Mini miami

Steven/
Hello there,
We are now in Guangdong province. Our plan to travel strictly overland has been briefly interupted by a China East airways flight from Kunming, Yunnan to Guanzhou( used to be Canton). This was on Sunday. We were flown here to start teaching English. We are just getting settled in and hope to stay at least until October, if not beyond.
I think that, with overland travel, you experience changes around you gradually, whereas if you fly then you find yourself suddenly in what can be a completely new situation.The reason for the tiltle is that here in Guangdong, life looks different to that in the China that we have seen so far.In Guangdong, around 50% of the companies are funded from HongKong, so there are many aspects of this part of China that seem altogether Western in feel. The first thing is the appartment complex that we live in- all tiled interiors and spotlessly clean( we heard some scare stories about apartments in the rest of China being absolutely filthy- something supported by not a few of our guesthouse stays- not a slur on house keeping habits, just an observation :) All the bike riders are actually wearing helmets here! (although they look a bit thin to do any real good in an emergency). At times, I have to remind myself that we're still in China by looking at the people, the environment being so homogenous and Westernised.
Another major difference here is the wheather. The cabin crew on the flight informed us that the ground temperature would be 32 degrees( this was at 6 pm). When we left the airport's controlled environment, we hit a wall of heat which we have been living within since. There are palm trees lining the streets here- very tropical.
Lelde/

Hey, Jan! I will be looking through my email constantly:))) I will also try to suggest that we might need to invite an Expert from USA, CT, for a little visit!! Fingers crossed!!!!
Yeah, we are Teachers now!!!! The people who run this company seem to be very nice and supportive, they all are Christians (rather strong believers), but so far so good.
The heat is unbelievable!!! If I said that it was very hot before, then that was nothing. This is SUPERhot!!! Even I' m sweating, even though I usually don't tend to.
Steven is having a lesson now, I just finnished my part. I had to get some more suitable clothes for this position - smart blouses and trousers. I'll be all elegance! :)
We are working a lot on preparing lesson plans, studying the materials etc. Even though we don't have a lot of lessons at the moment (last week we had only one 2 hour class), we are exausted as all this preparation takes a lot of energy and time.
Our life otherwise is carefree and easy - a lady comes every day to our appartment to cook lunch and sometimes dinner as well, she cleans up and does most of the housework, which is great on the one hand, but on the other, I would prefer if there would be nobody was to interfer with our private space (she came even today - on Saturday- at 8am!!!!!!) She is lovely, but it's a bit too much.
Even though we have been here almost a week, I have no idea what's where and how to get around as we have no map and usually we just go from our flat to the office , back home for lunch, back to the office and then a taxi takes us to the place (A Chineese company) where we are supposed to do a lesson, (which is usually from 6-8pm), picks us up afterwards and takes us home....
I think that's about everything for now:)))

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