Inital observations

Wow… I’m here. I’m really freaking here. It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I’m just on trip to California or something, and there just happens to be a ton of Asian people and signs I can’t read. That’s frustrating, not being able to read the signs, but it hasn’t been a problem really.
The Chinese language fascinates me. There aren’t letters; there are thousands of stick-figure pictures that convey very specific (and sometimes very vague) meanings, and some words (such as frustrating) don’t exist at all. At some point, someone whose name I completely forget took the Chinese characters and made words with Roman letters, and that translation is called pinyin. There’s one major problem though- pinyin words are pronounced completely differently than they are in English. Oh, and then there’s the four tones, which change the meaning entirely if you do somehow manage to get a word out. Insane. Maybe that’s just the communication major in me coming out… ex-communication major… I keep forgetting that I’m not a student anymore! I’m a teacher. And I decided to travel to the other side of the world to do it. I’m nuts.
Anyway, I haven’t given up on trying to learn the language. I ordered my beverage on the plane in Chinese today, and I was very proud of myself. That makes three words I can say in the whole language. Hello, black tea, and thank you. That’s the extent of my Chinese vocabulary. Hahahaha. Baby steps, right? I moved to a country where I speak THREE words of the language. What is wrong with me!? I’ve lost my mind; that must be it.
Speaking of the plane ride, I didn’t want to mention it because I have been trying desperately to forget about it. Miserable and LOOOONG. My total travel time from Baltimore to Wuhan was over 32 hours. The flight from LA to Guanzhou was SIXTEEN hours. SIXTEEN! My butt was aching sooo badly. It still hurts. Ew, I have to shift just thinking about it. At least I got an aisle seat could I could get up and wander when I wanted to. Our English language movie options were Bruce Almighty and The Italian Job, which I think everyone watched each one at least twice.
Needless to say, I took full advantage of my iPod, especially since I was sitting next to a Chinese man who was on business for Microsoft kept asking me questions and telling me random things in mumbled English. I took FOUR sleeping pills, and I was still only able to sleep for maybe 5 or 6 hours total. Told you guys I was excited.
I think I went though all five stages of grief. At first, I was in denial… “okay, this is going to be nothing, I’ll just sleep and it will be over in no time.:” Then I swiftly moved into anger… over my cheeks, over the food, over my sanity, which were all in bad shape. I kept waking up because I had dreams that we were landing. When I finally woke up for good, I checked the screen to see how much longer we had… over 8.5 hours! The flight wasn’t even halfway over, and I was absolutely stir-crazy and in pain. I had honestly resolved that I was going to die before I ever got off that air-prison, so that’s when I entered the third stage of grief, bargaining.. I asked Justin and Rachel to borrow their DVD of Taladega Nights, which I watched on my computer, I asked for food, and walked around to talkt to people thinking, “if I just keep myself busy, the time will pass by.” Around the two-hour count down, I entered the final stage of grief, acceptance. I began to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I started dancing and playing solitaire on my iPod, knowing that I had enough battery power to make it.
Once we got off the long plane ride, we went though customs fairly easily and waited a few hours before getting on another plane to Wuhan. Ms. Jia, our waiban, (the lady in charge of the foreign teachers) was there to pick us up and take us out to lunch and to our apartments. Lunch was pretty painless. The cool thing about eating at Chinese restaurants is that the host just orders a whole bunch of food, and then it’s served family style in a lazy susan, so you can kind of eat a few bites of this-and-that to see what you like, and you can take as much or as little as you want. Basically it means you have options as opposed to being stuck with something potentially gross. You’re supposed to try everything, and I think I was a pretty good sport. I ate “beef” “pork” tofu, fried lotus (very good), sautéed lotus, eggplant and greenbeans, spicy dumplings, cucumbers in like a Chinese BBQ sauce, watermelon slices, etc. - all of which I would never order on my own. I skipped the fish and soupy thing. Don’t tell. All three meals were traditional Chinese, which meant Pepto Bismal for dessert.
Ms. Jia (pronounced “Ja”) took us to our apartments. Mine is on the fifth floor… and there are no elevators in China, mind you. My apartment is filthy, especially the floor, but it’s big. My favorite part is the bathroom. Picture this… a regular square-shaped bathroom with a sink and toilet and tiled walls, but take out the shower… just imagine a wall there instead of a shower curtain. Then picture a showerhead hanging on the wall. That’s my bathroom. There’s a drain on the floor, and my washing machine drains onto the bathroom floor too. You have to take the toilet paper out of the room before you take a shower so it doesn’t get wet. Oh yeah, and you can’t drink the water here, so I brush my teeth with bottled water. I find it highly amusing.
There are three bedrooms, which function as an office, bedroom, and living room since it’s just me living here. Only my bedroom and living room have air conditioning, so I am abandoning the office and using it for storage.
Then there’s the kitchen. It’s also has tiled walls, but thankfully the water drains into the sink, and not the floor. It’s dirty too, and I don’t have any dishes. I do have a cute little fridge and a water machine. Some of the teachers who have been in Wuhan for a while made us “welcome buckets” with snacks and stuff, so that’s the extent of my pantry for right now.
Sara, who is also a new teacher, lives across the hall and has a practically identical apartment. I’m really glad she’s there. Fawn lives close by, but it’s in another building. Ms. Jia said something about Sara and I moving to Fawn’s building in a month… we couldn’t really understand her, so for now I’m just embracing the place I already have. The fourth teacher from our group, Johnny, lives in yet another building, but I haven’t been there yet.
I think our campus is pretty, most of it anyway. Wuhan is very pretty too, but it’s hotter than Hell. Like sticky hot. I don’t think I want to wear any of the clothes I brought except my old cotton cheerleading shorts and a loose-fitting lightweight tank top. I forgot to bring black flip-flops too…doh!