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Published: February 8th 2008
Cats
These are my cats Beast (the black and white one) and Hiboux (all black). I'm going to miss them for the five months that I'm in China.Hello and welcome to my travel blog! I am now a week away from leaving on what will be the biggest adventure of my life so far. I will be teaching English in China for five months at Changzhou International School in Changzhou City, which is about an hour away from Shanghai on the rail route between Shanghai and Nanjing in Jiangsu Province. I have posted a map image for those of you who are unfamiliar with Chinese geography. Suffice it to say that I will be in a very alien environment, living in a city of 3 million people whose language I can barely speak, and everything will be written in Chinese characters that I cannot read. I will also be teaching for the first time in my life and living abroad for the first time. All of this has me a little freaked out, but more than that I am excited to be visiting a country as huge and full of mystery as China. I'm going through a bit of detail overload as I try to decide what to pack and what to leave behind. This is like no trip I've ever been on. Five months is a long
House
This is my house in Lewisville. time to be away from home, and I know that there are a lot of things I will miss once I'm gone and there is not nearly enough room to bring them all with me. I can already tell that I will miss my cats because I always miss them when I'm away from home for a long time. I have posted a picture of them and of my house in general so that you can get to know them a little better.
Food is also going to be a big thing that I know I will be jonesing for once I've been in China for a while. Right now I'm doing my best to say goodbye to my favorite American cuisine by savoring it as much as possible. Pizza, BBQ, Pasta, Sweet Tea, and desserts that are flavored with mint and chocolate (particularly Mint Milano cookies) are all things that I have been chowing down on recently in an effort to give my taste buds something to hold onto through the long months of noodles, rice, and the countless strange delicacies that I'm sure to encounter.
People-wise, I will of course miss my parents, my brother, my sister, and
Mom
This is my Mom. my best friends, but its my hope to be able to make a new group of friends among my fellow expatriate teachers. I am participating in a program administered by the Council on International Educational Exchange or CIEE, and thus I will be grouped with 8-10 people who are in the same boat, although not all of them are going to the same school that I am. There will also be a group of 7 or 8 foreigners stationed at my school who have already been there for one semester and are staying on for a second. Hopefully they will be nice enough to show me the ropes. So far, they have been pretty helpful over e-mail, giving me some advice on what to bring and telling me a little about what conditions are like on the ground. I had been worried about the winter storms that are currently interfering with a lot of China's transportation network, but some of my future colleagues told me that the situation is not quite as bad as news reports makes it seem.
The timing of my trip will be lucky in some ways. I am going the miss the huge movement of people
Dad
Here is a picture of my dad. that occurs around the Chinese New Year, but I still get to take part in some of the celebrations, which go on for fifteen days, culminating in the Lantern Festival, which will be just after I arrive. I also am going to have at least two opportunities, once at mid-semester, and again after the semester ends, to do some free traveling within the country. The only thing that I am missing out on is a chance to go to the Olympics, but Beijing is supposed to be ridiculously crowded right now anyway, and things will only get worse during the games. I'm going to leave it at that for my first entry. Be sure to check out the maps page for a view of my destination, and I've posted pictures of some of the people and things that I'll be missing.
Until Next Time - Peace.
Chris.
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Katie
non-member comment
Have you checked to make sure that your route is completely seaboux free? It looks like you're passing over some rather large water spaces and it could be dangerous. I mean, it's your trip and all, but I'm just saying...it's fun and games now, but you're just one step away from "Seabouxs on a Plane!"