First few days....

It has been quite a first couple of days here in China.  I arrived Wednesday evening and immediately thought one of my bags has been lost in transit.  To make matters worse, the bag that got "lost" was the bag that had all my Summer stuff in it.  Note to those of you planning a year long trip somewhere... Split your Winter and Summer stuff up evenly between the bags you are taking, the thought of having only sweaters and coats when its 90 degrees outside in Beijing was terrifying.
     So the bag I had "lost" was actually blue, not black.  Luckily the airport personnel caught me before I exited the airport without my blue bag filled with all the clothes I'll need for the next 3 or 4 months.
     I am met by a couple of Chinese people with a hand scribbled sign that said only "EF" on it.  That is the initials of the company I am working for, so I wave at them, say something in English and quickly realize that they don't speak a word of it...  That's fine, I am in China now.  If they were Chinese republicans (and who knows, they might be!)  they could have been complaining to each other about how I was in China and I should speak Chinese damnet!  But alas, I don't.  Not yet.
    We go to their vehicle and I get my first look at Beijing.  My smog filled home for my next year Beijing. 

Beijing... Polluted, but it does have its charm

Aside from the sky at times, Beijing is a really pretty city.  The architecture is very neat and there are trees everywhere!  There is also construction everywhere.  I counted 20 cranes that I could see from a single spot while in traffic on the drive into the city.  From what I'm told, China doesn't worry to much about the long term when it comes to buildings.  They build an apartment building, use it for 8 or 10 years and once it gets run down, demolish it and rebuild.  This doesn't make a lot of sense until you realize they have over a billion people who all need jobs and this keeps them busy.

Now, a couple of things you need to know if you ever come to China:

First, there are no real traffic laws.  They have traffic signs, even speed limits, but they don't mean anything.  At least the people act like they don't mean anything.  Staying inside your lane?  No way.  Driving the posted speed limit?  Ha!  Blinkers?  Most Chinese have probably never heard of them.  Its not really that bad on the highway, but when you get in the city and the drivers are zooming past pedestrians while narrowly missing them, it's terrifying.

That brings us to the second thing you need to know; Cars do not stop at cross walks.  They honk and expect you to get out of the way.  Pedestrians have no rights here, its crazy.

So my drivers get me to where I am going and I meet up with Michael.  That night we hang out with a couple of his British colleagues and we bond over hating the French and futbol.  We go to the expat bar area called Sanlitor and have way to much to drink while taking way to few pictures.  I'll get some next time I'm there, but it is a really cool area.  Street food of all sorts, vendors hawking pirated DVD's and who knows what else, and bars packed with people from all over the world.  We had shots with some canadians, talked with what I think we Jamaicans, sat across from a Russian and a French guy... Beijing is truly an international city.  I love it.

The next day I slept until 2 (Jet lag!  Not alcohol mom and dad, I promise) and then we hit up one of the silk markets.  The silk markets are the places you hear about where the sell all sorts of fake goods at low prices.  They have everything from t-shirts and jeans to jewlery to electronics to rifle scopes.  I am not kidding, they sell knock-off rifle scopes!  The best part is, everything is negotiable and normally the real price of an item is very low.  Now, the Chinese vendors are not stupid... They see a white person and immediately jack up the price, but Michael had been here before and quickly got the price to more reasonable levels....

Michael bargains over some polo shirts... 4 for $23 US!

Michael makes a local uncomfortable...

Just shopping

This place is filled with eeeeeverything

 We each ended up getting a few shirts and some scarves for the winter.  Here is my haul:

4 polo shirts and a couple awesome scarves

I went to the Temple of Heaven today, but I'll write about that a little later... Its amazing though, here is a picture to wet your appetite:

See, the sky is blue sometimes!

 

And finally, I'll leave you with a few of the funnier things I have seen since I have been here....

I don't even know...

Rosetta Stone... Irish!  Not Gaelic, Irish!

If you are a family member of mine, I truly have no idea why this is funny, unsure how it got here.

MaObama?

Lets all meet up at the Leisure Water Bar!

Ya...

Cool Playing Cards

Knowledge likes pants!  I like pants too.

Ready. Ready? ...Ready

Wow, something like 9 days until I leave.  It's going to be a crazy 9 days.  I went to Houston this week and received my Chinese visa.  Let me tell one reason why I think I'll be ok when I go to China.  The Chinese Consulate is not that different than an American DMV!  You go in, you wait in a long line filled with unhappy people, too few people work there so it takes waaaaaay too much time, and when you do get to the window, you are helped by someone who obviously hates their job.  America and China....  Not that different?  I jest of course, but it's comforting to know that when I get homesick I can just go wait in line at the visa office,

I got back from Houston and made a list of things that I need to get done before I leave.  It is ENDLESS.  I'll never be ready to go, but whatever.  Those of you who know me know that I go into most things unprepared anyways.  It's more fun that way.  Money though... Money you cannot do without, so I made sure to pick up my Chinese currency at the bank, pictured above.  It looks like a ton of money right?  I'M RICH!!!  Not quite....  I have about $511 American dollars worth of Yuan.  No worries though, I look rich and, like I've always been told...  Appearances are what are most important in life.  (What's that mom?  I've got that backwards?  Damnet.)

So in the next 9 days I have to find a charger for my iPad keyboard, buy literally an entirely new wardrobe, pack as much of my life as possible into 2 bags, spend as much time as possible with my parents, say goodbye to friends, try to explain to my dog why I won't be around for a while, figure out how I am going to get from the airport to Michael's Beijing apartment when I don't speak or read the language, watch Tiger win the US Open, and, most difficult of all, try to fall asleep at night when my heart and mind are racing with thoughts of China.  I bet my time left in America flies by.

17 Days

I'm going to Beijing in 17 days for at least a year.  I have 17 days left with my family, and friends... 17 days left with Chipotle, 17 days left with American TV, my car, my phone... 17 days left with my life as I know it.

I'm excited.  And nervous.  I always wanted to study abroad while I was in college but it didn't happen due to the fact that I was less than studious early on.  By the time  I was serious about my classes, studying abroad just wasn't possible.  It was time to get down to business and graduate.  I have been out of school for about 6 months now and started an MBA in Finance this Spring.  Very quickly into the semester I realized that I didn't have another year and a half of school in me.  I needed a break.  My options were very limited, I could either get a real job making a low salary (thanks BBA in Marketing!) or I could try to make my dream of living abroad happen.  I decided to do the latter.

There are many options for Americans to get jobs in Asia and South America.  The easiest job to get is teaching English, especially in China.  Here are the qualifications:

1.  Be a natural born citizen of the USA, Canada, England, Ireland or Australia (few exceptions made for other countries, and its possible I forgot one or two)
2.  Be a native English Speaker
3.  Have a Bachelors Degree from an accredited university.

That's basically it.  In China you don't have to pay an exorbitant placement fee of up to $2000.00 like you do in South America.  The companies recruit you themselves, hire you, process your visa and work permit and get you over there.  China also pays more than South America.  Both places have a relatively low cost of living when compared to the United States, but the salary I was offered in China was much higher than I could make in South America.  So China it was.

One of my best friends is in Beijing teaching English right now, so my goal was to get a job there.  If that was impossible, I would have accepted a job in another major city, but I had no interest in living in rural China.  I think moving to Beijing will be enough of a culture shock.  Every company I talked to said that they couldn't get me a job in Beijing, but could offer a position in Shanghai, Guangzhou, or smaller towns in central China.  I was disappointing but undeterred.  I was about to accept a position in Guangzhou when one of the first schools I spoke with contacted me to say that they had an open position in Beijing.  I accepted.  My visa paperwork is in the mail as we speak, I am moving out of my apartment today and back in with my parents, and I have put school on hold until I return.

So in 17 days I start a new life.  A different life.  I don't really know what that life will look like yet.  I have read just about everything on the internet about life in Beijing (not really, but a lot) but I don't think words are enough to prepare someone for a change of this magnitude.  I am excited,  I am nervous,  I am hopeful and I am sad.  It will be hard to leave everyone behind for an entire year and move to a new place.  No one can really know what the next year holds for me, certainly not myself, but I hope that seventeen days from now is the beginning of something great.