alive!

After sleeping ten hours in the first four days since I left home, I went to bed at noon yesterday and basically slept until five this morning. 17 hours of sleep definitely made a difference in my level of consciosness. It wasn't even drug-induced sleep... I failed to find anything resembling benadryl to put me to sleep. I was just that exhausted.

The day before yesterday I went out with Kelly and bought myself a Chinese cellphone. If anyone has an interest in calling me (I don't expect that you do), let me know and I'll give you the number. Also, once I move, I'm going to put up my address so stuff can be mailed, but I'm not movnig until the end of next week now.

The area of the city I'm in is called 'university city' because tehre are give or take 13 universities in the immediate vicinity. This is as close to a suburban area as China will come... yesterday I was crossing the four-lane street to get to the internet cafe and there was a wagon of watermelons being pulled by some horses thrown in the mix of cars and busses that don't stop honking. I walked around the backside of our university and found a guy in camo with some cows grazing outside what will be the building I live in. So I'm guessing we're not too far from rural areas.

Speaking of cars honking, crossing the street in China is always an adventure. I read a book recently by a guy who traveled around China for a while, and as he put it, they honk before they pass someone, they honk wile they're passing, and they honk after they've passed'. It's totally true. When you want to cross a street, even a four-lane borderline highway like the one I have to cross to get to the store or the University, there aren't any crosswalks, just breaks in the curb every few hundred feet where you cross your fingers and frogger it across. you just watch how fast the cars coming towards you are going, and don't let them hit you. The traffic isn't really heavy so it's usually not a problem, but it is always an adventure.

I had my first encounter with a squatty potty the day before yesterday, i managed not to fall in. How I went two days without having to face one I have no idea. I'd better get used to it though, that's all there is in the building I will have classes in.

Today I'm going to try and find season four of lost on DVD cause I only have one episode left of season three. That's what I've been doing to pass the time when I've been too exhausted to go outside but too freaked out to sleep. I'm going to take the bus downtown and explore. My mom said I shoudl try and find the Walmart... I know there is one, I went there two years ago. Around here the only recognizable store I've found is a two-story KFC. The Chinese loves them some chicken.

I would also like to share with you something I was tipped off on by the only other non-Chinese person I know in Harbin, though I haven't actually met him yet... www.icanhascheezeburger.com is blocked in China. As timhowes put it, icanhascommunism. I'm gonna miss those silly kitties.

Time to go on an adventure, ta ta for now

insomnia sucks

so i cant get my brain turned around no matter what i do... this is gonna be a short one so i can go try and take a nap.

yesterday afternoon i met with the president, vice president, and dean of the university, the foreign dept people, and the other new foreign teachers. there are two older japanese guys, a middle-aged korean guy (every time he speaks korean i think of lost), and a 23-year old russian girl from irkusk named olga. olga speaks english well enough, and her chinese is pretty good. the korean guy speaks chinese very well though not fluently, and neither of the japanese guys speaks any chinese.

now imagine the scene when we wet to dinner; the three bigwigs, two foreign affairs reps. the two japanese guys and their translator, the korean guy, olga and her translator, and me amd my translator kelly. madness ensued. half the time i just sat there trying to figure out who was speaking what language when. it was kinda fun. each person was called upon in turn to make a toast, and it took a while to translate them all. i learned how to say 'what is this?' and 'bottoms up' in japanese. i suppose those two phrases are useful in their own way.

jetlag and lost bags and china oh my

sooo i made it to harbin, one of my bags didn't. when i left portland i had a huge hiking backpack i just bought, and an overweight suitcase. you would think they might have trouble transferring the suitcase, but it was my backpack that got lost. apparently they found it, it didn't leave new york, and its on its way today or tomorrow. it was quite the adventure trying to explain to them at the airpoet that i lost one of my bags (in beijing they told me it would be in harbin, in harbin i think i ocnfused them all because i couldnt find the plane ticket from beijing to harbin so they were just lost.). while i was in the office trying to sort out my bag, the foreign affairs person assigned to pick me up and show me around (Kelly), was outside waiting to pick me up... and i couldnt tell her i was there without going back through security. awesome. eventually she figured it out and when they realized i had no idea what i was doing, they let her come in and get me out of there.

im currently living in a hotel a fifteen minute walk from campus. the english dept diretor insists that i need to get my rest before i move into the dorms, but i personally would much rather be around other people, not by myself so much. the jetlag is awful, i have slept about six hours since i got here on wednesday night (its friday morning). this morning we figured out that my family can actually call me, i just can't call them, but i can send texts, so if i text them they can call me back. it was a relief to talk to them, since the hotel doesn't have internet and i was feelin kinda lonely.

right now i'm at the english department of the university, i've just met some of the other english teachers (they're all chinese), and this afternoon i'll have lunch with the university president and the other new foreign teachers, i think a couple japanese teachers and a russian teacher.

my one achievement for yesterday was getting through the language barrier to get myself an adapter for my lappy so i could watch dvds. i had to draw a picture of the outlet on a piece of paper and tell them what i wanted like a billion times, but i finally got it right. this afternoon i'm going on a quest for a fan and some benadryl to make me go to sleep so i stop feeling so gross. yayyy drug induced sleep!

it might be next week before i get another post in since i don't have internet of my own until i move. i can't get a clear answer other than they want me to rest as to why i can't jutst move in, but once i get there i should have internets all of the times. here's hoping.

zaijian for now :)

你好！

Bienvenidos a mi blog! Manana empiezo mi viaje...

oh wait, im being told that's the wrong language. aaaanyway. is 'blog' the same en espanol?

tomorrow morning i'm leaving for china for ten months. i'll be teaching english at the heilongjiang institute of science and technology (黑龙江科技学院） in the city of harbin. my plan is to update this thing every couple days with my advantures, misadventures, things i learn about china, and updates on my dumpling record (currently at 37 in one sitting).

schedule for the next couple days looks like this:

1130am flight from portland to JFK (lands at 1pm)
430pm flight from JFK to beijing (lands at 6pm wednesday china time, 6am maine time)
830 flight from beijing to harbin (lands at 1005pm china time, 1005am maine time on wednesday)

as to my apartment, i don't know what it looks like, i don't know how big it is, i don't even know if i have a squatty potty or a real toilet. i'll post pictures once i get there and get some sleep.

i might be a cool kid like stephanie and write a post on the plane or at the airport, we'll see. for now, i'm going to go pack the rest of my stuff and hope i don't forget anything too important...