What a long and exhausting journey! But after a 21 hour flight (13 to Tokyo then another 5 to Guangzhou after a 3 hour layover), I've finally arrived in China in one piece. For the most part. I guess aside from the joint stiffness from sitting for so long and the pain in my arms and shoulders from lugging around all my baggage I'm in fairly decent shape.
After we landed at the Guangzhou airport and made our way through customs, Amy and I were greeted by Phoenix Liu, an intern for our school. He was waiting patiently holding a nice bright blue EF English First sign. Definitely caught our attention. After dragging our luggage across what seemed to be the *entire* length of the airport, we made it to the exit where a van was waiting to take us to our hotel. It's lucky that Amy and I were the only ones being picked up that day, I'm not sure that anyone else's bags would've fit into the back. Seems like we've over-packed. Again.
In the 40 minutes it took to get to the hotel from the airport I'm pretty sure I saw my life flash before my eyes more than once. Apparently the rules of the road in China are that there are no rules. People merging lanes without signaling... People merging lanes without bothering to even check to see if there's already a car in the lane... Definitely not a place I'll be renting a car to do any driving myself!
The hotel EF has put us in is actually really nice! Much better than I was expecting. We've each got our own room with a queen size bed and a big flat-panel wall-mounted TV. The best part is that there's a western-style toilet. I don't think I'd be able to handle the Chinese squatting ones just yet... It's too bad this place is only temporary. If I could find an apartment that was similar to this I'd be perfectly satisfied. Amy and I are going on Thursday to find an apartment with a real estate agent/translator that EF set us up with. Hopefully we find something quickly - it'll be nice not having to live out of a suitcase for too long!
They don't give you much time to get over jet lag here - today we were met by Susan Woo, she's kind of like a coordinator of sorts. She took us to open a bank account and to the main EF branch to do a little orientation and contract signing. Tomorrow we have to be up and ready by 8:00 to go and get a medical check - definitely not looking forward to that. But in order to get a visa (a more permanent one than the one I have now) we have to be checked from head to toe. After that we have to do "boot camp" which is kind of like a concentrated teaching seminar. Seems kind of pointless though considering we've already missed the first day of it.
After we finished up with Susan at EF we were left to find our own way back to the hotel. Turns out it was easy enough on the subway - it was only two stops away LOL. We spent the rest of the day walking around Grandview Mall in search of Jusco to get a few groceries - turns out Jusco was in a different mall down the street. Fun times.
My first impressions of China are actually really positive. Guangzhou is a lot cleaner than I was anticipating and the people haven't been angrily staring at me like I thought they would. That's not to say that there isn't garbage or that people aren't staring at all though. Also, there's actually a lot more "Western/American" things available here than I would have imagined - more variety than in Japan which is really surprising! Store-wise so far I've seen a number of brand name shops like Tommy Hilfiger, Rolex, and Levi’s... Food-wise there are McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Pizza Hut (which were all available in Japan as well). But there's also Haagen-Dazs, Dairy Queen, and Papa John's Pizza. Tonight we ate at Pizza Hut and ordered the "American Special". A.K.A. pepperoni pizza.
Alright well it's time for me to go to bed - I'm having an early night. I haven't gotten used to the time change yet and I'm exhausted.
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