Hello from Beijing!

After all these years of trying, I've finally made it to China. I survived the flight, saw movies of varying quality, managed to not lose my luggage, and made it through my first Beijing taxi ride.

The last few days have been full of settling in kinds of things. I now have a Chinese phone number and data on my phone. My suitcases are all unpacked. I've figured out how to navigate public transportation. I am staying with a family, so I haven't had to do any shopping for food yet, but I'm looking forward to that in the coming weeks. 

I've already started doing a bit of teaching. The student population is a little bit younger than I was expecting, but the kids seem mostly sweet and well-behaved. I'm just going to have to reach way, way back into the Camp Chazon days and early months in Korea to remember tricks for entertaining groups of children. 

I didn't have any students today, so I ventured out to see the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square. It's always an amazing experience to see something in real life that you have read about for years. The sky was blue today, which was exciting, but it was quite hot. The temperature was around 90F/33C, so it was pretty awful to be out in. There is lots of shade in the Forbidden City, but Tienanmen Square was brutal. I didn't stay there very long. 

I did lots and lots of walking today, and I'm really regretting the one thing on my packing list that I forgot to put in my suitcase -- my tennis shoes.... I'm going to have to try and figure something out, although I am in the Land of Tiny Feet where it is always challenging to buy shoes. 

I managed to navigate the subway without getting lost, and I also made it to the entrance of the Forbidden City without getting lost. After I finished my tour of the palace, I discovered that I couldn't get out the way I had come in. I wandered around for awhile, managed to get myself lost, then managed to find my way home. It is all a great adventure! I'm just thankful for GPS enabled phones and map apps!

It has been hard to form a real opinion of Beijing so far. The part of the city where I'm living is far more residential than anything else, so it is quiet and not very crowded. There are loads of trees, and lots of rose gardens and other flower beds throughout the neighborhood. It's nice and calm up here, but there's also not much to do or see. I had a chance to see a bit more of the city today, and it was much more consistent with my experiences in Asian cities. I'm excited to continue to explore the city. I'm trying hard to no compare everything here to everything in Seoul. 

The school situation will be good, I think. And the apartment where I'm staying is quite nice. But neither of these things are what I thought they would be based on conversations and emails before I left. It has been a little bit hard trying to deal with all of the change, miscommunication and adjusting expectations as I'm going through the worst of jet lag, but the jet lag is getting much better, so I hope that my adventurous spirit will revive itself soon!

I'll try to post some pictures from my outing today sometime soon, but my unrestricted internet access is a little sketchy sometimes, so I'm not sure how long it will take to upload photos on here. I did manage to get them on facebook, so you can check there if you would like!