Summary of my month in China

I arrived in Dalian, China on Aug. 21. I was very excited but nervous at the same time. First, I had to find all 3 of my luggage on the luggage bell. I did find them and all my colleagues helped each other out. The hard part was not over yet; we had to dodge taxi traffic with our carts and luggage. I SURVIVED! When I stepped out of the airport, it was very hot and humid, and it was LOUD. Cars were honking everywhere and about everything, from telling you to move out of the way to do you need a ride to your destination? I was a little frightened on the bus to our apartments because the driver was driving quite fast, dodging traffic, and honking. However, that is how people drive in China. Pedestrians have no rights and cars make their own lane and sway in and out of lanes.

When we arrived, I was very excited because I was in one piece and I have arrived to a new place, my new home for at least a year. I live on the third floor of one of the buildings and it's a nice size. I'm the first one to live in this suite. I had A LOT of cleaning to do because they had just finished constructing my building. I have great apartment buddies! We are always looking out for each other and our doors are usually open.

The first few days here were a rush. I did a lot of shopping for my apartment, attended meetings, went exploring, and went for a medical exam. I spent a lot of money at IKEA to furnish my apartment. My flat sheet for my bed was doubled the price of my toaster oven. I could not believe it!

I also explored a town near where I live, Mafachu, it's about a 15-20 min. walk from my apartment. I live in Jinshitan, which is about an hour away from Dalian City. There is a great market in town with a lot of fruit and vegetables, buns, tofu, chicken, meat, etc. I have to work on my Mandarin. The locals do not understand that I look Chinese but I do not speak Mandarin. When they try to speak to my caucasian colleagues, they turn to me and speak Mandarin. Or they just stare at me and my friends because I'm speaking English fluently instead of Mandarin. On one of the weekends, I walked about 20 minutes from where I live to a beach. It was a very nice day because the sky was blue and there were fluffy clouds which is very rare here. Not too many people were in the water because of the oil spill. A lot of wedding couples take pictures at the beach. There is a bridge that connects the two beaches together, one side has a lot of small rocks and the other side has soft sand.

I go into a city about once a week call Kafachu (not sure about the spelling), there's a lot of restaurants, shopping locations, bars, markets, etc. It's about 15-20 min. drive from my apartment. I can take the trolleybuses into the city too but the last one out is 6:30pm. Everything here is a lot cheaper than in Vancouver so hopefully I can save some money. I've been eating out a lot because it's so cheap, such as a large bowl of noodles would only cost $1/$2 here and about $12 in Vancouver.

I've been teaching for about 2.5 weeks now. I am teaching only Planning 10 on the boys campus. I really enjoy it. The boys are very sweet. Some of them even help me carry my stuff to my classroom or office, they are gentlemen's. The boys understand my humour. They always call me teacher and they say good bye teacher every single day. Most of them work very hard in class; however, I have a few sleepers. I did not know that some students can fall asleep while writing an exam. I hope I can make a connection and a difference in my students. We have house events on each campus to encourage school spirit and participation. GO BLUE TEAM GO!

I have met many great friends and colleagues here. I will try and blog more often. In the meantime, if you have facebook, a lot of my pictures and updates are on there. I am heading into Dalian City sometime this weekend to do some exploring!