Exhaustion

I'm exhausted.  Completely exhausted. And, it's only 9:02pm.  Oh, wait. 9:03.  In that case...

But, yeah, in reality, today was a long day.  I'm still having trouble sleeping, although it's no longer the jetlag. It seems to be a combination of several things including a super hard bed, noise from outside, and something else.  Either way, sleep has been rough.

However, I ended up wandering around for over two hours today trying to find the two metro stops that I will take most often.  One is line 1 and the other is line 14.  Line 14 means I won't have to change lines when going to work, but Line 1 is convenient because it's a tad bit closer.  It took me forever to find them, as Google Maps decided to be a bum.  However, I did find them. Yay!  I'll probably go back out tomorrow and walk to them again just to be sure.  And, I'll go again on Sunday and Monday.  I'll probably time myself.

So, I may have mentioned before, but something I love seeing is this group of old men who play cards.  Now, every day they pull their table and chairs from under the overpass walking bridge and set up IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SIDEWALK.  Like, square in the middle of the sidewalk.  And, they play cards.  I want to be cool like them when I grow up. =^.^=

I had to be super sneaky getting this photo.

I spent a good chunk of today preparing lessons for the first week of class.  I've almost got my English III lessons done for the first week, but I need to do my American/British Lit lessons done.  The nice thing about the first week of classes is that we do some introductory information...which means that there isn't a ton that goes into the class.  Still, though,  I want to try to get a week done in advance, at least.  Ideally, I'd love to get through Week 5 done by the end of this first week, as Week 5 will be a break for October holidays.

I'm not going to lie.  Homesickness is hitting me hard because this weekend is DragonCon and so many of my friends will be there.  I had been looking forward to it this year.  It seems like these big events are going to be the hardest for me.  I mean with facebook and different chat services, I can keep in touch with  most of the people in my life, but these sorts of events that I tend to go to are all going to be missed...and there are two this fall pretty close together.  Oh well, there is also next year, and as my good friend said, I'm at Chinacon! xD

Money:

Like I said, I want to kind of track money here, mostly because I find the prices fascinating.  I only ate out once today.  I got beef noodle soup (again) for dinner, as I had left over dumplings that I heated up for breakfast.  However, I did get a bottle of water while walking because I was dying.  Lesson for the future? Pack my own bottle of water.

So, grand total for today was 34RMB. =]

Dumpling Update:

I had leftover dumplings today.  As I do not have a pot, I heated them in the microwave and they were pretty awesome. Yay!

Stuff and Things: Dumplings, Walmart, and Orientation

Today was long.  Very long.  But, it felt good to be productive all day.

Today was orientation at the campus.  My commute is kind of long, but I headed down there with Clark because we are both new teachers at the school.  We managed to navigate it just fine.

The campus has some really cool aspects.  For instance, there is this lovely pond area that has black swans! I didn't get to go there today, partially because it was raining, but it is definitely a place I can see myself spending some time.  The campus also has about four stray dogs.  My boss was telling us that most colleges in Beijing who had stray dogs "deal" with the problem, but here the students banded together to get the dogs neutered and whatnot and the school lets the dogs stay.  I am actually hoping that I run into one or two...apparently they aren't huge fans of men. xD

I also received my schedule, which is pretty sweet.  I have class on Tuesdays and Fridays with a 2 hour meeting on Thursday.  Tuesdays will be a long day for me.  Super long. I have three English 3 classes, which are all oral based, and I have a 2.5/3 hour class on British and American literature (which is also oral based and I can bring in chapters from LITERALLY ANY BOOK THAT I LIKE). So, why so long?  Basically, that class starts at 6pm so I'll be there until about 9 and then have an hour long commute. Yay.  The plus side to that is that I don't have to be up early on Wednesday.  On Fridays I will only have the first three classes, and I'll be done by 12:30.

I'm excited for classes to start.  Nervous, granted, but excited.  I'll probably spend some time tomorrow looking at the books for English 3 and planning some things out.  Then, I will work towards figuring out a schedule for my one night a week class.

Orientation Outfit...who doesn't love Harry Potter shirts?

I think my jet lag is also gone.  I'm exhausted now, but it was a long day.   I don't sleep very well at night, but that's okay. It has me waking up early, which sucks, but I did not take a nap today, so I think I've finally recovered.

Money:

I mentioned in my last post about money.  The exchange rate fascinates me, so I'm going to keep this up in future posts.  I'm also trying to see what my monthly spending is on average.  I spent a total of 138 RMBs today which equates to about 20 dollars.  With this I bought an umbrella (it was raining today, and I didn't pack one), a bowl and set of cutlery from Walmart, lunch, a drink, a small thing of chocolate, a bottle of coke, and a small bag of doritos.

Cool bag...and these are no where near as cheesy as the ones in the US

I needed the bowl and cutlery and umbrella, but I didn't need the rest.  Still, though, for a day's spending, 20 dollars is not so bad.

Walmart:

I finally made it to the Walmart here!  It's huge.  In many ways it is like the Walmarts at home.  There is a clothing section, an electronic section, a beauty and health aides section, a produce section, a meat section.  Pretty standard.

The hot bar area is extensive here, and all of it smelled delicious.  Like, seriously delicious.  This hot bar was spread out in multiple places, so anywhere you were in the store smelled good!

The meat section is huge too.  I'm going to try to get a picture next time I go, but they definitely had more meats than we do here in the US.

Dumplings:

I HAD DUMPLINGS!  Near the school there is this mall-ish area with food.  One of the places was a dumpling place, and I got beef and onion dumplings and OMG they were great.  Super flavorful.  So flavorful, in fact, that you didn't need any sauce, even though I ended up using some.  Also, I got a passionfruit drink that was pretty tasty.

Yum!

More Food Stuffs and Minor Victory

The goal is to update this every day, but I know that will A) become boring and B) sometimes be impossible.  However, it is the goal. =^.^=

This was another lazy day.  I did some more wandering down a different direction.  Truth be told, I've not gone terribly far from my apartment, but I have been exploring different areas around me.  Some areas are nicer, others are a bit rougher, but nowhere feels unsafe.  The only place that feels mildly creepy is when I have to go up the five flights of stairs to my apartment in the dark...there is no lighting in the stairwell so it's a tad bit creepy.

Orientation is tomorrow.  I'll get to find out my schedule, which I'm excited about!

Food Stuffs:

I also went and ate today by myself.  Say what?!  Up until this point I've either lived off of stuff I could get at the bakery right near me or eaten with someone else.  Even in the states I have an aversion to eating by myself.  Now, compound that with the language barrier and my anxiety spikes hard core.  Still though, I realized that egg tarts and hot dogs in amazing fresh bread were not doing it, so while wandering I grabbed lunch and tea.

I went to the noodle place for lunch and got the beef noodle soup.  Thank goodness they had a picture menu so I was able to point.  Granted, everywhere I've been has had a picture menu.  It was similar in Japan.  I find this immensely useful.  Again that meal was  something like  5 dollars which included the bottle of water.  xD

I went to this adorable tea house. Clark had mentioned it the other day, and when walking by it the place looked super calm and lovely.  The seats were plush and the atmosphere was nice.  They had a lot of  options.  Sadly they had no mango tea, and I ended up ordering a rose tea.  It was not what I expected.  It arrived in a class and atop the hot water were a bunch of small roses.  As the roses seeped the hot water was flavored very mildly and it was surprisingly good!  Not super flavorful,    but the small amount of flavor was lovely.

Dinner was the Italian place called Annie's.  It was a slightly more comfortable experience if for no other reason then the waiters and waitresses spoke English. It wasn't always strong English, but I felt better about not having to point.  It was also comforting food.  I ended up with lasagne and a coke.  The coke cans here have great writing on them.  I really should not have ordered the coke, but I had fallen asleep my apartment for about three hours earlier in the day and figured I needed a pick me up. I maybe got through half of my meal, coke included.

And, because I can...the entire meal came to 61RMB.  That is 8.97 cents.  $8.97!  Awesome deal. xD

Budgets

I thought about setting a food budget, but even if I ate out every single day for three meals a day, I maybe spend 15 dollars a day?  Times 30 equals $459 dollars.  And, because I have like no other expenses, that isn't the end of the world.  I don't really want to spend that much in food a month, and it is generally cheaper (I  just went for a more expensive meal today), but I might get myself a pan and stuff to do a little bit of cooking.  We shall see. We shall see.

I do want to sent myself a budge because I want to travel a bit and I want to save.  Food is going to be my biggest expense in general purely because that is one of my only expenses.Two other reoccurring expenses will end up being my metro card and phone.  I'll probably do a breakdown of expenses here after my first month (after I get paid) especially because this month has had some startup costs so far, and there are still  20more days until I get paid. Hmmm.

Dumpling Update:

Again, no dumplings.  Laura and I will have to make up for it!

Adventures in Laundry and Food stuffs.

Can you tell that I'm bad with titles? In fact, when I submitted my thesis to the grad schools several years ago, the only thing my committee asked me to change was the title...

Today was largely a bland day, which was  nice.  I'm still dealing with jet lag, though I can tell that it is getting  better.  I think I'm just getting old...I've never had jet lag this badly before! 

There is definitely some homesickness.  Not the crippling type of "I need to come home right now because I'm crying myself to sleep" but more of the "Wow, I'm here all alone without any of the comforts of home and I feel out of place".  It's a sort of dull homesickness like I haven't felt before, but I am enjoying myself, and I've met some nice coworkers, which is great.

However, there were two highlights of my day. Yay!

Laundry:

I figured out how to do  laundry! Yeah, I know that sounds silly.  But, seriously, it was an undertaking.  Doing laundry here involves moving the washer to right outside of the bathroom, plugging in the power, hooking up the water valve, and making sure the drainage hose is draining into the bathroom (in case you were wondering, the bathroom is essentially a shower with a toilet and sink in it).  On this note, I also managed to find laundry detergent, something I was nervous about because bottles of detergent look an awfully lot like other cleaners.

So, now I have some clean clothes drying in various places.  It's nice.  They smell good. xD

Food Stuffs:

I had a lovely chocolate and almond bread today, but it was dinner that was  OMFG to die for.

Clark and I decided we wanted to try one of  the BBQ places near us, and when we met up he told me about one he passed called MeowMeow. Needless to say, I  didn't  have to think twice.

So, MeowMeow was this amazingly cat and art themed place.  For instance, on the menu there was a cat face in a portrait of "The Girl With the  Pearl Earring" and "Starry Starry"night was painted on the wall.  And, there were these really pretty metal cats everywhere!

We had a bit of a kerfuffle when we first got there because neither of us speak the language so we weren't sure what the hostess was saying, but we eventually got seated.  

Something I've noticed about menus here, which I greatly appreciate, is that they have dishes in English as well as Mandarin.  This system was also set up in that we wrote down the numbers of what we wanted.  

We got:

*Chicken Wings

*Beef Skewers

*Pork Belly Skewers

*Lamb Skewers

*A Whole Fish

*Garlic Skewers

*Eggplant

And, we weren't able to finish it all.  And, it was amazing.  The seasoning was spot on; everything was absurdly flavorful.

And, here's the best part! It cost 138RMB.  What's that you say, Emily?  That sounds like a lot of money!  Hahah.  Doing the math it  came to $20 USD.  $20!!!  We had a ton of food. xD

Then we went to this Italian place  for dessert. We ordered two really lovely things to share and we each ordered a drink.  He  got  a fancy coffee and I got a fancy hot chocolate.  The desserts were lovely.  We got a fancy chocolate cake that was really dense with a ganache topping  and a fresh made apple pie slice.  And....it was 90RMB...which is $13.19! xD

Yes, I'm focusing on the money here (although the food is nothing at all to scoff at! Like seriously, that dinner was amazing!), but seriously this sort of meal would have cost probably $100 dollars or near about back home. xD

Dumpling Update:

Still no dumplings yet.=[

Adventures in Food, Medical Exams, and Bank Accounts

I few things that I have learned: 

1) Jet lag kicked my ass.  I woke up on Sunday feeling fine.  In fact, I woke up at 8am after having gone to bed around ten.  Seems like a good start, no?  Well, I went down to the store, grabbed an egg tart (THOSE THINGS ARE AMAZING, and if you live in Atlanta, Sweet Hut has ones that taste EXACTLY THE SAME), bought some toilet paper and water, and came home.  I relaxed for a bit, talked with some people and then, at around 2ish, I passed out.  Woke up, decided to go for a walk, wandered around for awhile and then grabbed some dinner (again, an egg tart because I wasn't sure what to do).  Came back.

I had to get up super early this morning.  Today was a long day (it's only 2:43 :(  ), but anyway, I could not sleep last night.  At all.  I tried.  I went to bed at about 11 to get up at 5:20.  And I maybe slept all of 1 hour total?  ~headdesk~

2) The Chinese medical exam is terrifying.  Like, it shouldn't be, but man, my blood pressure and heart rate spiked something fierce.  I mean, it shouldn't have.  And, I only had to do three of the elements of the check because they accepted my blood work, EKG, and chest x-ray, but they cycle you through these small medical rooms where everything goes very quickly.  They stamp a form that I cannot read, and then they send you on your way.  I'm guessing I passed. xD

3) The metro system is really easy to use.  The signs for the trains are also in English, and it helped that our boss gave us (Clark and me) a schedule we had to follow as far as what trains to take.  I got my metro card as well.  It cost 20RMB and the extra 30 (from the 50 dollar note I had) goes towards my rides, which are, by the way, only like 2-3 RMB a ride.  Super cheap!

Metro Card! xD

4) Opening a bank account here is much easier than opening one in America.  Granted, the line was long, but holy cow, it took my passport, a couple of signatures, and viola! I am not the proud owner of a Bank of Beijing bank account and debit card. Yeah, I know, I know.  Very cool. xD

Bank Card!

5) My boss loves boardgames and invited Clark and I to a boardgames thing on Saturday.  We both seem keen on it, which is pretty cool.  It is just starting up, but Cormac is super nerdy and so it is awesome.

6) Food.  So, I've eating a lot of egg tarts, but today Clark, Cormac, and I went out for lunch after all of our errands this morning.  Clark and I wanted Chinese food, so we ended up at this little place called Face to Face. It's quite near where I live, and I got a beef noodle soup which was to die for.  TO DIE FOR.  Seriously, it was amazing.  And, it was super duper cheap! It cost 25RMB which equates to $3.67 in US dollars.  Cheapest lunch ever, and it was a ton of food.

An exciting story:

So, for me this is exciting, and for those who know I had the VSG surgery over a year and a half ago, you may or may not find this exciting.  We were waiting in line at the Medical Examination place, and apparently my doctor put my weight in pounds instead of kilograms.  No big deal, except Cormac pointed it out.  Apparently Jing, the lady in HR, asked him about it because if it were correct my weight would be over 400lbs.  

So why is this story exciting to me? Because when Jing asked, Cormac said I was normal sized. ~squee~ Normal sized. <3<3<3

That is all.

Arrival

I've arrived in China.

After a total of about 15 hours of flying, I made it here, arriving at 3:20 pm on Saturday (China time).  And, everything is new and different.

My apartment is nice.  There are two bedrooms, a cooking area, an eating area, and a small sunporch looking place.  I look out over a street (at some point I'll give you some photos), and right near my place is this grocery story and an amazing small bakery. Oh, yeah, and a KFC. ~shifty eyes~

Adjusting is going to be difficult, but I'm sure that I'll get used to it.  I mean, I'll be here for a year, so adjusting will happen.  And, I'm going to try to learn some of the language, but it won't be easy.

Odd things:

1) The bed is as hard as a rock.  Like, literally.  I'm used to sleeping on a memory foam mattress, and while a change isn't bad, my back is not agreeing.  Thank goodness for sleeping aides?!

2) The bathroom.  This is actually kind of cool. It works like a shower stall.  Quit literally.  Which means, everything gets wet when I want to take a shower. Hah.  It amuses me.

I went to the grocery store yesterday, walked around forever, and settled on sponges and bottles of water because I couldn't read anything else.  Granted, I did find some nutella, which I almost succumbed to, but it was super expensive, so I resisted.  Still though, I couldn't read the labels on anything, although it was easy to spot the packaged ramen.  One of my fellow teachers found a walmart, so I might end up there later for some lovely toilet paper....and maybe some food? Oh yeah, and hangers.

Dumpling Update:

I have not found any yet, but I will! =]