Chinese Food Culture

Hey dear readers, my apologies for missing my weekly update last week. Life gets in the way sometimes! Well today I want to show you what real Chinese food looks like. It is actually quite different from the ¨Chinese¨ food we have back home! I always assumed our Chinese food was pretty authentic but, I was wrong. The Chinese food in the US has most certainly been tailored to American taste buds. I have not seen a single fortune cookie here haha

Some of this is ¨Western food¨ mixed in with the Chinese food. I will try to get a photo of some noodle and dumplings. Those are very common here! But so far what I have noticed about Chinese food in general is, 98% of the meat is ¨bone in¨ even though they eat everything with chopsticks.... talk about frustrating! The food in general is pretty spicy, and the meat is also pretty fatty ( for flavor I guess) really I wouldn´t say the food is bad here, its just different. Not what we are used to.

They have a lot of things with sauces and creams in the middle, a lot of spicy or sweet and sour flavos. They eat a lot of rice here and lots of green veggies. They love to eat fried food and food with a lot of oils and stuff. I really am quite amazed that they are as skinny as they are here with all the fried food that they eat.

China also has Walmart. Different foods of course but, same company 

Good ol Yellowtail :)

Toys R US may be finished in The US but not in China! 

Charming Grilled Fish is always charming haha

Found a store getting into the Christmas spirit. ¨Christ Merry Mas¨ lol

China also has convenience store food just like we do! But it may not be exactly what you are used to....

Chicken in a bag

Well thats all that I have for yall this time. If you have any ideas for topics you are curious about here in China just let me know and I will be happy to explore it for you! take care, Ty

University Life

Considering that I am now working/living at Sustech (Southern University of Science and Technology) here in Shenzhen, I thought yall might want to know a little more about university life and the student body here.

Main gate of my university

The university is very modern and big. It has a lot of greenery and all there are many different clubs and activities for the students and the teachers. All the vehicles around campus are electric so its nice to feel like there is less pollution around. We even have our very own robot! The technology really is amazing here in China.

me greeting our campus robot literally minutes after we first arrived to the campus on our first day!

Now I will show you some general photos of the campus so you can get an idea of what it looks like here. 

There is also a medical center, sports center, restaurants to eat at, stores, shops etc. We even have a kindergarden and nursing home here! It is like a small town here on this campus. If you chose to, you could stay here and never even leave the campus and have everything that you need. When we get packages delivered, they send a text message to our cell phones and we go to these automated lock boxes, punch in the code and bam! we have our packages. Easy peasy. 

As far as my students go, they are all very good students. Quiet and reserved, typical Asian students. I am used to a loud dynamic interactive classroom with constant speaking and noise so it was an adjustment at first for me coming here and realizing that getting them to speak out was like pulling teeth! But, as long as you approach it the right way ( a lot of group and pair work!) then you can get them talking. In one of my classes we even have a class mascot. 

Our class mascot :)

 Their worldview is completely opposite from our maps

China is truly massive! I think there are 34 providences

Sorry for my finger in the photo haha. You can buy books out of a vending machine! 

So, overall opinion working/living here has been good so far. It is very different work wise and living style but not bad. We are still adjusting but happy. The campus is very modern (founded in 2011) and everyone is super nice. I have good students and my coworkers are nice also. I certainly do miss Colombia but things aren´t bad here. 

See yall next Sunday, Tyler

We made it to China!

Well just as I promised, I am finally starting my blog once again after a two year hiatus! This time with a new and improved layout and more photos. Hope you like it. So I guess I should start at the beginning....

I got offered a job in China back in June and Jenny and I decided to make the move to China! I love Colombia and really enjoyed my (almost 7 years) there. I am already missing it and missing the ability to communicate, since we don´t speak Chinese!

This is all of our life in suitcases

Once we arrived and got settled I had some time before I started working so Jenny and I decided to explore the city for a bit. Shenzhen is huge! 23 million people in one city! 

Many more pictures to come! 

At the moment Jenny and I are living on the campus of my university ( I will post pictures of that in another blog post) things are going well for us so far but it isn´t always super easy to get what you need when you don´t speak the language. Thank god for Google Translate! I can´t imagine coming to China 20 or 30 years ago before the Internet and easy access to these translators. It has been an adjustment to get used to the food here. Almost everything is spicy, full of some weird cream or sauce or full of bones. It makes it harder trying to eat all this with only chopsticks!

Everyone has been super nice though and very helpful with everything. We have managed to use the Chinese version of Uber without knowing how to speak Chinese and they have an excellent metro and bus system here. One of the things I like the most is that you can connect your phone to your bank account and pay for everything with a click of a button on your phone. I have not made a single cash transaction in almost a month. Here in China there is an app called Wechat it is one app that can do everything. I do mean everything all inside this one app. 

I can pay rent, pay bills,buy movie/train/bus tickets, book a hotel, book a trip, order food, pay for anything, send money to someone, receive money, download things, make calls,video calls, record audio,order an Uber, locate myself on a map and much much more all inside Wechat without ever leaving the app!

I will end this blog with a few pictures from our trip to the Shenzhen Zoo ( many more to come)

 That bird is one of the most dangerous animals in all of Australia, I was very surprised that they let us get that close. It may not look so dangerous but even with the cage, they have been known to kill full grown adults!

Our lazy panda photo haha.

Well thats all for now. I promise I will try to be better about updating this more frequently with lots and lots of more photos. I hope you enjoyed this little update, I have lots more coming! 

Take care, Tyler