And so my adventures in China begin...

I got to Shenyang yesterday (sunday) morning and was dropped off at my apartment at around 10:30. My contact suggested I rest for awhile and made arrangements to meet with me again on Tuesday to get my residence permit and other documents. And then she left...

uhh...help?!

My guess is she thinks I know more Chinese than I actually do. :-( In any case, survival instincts kicked in as I was exceptionally thirsty but had been told not to drink the tap water. I went downstairs to the front desk to see about water, couldn’t understand what they were saying but they understood me enough to lead me to get a bottle of water at their little store. No idea how much I paid for it, was slightly flustered. Then I asked about a phone card and paid for that and went back upstairs. Problem is, I had no idea how to use it. So I futzed around with it for awhile and then went back downstairs to get some help. The xiaojie at the desk gave me a visual but I still didn’t understand a word she said. As I was going back upstairs, I met a couple of other students here, one a Japanese student named Sayuri. She introduced me to a couple of her other friends who spoke Japanese and they helped me figure out how to use the phone. phew, the Japanese skills saved me on that one.

Luckily I had the phone number for Darren, a friend of mine who's also teaching here so I gave him a call and he came over and walked me around the city for awhile just to get a sense of the place. That helped. A little. I was still really overwhelmed by it all though, thinking to myself often, just what the heck have I done and gotten myself into? It was scary suddenly feeling very alone and not knowing what to do. I'm glad Darren was here or I would have seriously had a major panic attack.

Darren and Wang Yang (Darren's girlfriend) and I went to dinner later and had a very tasty meal of pidandoufu (soft tofu with green onions and thousand year eggs (preserved eggs, salty, but yummy), a ground pork dish poured over mashed potatoes and jiaozi (potsticker dumplings).

I crashed around 10ish and was still feeling really overwhelmed but I slept like a rock and made myself promise to be more adventurous in the morning. I even had myself talked into going and finding breakfast by myself.

Well breakfast on my own didn't happen because Darren and Wang Yang wanted to introduce me to youtiao...it's this fried bread that you dip in sweet soy milk. A popular breakfast treat and Wang Yang taught me how to order for myself so it was a good learning experience.

We walked around for awhile and stopped by and met some of the other teachers I'll be working with and then did a little shopping for my apartment. I'm feeling better about buying things on my own. It's amazing how much more comfortable I've become with basic Chinese just in the last 24 hours.

Another teacher from MN arrived this afternoon and he and I decided to walk to Beiling Park. A little history: Shenyang is the former capitol of Manchuria. A lot of the relics/traditional buildings were destroyed by the Japanese during WWII but Beiling (North Tomb) is a holdover.
I'll add photos later because the uploader seems to not be working at the moment.

I'm really spoiled as far as living arrangements go. It's actually almost embarrassing how well taken care of I am as a foreigner. I have so much to learn about this country and this culture. What's really quite amazing is the range of emotions I've felt in the last 24 hours. From frightened, overwhelmed, scared, intimidated, lost, exhausted, perplexed to excited, exuberant, content, peaceful, thoughtful, humbled, pensive...and yet it's weird, it's as if I'm watching it all from a distance because I'm staying pretty even keeled through all of this.

What's most interesting is that even though it's all so new, it nevertheless feels very familiar and warm. I'm foreign, but not that foreign, if that makes any sense. People are really laidback, they kind of just expect you to fall into the way things work. It's refreshing. I like this place.