Chinese lessons to be learned

Contrary to the title of this blog, this will not be about learning to speak Chinese, but how to live Chinese. Our flight left Salt Lake City at 9:10 PM on Friday the 13th of September.  It is a good thing we are not superstitious about that day or we may not have made that flight.  Inspite of that, all things were uneventful. We arrived in Las Vegas just before midnight to board Korean Air for Seoul Korea.  We planned it that way so we would be able to sleep on the long flight over the Pacific.  Tylenol PM is my new best friend, I did self medicate and I am glad to say that I arrived on a Boeing 777 well rested at 5:00 AM on Sunday, September 15th.  The Seoul Airport is a modern masterpiece with all the conveniences you could imagine, unfortunately our connecting  Korean Air flight left at 9:00 AM before the designer  shops opened. We landed in Guangzhou on Sunday morning, September 15 at 11:58.  Immigration services stop was first, then to luggage claim, ( all four bags arrived with us, small miracle all by itself) on to customs and walaa we are on our way to Sunday morning in China. 

There are some very obvious advantages in being a "foreigner."  This first one being our official student escort William.  I haven't been greeted at the airport with my name printed on a sign very many times, so seeing William with "Kathy  Anderson " on a small card board sign was exhilarating after a 22 hour flight.  Our four designer( green military B4 bags) luggage were quickly loaded and we were on our way to South China University of Technology. 

As the week has developed it has become clear why we were told to arrive a week prior to classes starting.  Everything takes longer than expected to structure.  Our first adventure took three days; the task of internet access.  It took three different IT specialist from the university to connect my Mac.  Not very any students use Mac computers or are familiar with connections for a Mac to the Chinese internet, very stressful.  Cell phones on a Chinese plan proved to be yet another hurdle, lots of SIM card mysteries or possibly miscommunications.  We now have two new Chinese SIM cards in our phones that say invalid SIM card no service.  Not sure how that will turn out. We have been waiting to open a Chinese bank account because they require a phone number for contact on the bank application. That will have to be another adventure on yet another day.

On a positive side, grocery shopping proved to be very interesting, we were able to discover fruit and vegetables we didn't know about.  Eating out has been so much fun, not sure we will need those fruits and vegetables.  Very interesting and tasty food has arrived at our table!

Best of all are the other English teachers that are working with us in our endeavors to cultivate English speakers here.  There are two other couples living in our building teaching post-graduate students English.  We are having a great time sharing "war stories" in adapting to our new lifestyles.  It will indeed be an adventure. Next Monday, Meet the Students!