First Days Over Seas

China. Weihai, China. That’s where I am. Awesome much? Yeah, you don’t even know.

There are SO MANY things I can write about it’s hard to really pick the best or most unique (to me) parts of my trip… or even what to tell first. I suppose I’ll start where I left—in Salt Lake City airport. Also, considering much of my trip has so far consisted of little things that may not be interesting, I’ve tried to put a sort of heading before each paragraph so you fine people can skim to what sounds most intriguing. Unless of course you’re really bored or something, then you can just read it all :)

[SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH]: boring. I checked in and left for LA. Met maybe two people in my group. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

[LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA]: again, boring. Met a lot more people from my group! Really cool people. Spent maybe two hours trying to figure out where to go to prepare for the flight to Korea. That’s where I got my passport stamped. It looks so cool. Well, ok, considering this is the first thing on my passport ever, I’m not exactly an expert… but, whatever. It’s awesome.

[SEOUL, KOREA]: HUGE AIRPORT! And, very long plane ride. About 13 to 14 hours I think is how long the ride is. T O R T U R E. I was in the last row of the plane and actually did a good job of sleeping most of the way. Unfortunately, our lay-over was between about 630am-330pm so we didn’t get to go out and see much. The airline lent us a hotel and a free meal there which was cool, but since we weren’t allowed to sight-see, we just slept most of the time. I had Kimchi Fried Rice and it was SO GOOD. The hotel was also super high-class. I don’t know if I’ve ever stayed at a hotel that nice. It was awesome. And free :)

[WEIHAI, CHINA]: Now we get to the good stuff! Our group arrived at 330pm-ish and afterwards got to the school that we’ll be teaching and living at around 5pm. After dragging our luggage up about ten flights of stairs outside we continued up another five flights of stairs inside to get to our rooms. Will I have a good butt after these five months are over? I had better. After putting our luggage down we got to eat at the school’s cafeteria and then were let back upstairs to unpack and finally sleep.

[WIEHAI WEATHER….and other kind of boring stuff] This morning I woke up at about 645am to make sure I showered [note: showering is another adventure here which I will share in another entry I think] and then chatted with my mom and little sister over skype while my roommate showered. At 845am-ish is when we left our dorms to go out into the city!!! We walked. Yes, we walked. This is important. Why? BECAUSE IT’S FREEZING HERE! Not only is it temperature cold, but it’s very humid which makes it worse [note: am I aware that I am a huge wimp when it comes to cold weather? Yes, but hey, I wasn’t the only one in our group complaining!]. We first went to the police station to register our passports with the city or whatever then went to the bank to transfer money. After that long endeavor came the fun stuff.

[FOOD AND BEING AN ALIEN] We got to go out to eat and shop. No one really speaks English here. And, everyone stares at us when we walk by, like we’re aliens. Maybe for some of them, for all they know we could be. I guess Americans aren’t seen as much this far north in a smaller-ish town. At any rate, it’s kind of fun being an alien. I don’t know why, but I enjoy the strange attention. The lunch I had was SO GOOD! It was the fried bread stuff with meat and peppers and then I also had dumplings/pot-stickers (however you like to say it) with this tuber onion [note: I would not have known what the green vegetable stuff in there was called if it weren’t for Kelly, our coordinator, who told me..or, whose Chinese-English dictionary told us] and egg inside.

[MORE ON BEING AN ALIEN… AND CHINESE PEOPLE SO FAR] After that we went shopping in the grocery store for anything we were missing in our rooms. I had to find shampoo and conditioner and body and face wash and a bunch of other stuff. Seeing how I can’t even speak, let alone read, Chinese, it was a very fun adventure. My friend and I finally ended up asking one of the workers (who of course didn’t speak English) where the face wash was. We rubbed our faces and pointed to soap and I think she got the message… I’m not really sure, she nodded her head and spoke Chinese to us (as if we would understand) and took us to an aisle where face wash was pretty close by. There were also a couple Chinese women (older) who just thought we American girls were so funny. Anything we said? I don’t think so. Anything we were doing? Considering we were just standing in the middle of the produce section, I imagine not. They just thought we were hilarious and tried to talk to us. We just laughed back and said we couldn’t understand them. Did this deter them? Not in the least, they just spoke slower is all. That seems to be a trend though, instead of trying other means of communication, it seems like people just talk slower, as if that will magically help us understand their language. Well, anyway, it’s pretty funny and once I start wrapping my head around the language, I’m sure I’ll appreciate them talking slower! Anyhow, later on we met up with the older ladies again and they waved and smiled and my friend and I replied with “Ni Hao!” which they found even funnier than us standing in the middle of the produce section. It was great.

[END] So, that is a basic run-down of the what I’ve done so far. There are lots of other things I can talk about—like the smell, and the multi-functional bathroom, and the lack of good heating (I’ve been indoors for a couple hours or so and my coat and scarf are still on), and, well, lots of things. But, for now I think this will do. Now that you have a basic run-down, I’ll go into actual fun stories later. All you need to know right now is that I love it here and trying to enjoy even the seemingly unenjoyable has been more fun than I even thought! ‘Til next time!