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Published: February 20th 2011
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Restaurant
Probably less than half of the first floor Well it's Sunday morning in Wuhan and I should be doing some planning for tomorrow but I'm going to procrastinate and do my first blog to make my mom happy!
I left Wednesday morning at 8:45 am Edmonton time and arrived in China at around 10:30 pm Thurday Wuhan time, so that's pretty much a full 24 hours of travel. The flights were pretty good, just very long. There were 7 other teachers on the plane, 6 came to Wuhan and the other went to Chongqing (that may or may not be right). Our flight was delayed in Shanghai for about an hour and a half because the plane was delayed leaving (that is what they the reason they gave us over the intercom-probably had to hear how they said it but it was pretty funny).
We arrived at the the school at about 12:30 am and went to our apartments and I pretty much passed right out. One thing I was not prepared for was how cold it is here. I think the humidity makes it feel much colder than it really is. I only packed one pair of sweats, jeans and one sweater so for the next month or
Pretty fountain
At the restaurant so I'm going to be that girl who wears the same thing over and over again when I leave the school. The apartments are pretty nice. I ended up blowing two breakers the first night, the main one and the one for my kitchen. For the first two nights the only thing I could have on was my heater which would turn off every 20 minutes or so, so I didn't get much sleep because I was freezing all night.
The campus is pretty big. There are two schools - the Foreign National School and the High School. The Foreign National School is it's own little community which I didn't get a tour of. The High School has 2 teaching buildings, 3 student housing buildings, a cafeteria and gym building and 2 teacher housing buildings. There is room to expand which I think they plan on doing in the next few years.
Friday we went for our medicals in the morning (blood tests, eye test, ecg, x rays, etc), they weren't as bad as I thought it was going to be. After we went to this amazingly nice restaurant for lunch. It is ran by the husband of one of
the secretaries so we were treated very well. The restaurant is 3 stories and can serve over 2000 people at once. The food was delicious. We had fish, peking duck, lotus, mushrooms, cabbage (which was my favourite), soups, and a bunch of other delicious stuff. After we went shopping at Metro which is like Costco. Chinese people are super friendly and helpful but the only problem is not having any idea what they are saying. I put something in my cart that I was apparently not allowed to buy so a lady took me around the store to find me something that I could buy...it was very funny. We met a few other teachers at the Metro who took us out for dinner that night. We went to the area were a lot of the other teachers live and it is really nice; a lot of shops, some bars, and restaurants. I think if I was staying for longer than 5 months I'd probably move there but I don't really see much point now. Everything is pretty cheap here. I think there was about 10 of us out for dinner and for all the food (about 10-12 dishes) and beer
it was 25 RMB each, which is about $4. I bought an expensive brand of cigarettes for 10 RMB or $1.50.
Saturday we had a meeting, tour of the school, and were given our offices, I share an office with 12 other people. It was one of the teachers birthday yesterday so we went to a western restaurant for dinner. It was good, it was nice to eat something other than chinese food-which is super oily.
Wuhan is pretty dirty, lots of litter and lots of construction. I woke up Friday morning and when I looked outside I thought it was really foggy, nope it's all smog! The traffic here is crazy! Lanes are optional and I see way to many people driving on the wrong side of the road. I'm shocked I've only seen one accident so far. Some of the teachers have scooters, I think they're crazy-I would never have the balls to drive here.
Well I think that's it for now. I'm really looking forward to meeting my students tomorrow and will write more after my first week of teaching and let you guys know how that goes!
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haley
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awww, i have my own bedroom in China! and yes, i WILL be coming to visit....fingers crossed that i find a job really soon and dont have to go home instead. glad you are having a good time! keep on updating us