Wow! Right now I’m sitting in our apartment, in China.
Crazy! We had a long, 32 hour trip here. 4 hours from MN to LA, 4 hour layover,
then 14 hours to Guangzhou China, then a 7 hour layover, and finally a 2ish
hour flight to Wuhan and an hour car ride to our apartment.
On the car ride to our apartment I probably saw 100 things
that I’ve never seen before, and this is just the first day here! Four people
riding a scooter simultaneously, workers sweeping the sidewalks with brooms
made of twigs, walls of skyscrapers (like on the beach in Inception towards the
end), and more construction then I’ve ever seen before (even worse than
Minnesota believe it or not!). There were literally 20 skyscrapers all within
close proximity to each other, all covered in a mesh like material and with
cranes above building away. The way in which people drive is best described as
orchestrated chaos with cars swerving in an out of pedestrians, scooters, and
other cars. They have bad driving down so well it almost becomes amazing driving,
if you know what I mean.
After arriving we found our apartment. We are on the 7th
floor of a 7 floor apartment building, and we also have easy access to the
roof. Pretty sweet! The apartment is nice as well for China standards. After
unpacking a little we headed to Adam and Sherry’s apartment about half a mile
down the road (the P-stor here) and they took us to our landlady’s apartment to
meet. After about 35 minutes of not understanding what she was saying, we left
and headed for supper.
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| View my my Room! |
Supper was intense. Literally intense. Our table had a built
in grill in the center, and a team of 4 waitresses proceeded to bring platters
of veggies, meet, shrimp, dumplings, and the works. They would put the food on
the built-in grill, and then everyone would start grabbing food with
chopsticks. I am so glad I practiced my chopstick skills before coming here,
otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to eat! Grabbing food left and right, it
was almost a race to see who could find the best piece of meat. Throughout dinner
there were 4 year olds running around playing throughout the restaurant, one of
them had split pants-shorts (they sell pants for younger kids that are
literally split down the middle, this way they can go to the bathroom easier…)
Dinner was delicious, and afterwards we made a brief stop
with Jess and Nicole at the market-grocery store across the street to grab a
few essentials. We headed back, unpacked more, and ended the day with a
d-votion with a Chinese man in his 40s, who is studying Greek here with the
Wuhan p-stor (he’s staying at our place for a few more days).
What a whirlwind of a day! There are many challenges in the
weeks to come, such as starting teaching in 2 days at a preschool/kindergarten,
but I know that He will provide, and He is always near. Such a comfort.
Day 2: I will try to make this brief. We had to go to our
land-lady’s apartment so she could take us to register at the police station
(every foreigner must register within 24 hours). So she, as well as her
daughter Cindy and her cousin Lilly (junior high and college aged, they came to
translate because our landlady doesn’t know any English) brought us there and
we found out we have to come back Monday. Afterwards they met up with the
father, and their whole family took Andrew and I out to lunch, and to buy
supplies (they just brought us to the store, we weren’t planning on buying
anything!). Lunch was delicious. Pizza, fishsticks, French fries, pasta, and
fruit bowls, the waiter just kept brining our table food. Their family seems to
be very wealthy, because they live in a nice area and a Lamborghini was parked
near their car). They were very kind, and their 3 year old son was fun to play
and ‘talk’ with. After lunch they dropped us off at our apartment, and we spent
the afternoon unpacking and straightening out our place.
For dinner we took the bus (packed like sardines!) to Jess
and Nicole’s place to meet two Chinese friends, Edward, and John Wayne! Yes you
heard me right, John Wayne. Awesome English name. John is a civil engineer and
his English is really really good. He spent 3 months in Brazil for work, and is
my age. We all went out to dinner and “chopsticked”away! Kind of getting used
to them. It’s been really fun using my limited Chinese with our landlady, and
new Chinese friends. Andrew (my roommate) and I headed back after dinner (first
time on our own!) on the bus after walking through a sweet street market with
complementary poop gutters (aka human poop on the road…sorry I had to mention
it). We made it back easily and are hitting the hay early to catch up on lost
sleep from the flight.
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| A man welding on the street. We have seen pretty much everything you could imagine on the streets so far! |
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