool. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my coworkers christened this the “Beijing Bikini,” while I just call it cringe-worthy. Other men shirk the shirts altogether, regardless of whether or not they have a body worth showing off. One must admire the unselfconsciousness of these guys, I guess. When it’s hot, you gotta be comfortable, right? To answer your unspoken question, not everybody disregards all sense of taste. There are definitely some elegant dresses and spectacular suits, but they’re in the considerable minority.

T-shirts: we get quite a kick out of seeing things terribly written in English (and sometimes terrible things written in English) on T-shirts here. Check out the hilarious (and highly inappropriate) things people wear courtesy of an instagrammer from Shanghai, who’s made an effort to document some of the ridiculousness here, if you dare. We’ve seen some pretty dumb shirts, but nothing quite the jaw-dropper “I Am a Whore” is, for example. Now, let’s move onto that favored, always-safe conversational topic: weather.

T-shirts aren’t the only things to get puzzling or hilarious English translations, as these signs attest.

Temperature: has now dipped into the upper 50’s (Fahrenheit) at night. It feels like fall at last. Today Jenia even lamented not having brought more cold-weather clothing from the States. Shenzhen veterans tell me temps can dip almost to freezing, and when that happens, it’s mighty unpleasant, for there isn’t any heating inside the school offices. With the mercury dropping, it actually seems appropriate that we should be having…

Thanksgiving: not celebrated by Chinese folks, of course, so Starbucks is already decked out for Christmas. As for us, we will be celebrating over the weekend with friends–folks we know from the UAE, as well as new ones we’ve met on this teaching adventure. One of the enduring pleasures of life abroad is the relationships that spring up and the surrogate families that form.

Noise.

Big city life is noisy, right? So is country life, but in its own way, you might say. And you’d be right. I never knew how many weird noises cows make before moving to rural Georgia, after all. Big city noises are different, though. The unceasing clatter and din of human beasts. Traffic. Construction. Demolition. Reconstruction. Jackhammers.

In Shenzhen, there’s hardly a day goes by without the obnoxious racket of a jackhammer. There is a construction site adjacent to our residence–everyday for months they’ve been excavating there, cutting and drilling and slamming out rock so they can erect another skyscraper. Are you familiar with that process? Huge hydraulic breakers are employed to do the job, mounted on large crawler tractors. They repeatedly send a heavy chisel point into the rock. Eventually an excavator comes along and digs out the debris, whereupon a dump truck hauls it off. As you can imagine, it’s a loud and drawn out process.

Last week, a crew started demolishing the vacant Longzhu Hospital which is just across the road on the other side of our domicile. Now the clamor of jackhammers and breakers echoes off Tanglang Mountain from that direction, too.

There’s no relaxing outside in the beautiful fall weather because it’s so loud all the time. Even relaxing on the balcony is unrealistic. Luckily, after 6:30pm all is quiet.

Unless, that is, the road is being torn up so a sewage line can be replaced. Or they’re paving the other road.

Bearing all this in mind, when Jenia and I spent the night at the fantastic new Hard Rock Hotel in Longhua, some 45-60 minutes away, I was delighted that it was located in Mission Hills, where a posh golf course exists, and where things must surely be quieter.

Imagine my dismay when I was awakened on the 15th floor by the noise of what appears to be a metro line under construction. The entire median separating the highway was a big work zone. Curses.

But that’s all part of the deal with Shenzhen. It is a really big city, after all. Much of the construction really does make life better, ultimately, but it’s a drawback to living here as well.

About Visiting Hong Kong

As we’ve rhapsodized about before, we love having friends the world over as a result of living and working abroad. Last week was one of China’s Golden Week holidays–a time when holidays coincide to allow an entire week off from work. We called up a friend (okay, we didn’t even do that, we just used Facebook messenger to get in touch) who lives in Hong Kong, a mere 30 miles away. This is a pal we met while working in Russia. She now resides in Hong Kong, and it seemed like the Golden Week might allow us the chance to get together. As it happened, though, she already had travel plans. So when she went on vacation to Japan, she set us up for the week in her lovely studio apartment.

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This meant we had a chance to explore Asia’s world city in a whole different manner than we’d have done if we stayed in a hotel.

Here’s the funny thing–after a week there, neither of us were blown away. We’d expected a place significantly different from Shenzhen. Don’t get me wrong; in Hong Kong you’re less likely to see a toddler popping a squat beside the road, but I did witness a kid taking a leak into a bottle his mom was holding while we visited a children’s science museum. There are signs posted all over the city forbidding spitting and littering, as well as stipulating mandatory fines for those behaviors. Indeed, before arriving in China, I’d heard horror stories about mainland Chinese people constantly spitting everywhere–and that maybe true of second tier cities, but I’ve only seen a few people hock up loogies during the seven weeks I’ve been in Shenzhen. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but it’s not a big problem I’ve encountered. Now, was HK cleaner? Maybe somewhat, but there was still plenty of grunge. In actuality, there are parts of Shenzhen which are cleaner (as well as dirtier, to be fair). Shenzhen shines in some respects, and even compares well to its much more famous neighbor. Let’s take the subway system, for example. SZ’s is nicer–cleaner, larger, better illuminated. While HK has a truly admirable network of public transportation, the electric buses in SZ are much quieter and represent a significant contribution to Shenzhen’s urban environment.

One of our friends here described Hong Kong as “China with a veneer of money,” if I recall his turn of phrase correctly. That’s accurate, although not everyplace in HK is wealthy. Regardless, HK represents a more picturesque place to spend time in than Shenzhen, with stunning cityscapes visible from Victoria Peak and Victoria Harbor.

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It’s a big city, so there’s a ton of people. And with tons of people come huge crowds. Sometimes I wanted nothing more than to get away from the crowds. But then, that’s the same in Shenzhen. Now and again, popular places just get too packed for comfort.

We made a day trip to Repulse Bay, and found ourselves on a nice beach with pleasant scenery. It was relatively uncrowded, although there were bunches of people, often Filipinas enjoying themselves very loudly, occupying all the patches of shade. That was fine with us, as getting some sun is part of the reason we like going to the beach, but getting a tan is anathema to most folks occupying this neck of the woods. It was interesting watching the people and groups. There was a church conducting baptisms and singing praise and worship tunes. There was a 60 year old American man and his brother with a gorgeous 25 year old woman of Asian lineage (she was probably American, too, going by her accent) popping the cork out of a bottle of champagne. There were myriad women dressed up and striking poses while their spouses or friends snapped pictures, each doing their best to look like a model. And it must be said, the water was perfect for swimming.

During our days exploring via the cheap and fabulous Star Ferry, the famously creaky double decker trams, and also on buses and our own feet, we covered quite a bit of territory. For the most part, we took in all the touristy things on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, while skipping Lantau Island, since we can get there easily enough another time. One day we walked more than 7 miles, and others we covered 5 plus. That was tiring, since Hong Kong Island is something like San Francisco in the sense that it is very hilly. In fact, there are even a series of outdoor escalators to help make life easier. The sidewalks are also there one minute, and all but gone another, depending on where you happen to wander, which makes life interesting.

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Some things we enjoyed seeing included Hong Kong Park, nearby the hugely popular Victoria Peak Tram (pro tip–go before 9:00 am), and the Zoological Park, which had a lot of monkeys who were very animated–except the humongous orangutans, who were more interested in lounging around with head coverings they’d fashioned from leaves than anything else. We found some of the temples, including Man Mo (which is in the process of being refurbished, by the way) interesting. Man Mo, for example, is named for two gods–the god of literature and the god of war. The customs observed by worshippers inside are very similar to those we observed when we visited a local Buddhist temple in Shenzhen (incense being burned, respect being paid, food and drink sacrifices being offered).

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Here’s something we learned about traveling to HK from SZ–it’s necessary to fill out an immigration card when leaving China (yes, HK is part of China, but it’s treated as if it isn’t), and there weren’t any signs or forms to indicate that. So if you’re waiting in line to leave China and there aren’t any immigration forms at hand, go to an immigration officer and get some. It’ll save 10 or 15 minutes and the necessity to step out of the queue, because they want the forms all filled out before you get to the desk. Hong Kong wants forms, too, and they give you a little 1-inch square piece of paper with a stamp on it you’ve got to keep, too, so that’s a slight annoyance, ’cause man, it’d be easy to lose.

Make friends, visit them, or at least visit their apartments. Build some good relationships with fine people and enjoy their hospitality when the opportunity arises. It is something which helps develop and expand horizons, and it also can provide entirely new options for exploring the world.

 

 

 

Impressions: Shenzhen After 4 Weeks

In lieu of a straightforward narrative per the usual, here’s a post that aims simply to catch the feelings of some recent moments. Some paragraphs are present tense, some past, so don’t get all English teachery about it. It’s about emotion.

Dafeng Oil Painting Village: Man, most of these rip-offs/copies of other people’s work are actually not even good. Low-caliber. Also, this whole street reeks of sewage. But where are the bathrooms? This toddler needs to pee! No luck with a bathroom. A while later: look, there’s a local mom holding her son in the air, buck naked, over a diaper so he can do his business (again, judging by the state of the diaper).

Princess doesn’t care that this is a low-caliber knock off. She likes it.

Walmart: no thanks. Holy too-packed-for-me, Batman!

Electric buses used everywhere in SZ for public transportation are made by BYD (who has a factory in California now). Slick! Quiet, modern, nice. The buses also have English announcements, making using them painless for foreigners like us.

More cloudy days than not. Glimpses of blue skies and rare clear days. I’m enjoying one of these on my balcony now, sweating like a stuck pig, but thrilled with the sun beaming down on me.

Clouds keep the heat down.

Buddhist (i.e. Vegetarian) restaurants and Muslim (i.e. halal) noodle places. Who knew?

Curse those wretched silent electric bikes which disregard all rules. Sidewalks, opposite traffic lanes, you name it, they go there. Royally irritating. Can’t let your guard down while walking, and especially not with little ones.

Curse also the miserable excuse for a human who decided to start putting durian into all manner of otherwise delectable foods. Breads, ice creams, you name it. If it’s yellow, watch out.

Speaking of durian, why in the whole world would anyone ever want to eat it? It is the most sense-confusing fruit ever–the nose says, “Hey, that’s going to be sweet!” and the tastebuds, caught off guard, say “Holy unexpected crap, this tastes like rotten onions!” If at first it’s not revolting, try and try again.

Walked into a restaurant. Evidently they were using Szechuan spices as they prepared something. Whole family felt vaguely pepper sprayed and started coughing uncontrollably (but not severely).

Best mango ever! Huge and, oh, words can’t express how soft and sweet.

Delicious–fresh mango and a Cantonese breakfast food called chong fen (pork excluded, of course).

Risky business, making an order for food. Being vegetarian adds a serious layer of challenge to eating out.

Spying a toddler clad in split pants, Turtle points and laughs. “Hahaha! Mom, look! You can see his butt!”

Sometimes you need to laugh a little.

People slap themselves while exercising. They also walk backwards.

There are eye exercises at school, wherein pupils shut and then rub their eyes in various patterns.

“That’s called the Beijing bikini,” says a coworker, as I point out the guy walking past our bus wearing his T-shirt rolled up so everyone can see his jiggling waist. This style of dress is common.

Style? It’s all over the place. From none to wow, there’s something for everyone.

Bentley. Porsche. Tesla. Maserati. Those with wealth flaunt it.

Cadillac is well represented in the area.

Yeah, it gets crowded. Mornings are less busy.

You could get mowed down in a crosswalk. Keep your eyes open–not just for cars, also for the jerk on the e-bike I mentioned earlier.

I’ve only seen one automobile accident. How is it possible, given the way these people drive? “There’s a rhythm to it,” says another coworker, describing the near-chaotic traffic. “It seems to be about occupying the space,” my coworker continues. “If you’re there first, you can have it, and if you turn and get partly there, then other drivers will yield to you.”

Amazing architecture.

Newly completed, Ping An International Finance Center reaches 599 meters into the sky, making it the world’s fourth tallest building. It comes within about 10 meters of being the third tallest and is indeed impressive.

Outside the Chegongmio metro stop there are a number of impressive buildings.

These buildings in Dafeng Oil Painting Village suggest the massive growth that’s taken place in the last thirty or forty years.

Mall interiors that defy logic. Why the devil isn’t there an escalator right here, with all the others, to get down a single floor?

Windows that get opened and left open for no reason, including while air conditioning is running.

Noise.

People often shout when they talk.

Shoddy workmanship.

Tropical vegetation. Lush.

That banyan tree blew my mind. The dude outside started examining it when I aimed my camera up.

Shopping for big items isn’t easy without a car.

Buying food is cheap, unless you opt for the high-end stuff. It’s possible to spend a lot if you’ve gotta have all the same stuff as you do at home. Also, cooking is a hassle when you can’t get all the same stuff as home (and you aren’t versed in Chinese foods).

Banks take forever. Under no circumstances change money at Bank of China. Just leave your cash at home (or swap it in HK at the airport’s forex) and use the friggin’ ATM. Jenia’s going to write an entire post about this.

22 kwai (if memory serves) buys a delightful Korean dish (kimchi fried rice), plus water and appetizers are free.

What a modern and efficient subway system. It actually is a pleasure to use.

It really is possible to eat out for less than it is to cook at home. Quality varies.

 

 

 

 

 

One Week In

Ask any teacher and he or she will tell you: the first two weeks of classes are always pretty good. Students behave well as they learn the rules and expectations of a new teacher, and they’re normally not prone to testing the boundaries. The first weeks are, therefore, the easiest of the year. And what is it like in Shenzhen, China, after one week with Chinese eleventh graders?

Not bad.

The only aggravations are of a sort easily dismissed. They’re a result of the power in the office going out without warning periodically (I hope that grade book autosaved…oh, snot, it didn’t); the internet not always working properly, and a lack of wifi in the office. Oh, and there’s a bit of disorganization, which would probably have driven me nuts if I hadn’t been through worse before. For example, the English text books we are supposed to be using this term to help students firm up their language fundamentals only arrived yesterday, and further, it was unclear which classes were expected to use which books. As it turns out, grade 11 students will use a book called Interchange, while others at a higher level will use one called Know More English, the title of which seems a questionable play on words to me. One might have expected to know this stuff ahead of time, but ultimately, it’s not a big deal.

One fantastic thing about teaching where I am is that I get lots of prep periods. There is time to get organized, time to gather materials, and time to grade student work. There is actually enough time in the workday to get my work done. That’s huge. Last year, though I loved my job in Utah, I took work home every weekend. And not a little–hours worth of work. I didn’t have a spare moment at work, never mind actually being able to enjoy my entire weekend. Here, I have time again. It’s splendid.

I’ve found Chinese students to be more or less like students anywhere. There is a great deal of variation in capabilities–or rather desire, I suspect–between streams. Yep, students in this school are streamed according to ability. I have two classes which are higher level English learners, and one which is very low. The ones in the lower class tend to be unmotivated, as you might expect, so I have to wake sleepers and prod those who aren’t taking their work seriously. Oh, about sleepers–this is a boarding school where students are kept working until 9:00 at night, so that’s one reason they nod off. They’re legitimately tired, not just uninterested.

Yesterday left me with a smile on my face, for it was Teacher’s Day. As the day wore on, students brought me a box of apples, two big bouquets, chocolate, a couple of hand-written notes, and some fancy soap. In the evening, there was a banquet staged for all of us teachers, too, at some fancy restaurant, but it turned out my little ones weren’t welcome, so I skipped it. After all, who wants to go to a teacher’s day banquet where teachers’ families aren’t welcome?

Gifts for teacher’s day.

Traffic jam upon leaving. Note people walking in middle of road. The white Mazda is partly in the wrong lane.

Note the smiles and the flowers on the bus.

Another point of interest is the end of the school day at a boarding school on Friday. Since most of the English teachers live at a different location, we ride a bus to and from school. Yesterday, we sat in traffic–not even able to get out of the school gates–for almost 20 minutes because the students were going home. The kids rolled their carry-on sized luggage out the gates and along the sidewalk to a car sitting in the road waiting for them. It was a big of an exodus, and quite interesting to witness. Hopefully, though, our bus can make a quicker escape hereafter.

If things continue in this vein, I’ll be very pleased to be working in Shenzhen. Here’s hoping the first week is a harbinger of what is to come, not merely the honeymoon period.

 

Russia: Underrated Teaching Location?

Note: Moscow at one point earned the title of World’s Most Expensive City; that’s no longer the case, but it is undoubtedly more expensive than Kazan. The information herein relates to our experiences in Kazan, rather than Russia’s huge capital.

Russia–what a storied place. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Leningrad, multi-hewed onion domes atop brick towers, Red Square. Having had time to reflect on our year in Russia, a few things really stand out about the experience.

First and foremost, it’s a country that can aptly be described as Second World. Google the phrase and you’ll find that it refers to the former Soviet countries (and a handful of others). While the term Second World is a relic of a bygone era of Cold War, it is still used to describe a country’s level of development–between underdeveloped (Third World) and developed (First World). Perhaps we’d be better off using the phrase “developing” instead of Second World. At any rate, whether we call it Second World or developing, sometimes Russia is as modern and wonderful as can be–spacious new apartment complexes, glittering towers, high speed internet, glamorous German sedans, and all the luxury you might imagine of a country that, as some say, is experiencing a type of resurgence. And yet, those glamorous Teutonic cruisers zoom over potholed pavement, suspension slamming against the stops in a most unglamorous fashion, and despite blazing quick internet, the hot water quits working for days at a time whilst undergoing yet another round of maintenance and repairs. The fancy apartment complex’s landscaping consists of tires as planters, poorly pruned trees and helter-skelter shrubberies. The newly paved parking lot has a section ripped up and poorly repaved scarcely a week after being finished. The parking garages in this complex have never even opened because they are both a terrible deal–one has to pay extra to park in them, as opposed to simply parking on the street level–and also because they are dreadfully constructed. Consequently, navigating through the overcrowded street level parking lot is sometimes impossible.

A photo posted by Shon Rand (@shonmrand) on Oct 25, 2015 at 10:47pm PDT

This photo was taken last week as I walked the slippery sidewalks and jumped puddles going to the gym. #TheGreatThaw has begun in earnest. #Russia #Kazan

A photo posted by Shon Rand (@shonmrand) on Mar 13, 2016 at 11:12am PDT

 

It would seem #winter is ending.

A photo posted by Shon Rand (@shonmrand) on Feb 29, 2016 at 9:24am PST

 

Second, it’s an inexpensive place to live, assuming that one makes an otherwise competitive Western salary. While it would be classless to share how much I was making, it was in line with a typical IB/international school salary, and included the usual benefits for those sorts of jobs. Suffice it to say that we were able to send up to 70% of our money home monthly. Cab fare using Tap Taxi would run around $2-3 for a typical middle-length ride (Kazan is cheap compared to Moscow or St. Petersburg, by the way), and while eating out could be as expensive as anywhere else if we didn’t use some discretion, we found fantastic delivery sushi, and groceries were inexpensive. During August and September, the fruits and vegetables were surprisingly fresh and delicious. We had trouble finding decent cheeses, though, and settled on Cheese Gallery offerings as usually tasting best. Home DSL internet is inexpensive. Mobile phone service is marvelously affordable–we paid around $3 a month for our MTS internet-equipped phone plans, for instance. A month’s expenses for water, gas, and electricity, as well as whatever fees the apartment complex included, cost around 5,000 rubles (the ruble hovered around 60 to a dollar while we were there).

By some measures, then, teaching in Russia is a great experience. Financially, it was very good for us. Other things made it hard, though. There’s virtually no English spoken on the street (even though some road signs feature both languages), making exploring more of a challenge. Of course, that also helps one be motivated to learn some Russian, and acquiring a foreign language is no small feat.

What about teaching itself? There is a range of opportunity available for an American to teach English. Language schools are one option, although they are basically their own animals as compared to public or private schools. I was able to get a job working at an international school, which, we shall wait and see, may help open doors to other international schools in the future. The school I worked for was brand new, and had its share of growing pains, which made the work environment a bit more difficult than it probably would have been if the school had been established for a while (there’s a good lesson, I think; find a school that’s been around for long enough to be stable, with administrators who have plenty of experience in their roles). In most ways, the work place was nice–it must be said that the new building was generally world-class; having meals (they even accommodated my vegetarianism happily) provided was super convenient; and having transportation to and from work included was a definite perk.

Coming out of the Emirates, I found Russian students to be much easier to work with than the over-privileged Emirati youth, and that was a welcome improvement. Also coming out of the Emirates, the long work days (7:45-4:45) were not a pleasant adjustment, and seriously ate into my quality of family life, while also making it harder to fit routine things like going to the gym into my schedule.

As was the case in the Emirates, and as is usual of international schools and many teaching jobs abroad, living quarters were included as part of the salary package, and the apartment we had was nice and plenty roomy. The location in the Sun City area wasn’t very convenient, which meant we relied heavily on taxis to get around (we could travel by bus, but it took forever and a day), but as I said before, taxi fare is cheap in Kazan, so that was alright. Of course, Russian taxi men are a mixed bag, and you might get a jovial driver one day, and a horrendous jerk the next. Uber has made its way to Kazan, by the way, but I never had any luck finding a car with Uber.

Everyone always asks about the weather. In short, the temperatures only got extremely cold for about a month around January, and only about 2 weeks were truly frigid (-25 c or more). August sucked–it was cold and dreary, but September was made great by Indian Summer–beautiful and clear–and snow fell and stuck from October. In general, after that, winter arrived and it was an overcast crap fest with terribly short days, especially in December, making the arrival of spring and frequent blue skies most welcome around April. May was okay, and June quite nice.

There isn’t much of an expat scene in Kazan. “Single women we knew had a particularly hard time making any kind of connections outside of work,” Jenia says. There are a few small gatherings, there’s a little Western church homegroup that meets regularly, and with coworkers at the school, we had a bit of a social life, but nothing like the thriving one that we experience in Abu Dhabi. But then, as our world-traveling fellow expat-teacher friends the Casales once observed, it is incredibly easy to live in the UAE as an expat. Russia, or at least Kazan (Moscow and St. Petersburg have larger expat populations), doesn’t make it easy to be an expat, although as I said, that does have some benefits, including making it easier or at least more necessary to acquire some language skills. There are lots of events going on, though, with concerts, sports events, and more happening frequently, if one can just navigate enough Russian to figure them out (a task much easier these days with the mind-blowing Google Translate app).

Travel within Russia is inexpensive. We’d recommend visiting the Caucasus–it’s drastically different from the plains which dominate the rest of the Russian landscape.

#Dombay #Russia #Caucasus #caucasusmountains #skiresort

A photo posted by Shon Rand (@shonmrand) on Apr 3, 2016 at 2:41am PDT

A final observation is what Jenia calls spotty but inexpensive healthcare. There was only one hospital in all of Kazan, with its 1.2 million people, willing to allow me into the delivery room when our youngest was born, for example. This private hospital, Ava Kazan, did generally offer a Western level experience. “It differed dramatically from doctor to doctor,” Jenia says.  Ava had English-speaking staff, too, which was great, but even they couldn’t get Western-made vaccines (Russian ones don’t have a very good reputation).

Where we spent the last couple of days. #Kazan #россия

A photo posted by Shon Rand (@shonmrand) on Nov 28, 2015 at 1:02am PST

 

So is Russia an underrated teaching destination? In some ways, probably so. If you value a place where your dollars stretch a long way, then Kazan is certainly a place where they do. If you don’t need to be surrounded by a large community of Westerners, and if you value the chance to be immersed in Russian (and in the case of Kazan, Tartar) culture, then it’s a neat place to spend some time. So find an established school with experienced leadership, and give it a shot.

Leaving Russia

In 3 hours we’ll be off the ground, heading to America.

Our year in Russia has been in some ways wonderful, and in other ways, very challenging.

Let’s start with a wonderful thing: we moved here with, and I worked alongside, two sets of friends we met in Al Ain. This year we got to spend lots of time together, and it was great to develop our friendships further.

Here’s a challenge: because of her Russian citizenship, Jenia had a bunch of hassles and hoops to jump through relating to renewing passports and getting one for our November-born baby. That was made harder (to the tune of 6 trips to Ryazan, a 9-hour ordeal) by the school I worked for. How is that possible? Well, Russia has some byzantine paperwork requirements for its citizens, and one of them involves registering in a new city when you move there. My employers somehow couldn’t manage to register my wife, despite more than one promise to do so, which meant she had to travel to Ryazan to handle the paperwork. That was a royal pain. Similarly, since the new baby was given Russian citizenship because her mom is Russian, we had some hassles involving her passport.

Wonderful: teaching Russian kids, after spending a few years in the Emirates, was a delight. Generally, the students apply themselves, and that’s unsurprisingly much more rewarding than trying to instruct unmotivated Emirati boys.

Here’s a second wonderful: shoe condoms and poplar snow. Wonderfully weird, that is. And the shoe covers are more of an annoyance than a good thing, but they’re so delightfully Russian that you have to appreciate them. Poplar snow seems to happen mostly at the beginning of June, when poplar trees spread their fluffy white seeds everywhere the wind will blow them. It’s kind of similar to shoe covers–incredibly annoying, yet also so unique you gotta love it.

A tiny little bit of poplar snow

A challenge: dealing with a new school and inexperienced leaders therein. You can imagine how daunting setting up an educational institution is, can’t you? There are lots of expectations and it’s hard to hit them all dead center, no doubt about it. However, establishing clear goals and quality communication with experienced leaders at the helm would go a long way toward helping things get up and running without much problem. I say “would,” because that was not the case here. Everyone, except, for the most part, teachers, were doing their jobs for the first time. That was hard. Lesson learned: if you’re heading to a new educational institution, make sure you’re working for folks who know what they’re doing.

Here’s another challenge: midwinter. The sun set before 3pm, and many days it didn’t really come out to shine. Depression city.

Wonderful: seasons. You miss those when you’re in what amounts to year-round summer in the UAE for a few years. And summer in Kazan is really beautiful. Also, since we’re talking seasons, who can’t appreciate a good 3am sunrise?

Challenge: cultural expectations. This is one complication an expat faces almost anywhere–Russia is a different place from the States after all, and even though on the surface Russian culture is similar to that of Western nations, one must only scrape a layer or two to realize that there are lots of little differences. Widespread superstitions and adherence to puzzling traditions (could this just be due to ignorance?) are among these differences. Here are some examples of superstitions we’ve encountered: knocking on wood (familiar, right?) or saying “tfu tfu tfu” after a compliment, not shaking hands over a threshold, not accepting money in your hand at night, to name a few. Jenia can tell you more. As for puzzling traditions/ignorance, I had a mother tell me she didn’t want her child to sit on the bench outside during the winter because she wanted grandchildren one day. For the same reason, girls weren’t allowed to sit on the concrete. Yep, educated adults seriously think their kids will have reproductive issues because of sitting on cold surfaces. I’m telling you, lady, if your kid has gotten so cold that his reproductive system has frozen, then you won’t have to worry about having grandkids, you’ll have to think about replacing your child. Sheesh.

Wonderful: cost of living, assuming you are being paid on a competitive Western rate, is incredibly low. For example, we paid about 200 rubles a month, each, for our prepaid cell phone service, which included data. At current exchange rates, that’s about $3.50. A taxi ride across Kazan, reservations made using the wonderful Tap Taxi app, would usually set us back about 250 rubles, depending of course on where we were going. Hopping the bus costs 25 rubles. Food is similarly inexpensive. Brand name clothing and shoes, on the other hand, are similarly priced to the USA, and by comparison to other things, are very expensive. It’s been a really good year for saving money.

Oh, and I can’t forget to list another wonderful thing: learning Russian. My Russian is low, but I’ve learned a lot. Turtle, on the other hand, has really become a fluent speaker, and that’s fantastic.

So as we’re leaving, it’s obvious that we’ve had a year full of experiences both delightful and aggravating. And while it can be easy to focus on the things which are difficult, I think the year has been worthwhile. At any rate, it is over.

 

 

The Latest

I’ve seen blogs that languish as their authors lose interest, and it’s sort of a sad thing. The posts get sporadic, and then, with no explanation at all, the writers simply stop updating. When that happens it’s like a story has been interrupted in the middle. It’s like you’re watching TV and the channel suddenly cuts off and won’t come back. I’m always left wondering what has happened to those authors who wrote about their interesting lives–what happened? What did they stop writing for? Did things go badly for them? Inevitably, I find myself hoping for the best–that they quit writing because life simply got too busy, too full of goodness–not that they dropped the virtual pen because they had some tragedy strike, or because everything went sideways, or etc.

As for this blog, it’s languished a bit because it’s been really hard to find time to update. When we write we like to share things we find insightful or memorable for some reason, besides the odd bit about teaching abroad. We like to write about good things, because the world is chock-full of negativity. With the new baby, we simply haven’t had time to sit down and do much writing. We find as a family of four that there aren’t enough hours in the day anymore. And, really, sometimes it’s hard to find good things to write about, too, when life is in something of a rut–not necessarily a nasty place, but nothing remarkable, either.

Somewhere in Mundaneville, Regulartown, USA, one of our readers is chuckling, imagining life in Kazan, Russia, as pretty unremarkable. He is grinning and saying, “You’re living an adventure, and you think you’re in a rut.” And, dear reader, if you’re the one laughing, you are partly right. Sometimes I pause as I’m walking through the birches and think to myself, “Hey, I’m in Russia, the former USSR, and I was just speaking Russian with a random guy–I’m living a kind of dream;” and that’s all fine and good, but I’m reminded that wherever we travel to, people live more or less the same kinds of lives, observing pretty similar daily routines, not much different from those of anywhere else, except perhaps in location.

So what really is new for us? Well, we’re finishing up the school year at the end of June and packing our bags for someplace new. I was offered a contract for a two year position here in town, but decided it would be best to move on and explore more of the world. Where to next? Stay tuned:)

Russian Winter Has Come…

…and gone, or so it seems. It’s been snowing here since October, so what is going on? I expected a frigid winter, and while it has been significantly below freezing since about the end of November, it hasn’t been the sort of “Holy crap, it’s horrendous!” cold that I’d anticipated. Except for about a 2-3 week stretch, that is. Last week it was down all the way to -20 Fahrenheit.

The day it started warming up. Look at how quickly it bounced back t0 + temps.

That was pretty much Russia as I’d expected it: nose hair freezing weather. It was actually cold enough that public schools closed for a couple days. My school, holding the weather in contempt, did not follow suit. After a couple of days in a chilly classroom, suddenly I found myself with two electrical space heaters to augment my room’s 4 hot water radiators, and a room that’s always plenty warm. During that cold snap the school doctor also started planting little home-made paper trays full of sliced onion in all the classrooms and even common areas.

Nice little carton, huh?

Did I mention there’s supposedly a flu epidemic going around? Not that I’d have much way of knowing it, since my Russian language skills are rudimentary at best, and since I haven’t seen anyone outrageously sick, either.

Anyway, two days ago, the temperature bounced back up. Now, it’s above freezing and the all the white stuff is melting; roads are slushy (a slight improvement in the case of the really secondary ones which they seem to have given up plowing after the snowfall got really serious and the cold snap occurred).

Today I went outside–it’s a rare sunny day (see some photos above from another sunny day a couple weeks ago, when it was 7 Fahrenheit and Turtle and I ventured outside for some fun in the snow)–and found that the fleet of tractors and skid steer loaders which at first did a somewhat acceptable job of keeping our residentail area’s driveways somewhat cleared of snow was active again for the first time in approximately 3 weeks. In the interim, the snow had gotten so deep on these roads that cars’ undercarriages were scraping the snow flat between the deep ruts cut by their tires. For a country where winter comes at the same time every year, it seems to always be a surprise here, and even though Kazan is far better at handling it and keeping the main roads clear than Ryazan, the other smaller city I’ve spent time in here, it is quite astonishing from a first-world perspective. To cope, people buy studded winter tires as a matter of course, and get stuck remarkably little, given the conditions.

The forecast for the next week is fairly warm, hovering not far below freezing, so that should be nice. February’s first week is already virtually past, so maybe we have only a few weeks of real winter left.

A Top 10 List: What’s Surprising?

Having been to Russia a few times, Ukraine once, and other Eastern European nations, I don’t always notice the things a newcomer would. I don’t even find things that once surprised me remarkable, tending to forget, instead, that anyone might actually be interested in reading about them. Yet, undoubtedly, there’s quite a few quirks one has to adjust to in this sprawling, chilly land. Here’s a selection of unusual things you might encounter on a daily basis in this neck of the woods.

1. Trees wearing white paint. Actually, I think it’s lime. The purpose? Er, I don’t know.
2. Toilets which you can’t flush toilet paper down, along with a little trashcan sitting nearby for your used tissue. Only problematic if there’s no waste basket nearby.
   

   No basket. Problem?

   3. Shopping centers, train stations, and other large foot-traffic areas with only a few of their many doors unlocked and open. Typically requires you to zig-zag. Let the cursing ensue.

4.  Heating cranked up indoors. This is a cool weather thing, of course, not  a summer time issue. Only surprising when you realize that there’s no control over said heating in your apartment, except maybe to disable it altogether.

5. Heating cranked up in public transportation. All modes. Taxis, buses, you name it. Sweat much?

6. No lawn mowers. Who cares for the many shabby, overgrown outdoor spaces around apartment buildings and alongside secondary streets? Nobody, it appears, except for on rare special occasions.

7. Early sunrise and late sunset in summer. This is a product of latitude, of course.

8. Late sunrise and early sunset in winter. Nothing makes you want to stay in bed more than the sun staying away.

9. Price tags for ordinary goods with numbers in the thousands. Generally goods aren’t too pricey, but you’ll do a double take as you remind yourself of the exchange rate.

10. Soup, sour cream, and cabbage are ubiquitous. “I can’t imagine a day without having soup,” a guy told me a couple weeks ago. Of course, the soups here are good, so why not have ’em regularly?