WTC.....Welcome to China, did you bring TOILET PAPER?

This morning we landed in China, after another very pleasant JAL flight full of very awesome JAL flight attendants. We had a very interesting lunch!

Upon arrival we went through immigration were waiting for our luggage, when a man from the airport started walking around saying “doo” or “loo”. After we had collected our luggage I was walking towards customs when the man came over to me asked my name. When I said Kristen he showed me a piece of paper with Rieu written on it. He then pointed to Bienvenu so I showed him where Paul was. It turns out we forgot our camera op t he seat, but he could not tell us what we forgot. We had to guess what we had forgotten on the plane and then tell him the brand name of that item, but since he only spoke Mandarin we needed a translator!!!! Luckily one of the students from our school happened to be walking by and she kindly helped us out! Almost “epic fail” number one.

We meet up with Les the principal of the school and we all rode back to the school while he played tour guide and filled us in on the details of our next few days. When we arrived the very first thing that we did was get our apartments which are on the newish “girls campus”. As it turns out the whole same last name thing when you’re married actually might have some merit.  We were assigned separate studio and one bedroom apartments, neither of which was large enough for us to live in. After we talked to Les, who talked to Candy, the secretary, who talked to  Bryan our awesome building manager, he helped us move into our now awesome apartment with 1 and a half bedrooms and a 4’ X 6’ closet/room without windows but a 10 foot ceiling. Welcome to China.

We met up with the rest of the group, and some of the teachers who had been here before in one of the classrooms on the girls campus.  One of the Chinese teachers (who by the way is possible one of the cutest fellows in the world) talked to us about the backgrounds of the students we will be teaching and then Les gave an intro to the school philosophy. Oh and he warned us about the fireworks.

Apparently Jinshitan is a very affluent community, and a holiday resort to boot. So when celebrations happen here, there are a lot of people who have money to burn on these celebrations. We happened to arrive in China on the last day of the spring festival (after Chinese New Year) which was a day for Chinese families to get together and “PARTY!” with their families.

Our next move was a trip into the little community center to buy some snacks, cleaning supplies and yes lots of toilet paper (you have to bring it with you everywhere). On the way down, the fireworks started up in earnest- it was still light out, but people were lighting off fireworks on every street corner. By the time we had returned to our apartments, and were heading back out for  dinner- well things got nuts!!!!

Walking into the town was like being in a crazy festive warzone. Huge fireworks would go off on one corner and their echoes would bounce around all over. You could feel the loudest ones in your body, and their brightness was actually painful on your eyes. Add in the smaller firecrackers going off for minutes on the other corner, the little kids with huge bottle rocket type crackers, the paper lantern hot air balloon, paper money fires in honour of ancestors, and general craziness of thousands of fireworks going off at once and you can understand our first night in China! (-The fireworks are still going on at 6:45 on the next morning!!!!-).

Anyways, Les, took all the new teachers out for an incredibly tasty Chinese dinner. Lots of small dishes- spicy green beans, squid, soups, hot and sour chicken, shredded pork and rice wrappers, pork and chestnuts, etc.  Oh and lots and lots of Tsingtao beer (we drank a ton, so it was probably a good thing that it was only 2.5% alcohol).

All in all, a good introduction to China.