China-Land the Early Years

China Land: Shanghai–The City of 18 Million People and Quite Opposite from The Last Great Frontier of Alaska

So we've arrived!

The plane flight was actually pretty good. Since we flew out at 1:30AM we actually slept for most of the flight. There was also some pretty darn good airplane food. Korean Air definitally treats their economy passengers better than most American Carriers I've flown on. Chris and had a cool noodle-like dish called: Bibimbap. I'm sure videos will be posted on the Blogspots (address's to be supplied at the end of the e-mail.)

Hmmmmm...... okay I'm getting tired. Let's hit up the main points.

Things that I've been happily surprised to find (mostly because Shanghai is as western as western as you can get in China-land):
•Non-Fat Milk (who would have known that they would have milk at all! I had prepared myself for 3 months not to have any milk. The quality in taste of this milk is yet to be determined, but it did suffice to be consumed with my.... American Cereal that I ate this morning. Sorry guys.... you can't eat china-food all the time... they don't even really have "breakfast food.")
•Cold Soda

Things I didn't even realize:
•You can't flush anything "extra" down the toilet. There's apparently a reason that all the bathrooms have waste baskets in them. This is of course true in the "fancy" flush toilet bathrooms... I havn't had the pleasure of experiencing the "holes" yet.

Things that I knew, but so far stilll find overly comical:
•The driving is crazy. I'm amazed that every pedestrian, and every bicyclist isn't pancakedness-roadkill-meat.
•"Click-it or Tick-it" would be a completely foreign philosophy. I'm still getting used to not even having the option of wearing a seatbelt (not really a good thing when combined with things-I-knew-but-so-far-still-find-overly-comical observation #1 of crazy driving and pancakeness-roadkill.

I'm sure there's more that I'm not even thinking of right now.

In other news:....

The school seems pretty cool. I've already discovered and put to use the all weather outdoor track, tennis courts, indoor pool, and soccer field. Our Kindergarten group is fun because there's only 8 of us under one head-overlooker type guy (Teacher J is in charge of the Kindergarten department). So since there's so few of us, and because he's just such a friendly guy, he's been totally willing to take us on field trips to IKEA and different furniture warehouses to get our Apartments outfitted with stuff.

Funny Story Time with Janai

Chinese Movers are crazy : So apparently it's really really cheap to hire, and since I had a bed and really large closet to move, we decided to hire some. Well I missed most the excitement (and you can see the rest of it at the blogspot in the little movie Sarah made) but basically my furniture took a few falls... and by falls I mean they dropped my closet off a second story balcony thinking that the "ropes" and by ropes I mean short towels, they had around it to lower it down would hold it. Well aparently not so much... I think my closet experienced it's first (and hopefully only) freefall in the moments after this. Other funny mental images: crazy guy stacking 3 drawers on his back and then trying to walk through a doorway (ya the drawers go tdented too). The guys (C and E) are having a bunch of stuff moved on Thursday.. hopefully their experience is better. We kept the mover poeples card so we knew who NOT to hire.

A new kind of competition: Tally started: who gets asked to be in the most number of pictures with random Chinese people or their newborn babies. I'm at 2, Sarah's at 1, and I think Laura has 2 to her name. Oh and Dan (the man with the plan who is like 10ft tall and from Tennessee) has at least 2. They love him because he's tall.

Theme Park China-Land Hospital: So the other day all 40something of us new teachers got carted off to the "foreigners hospital" to have our physical examinations. :) We didn't really know what all kinds of physical examinations they would be doing... so the whole thing was one big surprise. So imagine this: your number gets called... you go in and give your "medical history" paper to one doctor...... they type... then say next seat... you scoot over give the paper to another doctor.. .they type and say go to room ***. Here they give you a robe in exchange for your clothes... go to room *** . Behind each door is a new surprise as to what's going to be "examined" since they don't tell you What you're having done to you next,, all you know is what room number you're to go to... it was like a ping pong game or something... i went from EKG around the corner onto a little rizer thing for a x-ray... down the hall to the left to have 2 viles of blood drawn... back up the hall to the right where a bunch of suction cups took my heart beat... around the corner for an ultra sound (i'm not pregnant and aparently I still have my liver and kidneys...phew)... around to the next room for blood pressure.. and the whole time you're wearing little blue plastic booties over your shoes and passing all the other China-Land Hospital goes in their robes and blue booties. Okay.... well I had fun anyway... but I enjoy giving blood and finding out that my liver hasn't migrated to my foot. :)

In Other News
Mandarine is Hard: i've got down thank you (xie xie) yes-ish (duwe) your welcome (i think(debuche)), and we thought we knew how to say SMIC School which is what we tell the taxi drivers so that we can get home... but aparently we don't even kjnow how to say that since our taxi ride was much round-abouter and longer.. and not so much to the SMIC School when we told the taxi guy that.


We start teaching in 2 weeks, today was the first day John actually started talking about WHAT we're suppose to be teaching, and what we're going to use to teach (mom you'll be excited.. they use Total Physical Response methods... that's cool right?). We've also started deciding how we're going to decorate our rooms. Since my room for this semester is completely walled with white tiles, and the floor are these blue sponge lego tile things, i'm goign to do Alaska/Antartica/North Pole-ish. There'll be lots of Penguins.. and maybe a Polar bear or two. I'll throw a monkey in as well for good measure.

Our 1 week vacation is coming up soon, and the brain-storming of where to go has begun. Last I heard Mongolia was a posibility.

Bargaining is fun. It's not anything that I was ever really into in the US, but it's pretty much required here so that you don't get ripped off.

The other teachers are fun. There's a lot of poeple from Texas, and they use the phrase Ya'll way too much. You can hit me if I start saying that.