In China

I've been in China for two and a half weeks now and I'm sorry I haven't been able to update this until now. I know I said I'd update weekly. Things here have been a bit crazy. There were a few problems with my apartment (including the internet connection) I have literally not been able to even see my beautiful blog until this very moment. 

I've settled in a little bit. I'm still figuring out this whole new language thing. My Chinese is still very much non-existent but I have started to recognize some of the characters. I know which ones to avoid on restaurant menus (like  辣 which means spicy) and I know that character for meat (肉) which is usually pork. Beef is 牛肉 and translates literally as cow meat. I tend to look for these characters near rice (饭) or noodles (面). I've had some pretty good food just looking for the few characters I know. I've also had some food that was way to spicy for me even without the indication of spicy on the menu. So far my favorite food has been a Chinese hamburger. It's slow roasted meat chopped with green peppers and put inside a homemade pita pocket type bun. It's very cheap too - only 4 元. That's the character for the Chinese currency, called yuan. That's about $0.66. It's very yummy. I eat them a lot.

I really enjoy wandering around my neighborhood a little bit. There are some really neat little shops and convenient stores all over the place. And at the end of my street, every night there are a bunch of food carts and vendors selling pretty much everything imaginable.  I've seen everything from kids pajamas to used Chinese textbooks for the university near by to personal hygiene products (those aren't used). I walked along that road the other night and I'm pretty sure I looked like some starry-eyed foreigner. Which, let's face it. That's what I am for now. I hope to be able to fit in a little better and communicate eventually. 

The school where I'm teaching, Kid Castle, is a private English school with children form ages 3 to about 15. During the week, the kids come to us after they've finished there normal day of school. We normally teach from about 5pm to about 7:30 pm during the week. The weekends are when we have a whole bunch of classes to teach. The kids don't have to go to school first, so we can teach for more hours. It makes for a strange work week, to be sure. Most of the foreign teachers (there's  only six or seven of us) don't even start work until 3 or 4 in the afternoon during the week. 

The city of Harbin is huge and diverse. It can take only walking one block until you feel like you're in a completely different place. The neighborhood where I live and teach is small and inexpensive, yet only a few blocks away there are big fancy apartment buildings and a seven-floor mall. I really think I'm going to like it here. 

Well, I promise to not take so long to update next time. Good-bye!

Leaving

I finally have a date to leave - Friday November 8th. I will be leaving for China this coming Friday. That's super close. I've been packing and sorting and deciding what to take and what to leave all morning.

It's a relief to finally have a date and my plane ticket and a deadline. It's also makes me panic a little. I have so much to do yet. I have to finish packing (duh!) and I still haven't sold my car and it seems like I always need to get just one more thing. And I believe after I have everything packed, I'll have to unpack and repack everything to make it all fit and make sure I haven't forgotten everything. It's exhausting just thinking about.

I know this week will go by way to fast. There is so much to do and so many things I want to do that I feel like there will be very little time to stop and breath. It'll be worth it once I get to China and can start exploring and challenging myself.

I still don't speak very much Chinese.  My vocabulary is about 10 words or so. Not enough to hardly count as knowing the language. That will be something I'll have to learn in China; something that will be easiest to do once I'm immersed in the country and culture and am forced to learn to manage. I'm looking forward to learning and broadening my horizons.

I gotta go now. Next time you hear from me, I'll probably be in China.

Until next time!