After One Month in Lin’an

Good afternoon Internet. Now that I have been here for one month, I can say with some certainty that I like it. First of all, the school, at least my department, is better than the school at which I taught previously. Here we, the foreign teachers, are made to feel a little more a part of the university. We are not completely segregated, nor left out of the loop. Though of course, we’re not completely a part of the university either. We’ll always be foreigners first, and teachers second in the minds of the Chinese. Maybe that will change some day.

The facilities here are much better as well, though I know teachers in other departments have some complaints. Perhaps the single greatest improvement of Zhejiang Forestry University over my previous position is that I do not need to commute to the campus here. I don’t have to wake up at quarter to 6:00 to catch a bus to the campus. Dare I say, “yippee!”?

One negative here, however, is that I am not within the city proper. So if I want to go to shopping I need to take a bus into town. But, it is only a 10 minute trip, so it is hardly worth complaining about.

Yet, I like living here on the new campus. It is surrounded by hills and trees. Here the ground is green and the sky is blue. The air is clear, the area spacious. This is the least crowded place I have ever been in China. The campus is large, almost unnecessarily so, and it feels peaceful, even quiet. I have rarely had those feelings in China.

While it’s true the DVD stores are lacking, and I can’t get (real) cheese, pizza, or much else in Western food, I like that I am here. It is certainly a contrast from Beijing, and even Wenzhou. Perhaps it is a chance to engage myself in the culture more than I have in the past.