I’ve been in China for a few days now and the country has been good to me so far.
Delta Airlines was top notch. I was hoping to get a plane with a TV on the chair for such a long flight but that didn’t happen. My layover was in Tokyo, Japan. I had about four hours to kill at the airport. I was not disappointed with the Japanese airport as they had a sushi restaurant, anime, toys that don’t make sense, and ‘cute’ things. I also stumbled a Google sponsored WiFi hotspot. Thanks Google! It wouldn’t be a complete Japanese airport visit without eating Sushi so that’s what I ate. As I was eating near a LCD displaying a fireplace, two other American expats joined my table and we talked till it was time to get on the flight. When you’re in an airport full of Asians, you just notice other white folks quickly. Note: I could not sleep at all on the sixteen hour flight.
In Beijing, I’m familiar with how the taxi’s work. I have the name of the area I need to go to for my hostel and point it out to my taxi driver. I get out of the taxi and pay my 80RMB. I know exactly how to get to P.Loft hostel because it’s the same exact hostel I stayed at when my trip started over a year ago. As I was walking down the streets, everything came rushing back in memories as if I had never left Beijing. I knew exactly where to go and everything was exactly how it was over a year ago. I arrive at the hostel by midnight with still no sleep. The receptionist asks me if I had booked in advanced. A few days ago, I had checked HostelWorld and they had plenty of empty rooms and figured I wouldn’t need to book in advanced. What a stupid move for not booking. She tells me they are fully booked. I’m tired, no hostels anywhere nearby, and in no mood to deal with this. She was of no help as I asked her if there was any hostels near by. My next flight was at 8:30am and all I wanted to do was rest for a few hours. Instead of going back out into the city, I decided to hang out in the lobby of the hostel till it was time for my flight. I killed several hours catching up with things online and watching a few movies. I’m a total wreck stumbling over everything in tiredness. I eventually get to the airport for my flight to Xi’an. Lesson learned I suppose.
For the first time, there was a lady at the airport holding a sign with my name on it. I felt important for a whole second. The school I’m teaching at picks me up and brings me over to the University. First impression of the school is overwhelming. It’s enormous. I’m told there are roughly 20,000 students at this university and on the same street there are eight other universities. There’s nine cafeteria’s at my university and each one has dozens of options to choose from for food. Since no one understands English there, I usually point to what looks good and try it out. If I spend more than $2USD, I spent too much on food.
My apartment complex is conveniently labeled as the Foreign Experts Building. The apartment itself isn’t too bad. Very basic. It reminds me of a university private dorm room. Two things that seem to suck is that the I don’t have a dryer and the shower head isn’t great. Having one English channel (CCTV) doesn’t bother me since I don’t watch much TV. It’s a shitty news channel that seems to repeat every other hour. For shopping, there’s small shops all over town including in the campus. The school is nice enough to drive us to their version of a Walmart once a week at a place called Metro. I get most of what I need from there.
So far I’ve met Tom and Donato. Tom is from the Boston area and Donato is from Toronto. Nice guys that I’ve been hanging out with frequently. Both are English teachers as well. There’s also a few Chinese teachers that has been helping us get sorted out.
The other day I took a trip to the city center. The 20-30 minute taxi ride from my campus to Bell Tower which is inside the city wall was 32Yuan and later split between the three of us. Walking around the city was a major deja vu for me. We took a general walk around the city and went on top of the Bell Tower which makes for a top view of the center of the city. We had a good few hours walk around the Muslim market seeing everything you wouldn’t want to see be eaten or sold. Afterwards, we tried for awhile to look for something to eat but it proved to be difficult. Instead, I suggested the hostel I had stayed at previously in Xi’an for food. Unfortunately, the restaurant bit was closed so I settled with just a beer and hanging out in in the lobby. It was like entering a time machine as I started to remember when I had first met Chris and the rest of the group. It brought happy memories.
Jumping around here, I had to take a full medical examination. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have the Plague or other medical issues. X-rays, Ultrasounds, eye sight test, and blood samples had to be done. That’s a heavy checkup. This is all part of the work visa for China.
I have my work schedule. It’s 20 hours a week, 10 classes, and each class is two hours long. Most of my students are younger than what the other English teachers have. Some classes are 16-17 and others are 18-19 year olds. I like teaching the younger kids so this is perfect for me. I start this Thursday. There are plenty of holidays as well. From Oct 1st till Oct 7th, it’s a Chinese national holiday. Undecided where to go during that time. What I really can’t wait for is the winter break I get from January 10th till March 1st. I’ll be joining Steph in the SEAsia travels for that. Can’t wait!
In other news:
I decided to remove a lot of pictures from Facebook. I don’t like the fact that they own royalty of my pictures. Instead, I have a Flickr Pro account that I’ll be using to update my pictures.
With film, I continue to take footage and starting to feel more comfortable in front of a camera. I won’t have a computer to edit any of this or publish most of what I record but it’s in hopes that someday I’ll be able to do something with it.
I’m unsure how she found me but I’ve been featured and interviewed on Forbes. How To Take A Sabbatical From Work. It was a fun interview. Super excited about it.
I’m a moderator on the Everything Everywhere Forums. It’s got amazing potential. Join in.
{ 0 comments }
<3
