My Arrival

Finally, I get to make a blog post.  Apparently Blogspot is a blocked website in China so it took me a few days to get an internet proxy software running on my computer.  Now I have access to uncensored internet.

I have been in China for six days now and a lot has happened to me since my arrival.  I arrived in the Chongqing airport around 10am with Ryan Kephart and John Murray.  Unfortunately the airlines had lost our luggage.   Ryan and John eventually were able to get their luggage delivered to their apartments two days later.  I am not so fortunate, the airlines still have yet to find and deliver my luggage to me.  At least I packed another pair of cloths in my carry on so I can have a clean pair of clothing to wear everyday.  Still this creates added stress on top of the stress of readjusting to my new home here in Beibei.  Now I will stop complaining.  Our apartments are great.  We all get our own apartments that include a living room with furniture, kitchen with a microwave, fridge and stove, an enclosed balcony with a washing machine, and bedroom with a queen sized bed and other furniture and lastly a bathroom.    

All of us have been keeping pretty busy since arriving.  We have had orientation meetings with Frank Wang (our foreign affairs director) almost everyday this week.  On Monday we all signed our teaching contracts with the school and then headed to a bank to open up Chinese bank accounts.  On Tuesday we had a medical examination in Chongqing which included getting an X ray of our chest.  After that we headed to a an Ming dynasty recreation tourist town called Ciqikou and walked around for a bit. In our free time we have just been exploring Beibei and setting up our apartments.

Just twittling my thumbs

Hello all.  Pretty soon I will be embarking on another adventure to China.  This time I will be going to China not as a student, but as an English teacher.  I will be teaching conversational English to upper level English major students at Southwest University in Beibei, Chongqing.  Returning to the university that I studied abroad at during college in a way makes me feel like I am returning home.  Since my return from my study abroad I have continued to take Chinese language classes for the past year and a half and I am anxious to use that knowledge in the field.  It will be nice to be able to communicate with the locals right away when I arrive.  During my last visit, I was not so lucky, I pretty much only knew how to say hello "ni hao" when I arrived.

I hope to keep posting my experiences on this blog as often as I can and I hope you enjoy it!  But until then, I will just keep twittling my thumbs until I depart (August 25th).