Holy Cow, I Can Actually See a Blue Sky (the morning after the typhoon)

It's pretty wild that my school organized a get-together for Steve (the other new teacher) and I during the worst storm Ningbo has had in 56 years. But that's what they did.

I flew in from DFW to Vancouver on the 5th and then went from Vancouver to Shanghai on the 6th, crossing the International Date Line, landing on the 7th. It was an eleven hour flight with around 250 people, about 50 or 60 of which were children. And not a single one of them acted up. And wow, Chinese kids are well behaved. There was no crying, fussing, screaming, running, anything. Not once did any of those kids have to be restrained on an eleven hour flight. I am amazed. That also gives me hope for my classroom.

So I went through TSA, Canadian customs, Chinese customs and immigration. It was actually a cakewalk. Carried the Ripstik through and everything without a problem. I expected some sort of hangup, a speedbump or something, but there wasn't one.

At least not until I got to China and then realized no one was there waiting for me.

Imagine you've been awake for over 24 hours. You're exhausted, sweaty, lugging a huge suitcase with a heavy backpack hanging off your shoulders, and there's a sea of people waiting at the gate. A lot of them are holding signs. And you walk through them like a gauntlet looking for your name. And your name isn't there. Ok, you must have missed it, right? You're tired, hazy. You must have missed it.

So you exit the gauntlet into the open air of the Meeting Point, which is a lot of benches, a few phones, and a couple of hawkers selling calling cards for the phones. And then you hear someone yell at you in English, "Hey! Hey! Where are you going!" Sounds urgent, right? Sounds official. Nope, it's someone trying to sell you a phone card.

Now imagine you spend the next hour going back-and-forth from the gauntlet to the meeting point, leaning over to see if the names on the signs have changed, sweating more, getting dizzy from lugging everything around. But still no one.

It was at that point I pulled out my contact's phone number. I would call him collect. I didn't care. Someone had forgotten me. Despite a dozen tries, I couldn't operate a Chinese pay phone. The instructions in English were very clear and didn't work at all. "Pick up, wait 5 seconds for the tone, and dial." I fumbled around with that thing for a while and then a girl walking by asked if I needed to make a call, so I said yes. And she pointed me to the hawkers. Fine, screw it. I'll buy a stupid calling card. I don't care anymore.

50 RMB. Sounds like a lot, right? And there was a convenient ATM right next to their booth. I withdrew 100 RMB and paid and got exactly 50 back (no tax) and took my calling card to the phones. It showed the credit on the screen and I figured out how to put the display in English and it still didn't work. I couldn't operate a telephone. Luckily, 50 RMB comes out to about $7.50. To put that in better perspective, I bought lunch for myself and Steve yesterday as a thank you to him for ordering for us (he speaks Chinese) and our combined bill came to 24 RMB, or yes, about $3.75, give or take. Need a taxi across downtown? 5 or 10 RMB, depending. Yes, two dollars for a taxi ride.

But I digress.

It was at that point I decided maybe I should just ask one of the white guys coming through the gauntlet if they had cell service or wifi. I was considering all the implications of being stuck in a country where I didn't know the language and if I ended up having to tell the people at the airport, I would have gotten myself deported for coming over on an invitational visa without actually meeting the person who invited me.

After two hours I was nearly done. Planned on falling asleep at the Meeting Point and figuring it out when I woke up. But then through my limited focus, I saw a short man in a black shirt with a little folded paper that I swore had my name on it. He was wandering between the Meeting Point and the gauntlet. It could have been me just hallucinating but I had to get up and check. Then I lost him. Then I wandered for fifteen minutes or so and saw him again. His paper did have my name on it. I wanted to hug that guy.

His name is Kevin and he owns the school where I'm working. Technically he owns four schools. We rode three hours from Shanghai to Ningbo. I got set up with a hotel room and then crashed for a solid six hours.

Then the typhoon.

Let me tell you, the people in this city are troopers. Worst storm in 56 years? They don't care. The taxi drivers don't care. They drive through the streets like they're in hovercraft. Getting a ride from the hotel to the local expatriate bar for the late afternoon group meetup, our taxi driver stopped in a lake to air up his tires. I was wondering how water wasn't coming in through my door. And since the driver's face didn't match the picture on the dangling license, Steve and I presumed he wasn't the normal driver but the guy's cousin or something.

Anyway, I got to meet the hard core group, the ones that braved typhoon weather to meet and greet us. Mostly Canadians, mostly from Ottowa, though I did meet one guy from Chicago. One from Portland and he identified me as an Austinite because of my skinny jeans. Apparently the only Texans he meets out East are from Austin and I believe that.

The expat bars are in the upscale part of town. When you think "upscale" you have to think in relative terms. "Upscale" here is more like "normal" back home. If it looks like a building that's regularly cleaned and has toilets, you're in a classy place. The cool part is, there are five star hotels here and for about 100 or 200 RMB, $15 - $30, you can eat a five star buffet of western foods. That's considered splurging. I actually heard one guy complaining about how the price of something here double from 1 RMB to 2. That's going from 15 cents to 30. I mean really guys.

The expat places are comforting and a little bit of a tease at the same time. Walk into one and you could be at any bar in the States or UK or Australia. Pool tables, Guinness banners, urinals, Budweiser. These are the places where the forlorn and homesick and frustrated go to ignore or take a break from the outside Chinese world. And I can't blame them. It's hectic and wild out there.

We all met up, had a round and then went to get some Sichuan. Actual Sichuan. Like me fumbling with chopsticks and burning my mouth Sichuan. Eggplant? Amazing. I've never tried it before. And the rumors of Chinese food being overspiced? Sort of true. It's nothing spicier than I've eaten before. Also, since we're really in middle China, there's rice and noodles served in equal supply. So far the food's really good. Kevin, the school owner, wants me to try some sort of rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. I keep forgetting what it's called but apparently it's an initiation food for new teachers.

That said, I got in at about ten last night after finishing a round and playing a few games of pool. Today I have to forego breakfast because I have a medical exam. I get blood drawn and all that good stuff - also, an ultrasound for some reason. I hope I'm not pregnant.

Then I get to look at an apartment. Then I get lunch. Then I observe a few classes (I still haven't been TO the school yet).


*Observations*

-the metric system- I have to convert everything. The air conditioner is on Celcius. The distances are in kilometers. Thanks, America, for not preparing me for this.

-money- Because the denominations are like 10 and 20 and 50 RMB, I always feel like I'm spending more than I am. Walking around a shop, the price tags read 4 and 5 and 6 like at any store in the US and my mind still thinks I'm looking at dollars. So when Steve pointed out that my bottled water would cost 5 a piece, I was like, "God that's expensive." No, no it's not. Two 2 liter bottles of water (can't drink from the tap) cost a combined 10 RMB or about $1.50.

-people- People stare. For two reasons I can tell so far. One, I'm not Chinese. Two, I speak loudly and in English. Some of the Canadians are so soft spoken that I feel like a walking megaphone. Also, there's a lot of uninhibited expression: people yelling, shouting, singing in the street. I guess it's not that odd but I don't know what people are saying, so I find myself wondering if they're yelling, shouting, singing at me.

-traffic- Jesus hell. There is no pedestrian right of way. People park on the sidewalks. And last night, when the traffic and water level in the street had finally died down, I saw a guy driving backwards down the road. Back-wards.

-hygiene- I wash my hands and brush my teeth a lot and I'm going to just carry around sanitizer. I haven't seen any egregious offenders, like people pooping in the street (which happens, just not in this part of town I'm sure), but the big thing is that I'm in a new country. There are germs here my body has never encountered. Regardless of what's clean and what's not, I'm exposed to it. It could be Japan or Thailand or South Africa. This is just not my town yet. And it's full of people. Like six to eight million people. So I'm going to be careful there.

-loneliness- I miss everyone back home. I miss everyone I didn't even really hang out with back home. It's amazing how this distance and lack of access puts everything in perspective. I have to make friends here, find my own group, and thank the wonderful universe for my VPN that gets around China's firewall to allow me to use Facebook. I don't care what you say about it now, without Facebook and access to my friends through their pictures and updates and chat, this transition would suck. It means a lot knowing you're all there.