11/11 Saturday

Today I woke up well rested from staying in Lac’s place. I had taken advantage of his nice shower the night before, and had the most terrific looking bed-head when I walked out of his guest bedroom. I went with Lac and Ali, who lives close by, to meet up with Caroline and Terry for breakfast. They were going to head out to the Great Wall while I looked for a job in the nearby district of Jian Wai SoHo. It was very fortuitous that I had to stay at Lac’s, because I had been planning to go English-teaching job hunting at some point over the weekend, and now I was presented with the perfect opportunity to hit Soho. I went to a copy center, hand wrote (neatly) some English teaching experience into my resume, as well as my China contact information, and had a pile of 12 copies in no time. I went to the two largest buildings in Soho, and first found the place that had been recommended by my Chinese teacher, Yue Laoshi, called Vivid English Club. They ended up being the most enthusiastic of the bunch, and said that they’d call within a week. I found a couple of other places, but only managed to hand out 2 more resumes. I then needed to head back to my apartment to recharge my cell phone, as it had completely died.

I took the subway from Soho in the east, past Tian An Men square, and transferred in the west to the ring line. I then took that to the point directly under the Music School, and got off there. I looked for a bus at several stops that would go my way, but none ever appeared. I ended up walking from the second ring road to the fourth ring road, the equivalent to about an hour and a half of brisk paced walking.

I posted some advertisements of myself as an English teacher online for free at a site that does classifieds for the Beijing area, and am hoping that there are many people who check the site regularly.

More about my shower: steadily flowing hot water is hard to obtain in my shower. First off, I realized that igniting the hot water heater with the shower was not possible, and that I would have to do it with one of the sinks. This is due to the fact that I have on-demand hot water, with the heating unit stationed in my kitchen. My first successful shower was had by igniting the heater using my kitchen sink, shutting it off, and then running back to the shower. This shower lasted 3 minutes before the heater turned off. Later, I realized that I could ignite the unit with the sink that was actually in the bathroom, but that the heater would shut off immediately after I turned off the tap.

I can now have a decent shower by letting the bathroom sink run just enough to keep the heater going. Unfortunately, the process decreases the strength of the shower because the two are on the same pipe.