June 07, 2008 7:40pm

Sam and I arrived to Beijing, China Thursday this week at 5:40am. Our landlord, Wang Yun, was kind eneough to pick us up at the airport. We were pretty out of it. The plane ride was nearly 14 hours long, and I really didn't sleep at all. Sam pretty much slept like a baby though:) We waited for our luggage for about an hour and a half, and then we ate at a Korean fast-food restaurant in the airport with Wang. We didn't leave the airpot until about 7:45am or so.
It only took about 20 minutes to get from the airport to our apartment. When we got to our apartment, we felt really overwhelmed. Our landlord had to go to work, and we were left alone with no clue of what to do with ourselves. We pretty much stayed inside for awhile thinking that we were way in over our heads.

Sam fell asleep around 1:00pm, but I was way too siked to even think about sleeping, so I thought I might give my Chinese a try by making friends out in the community (seeming how there are tens of thousands of people in our neighborhood). Our community has about four different entrances with security guards at each one. So I decided to make friends with the two security guards at our nearest entrance. After explaining to them that we had just arrived that morning, that my wife was asleep, and I had nothing to do, they told me I could just hang out with them for awhile. So I chatted with them while we let the traffic in and out of the gate. I asked the security guards if there are people who practice Tai Chi in the morning here in our community, and they told me that if we went one block down the road, we could catch people practicing from 6:00am to 7:30am.

That night we didn't feel brave enough to go to the local Chinese restaurants, so we walked about a mile down the road to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Crossing the streets was interesting. Nobody obeys traffic laws, so we would just followed the locals as they would cross the streets, and the cars would just go around us as if it were totally normal.

We got to bed around 9:00pm or so, which is 6am California time. We got up the next morning around 6:00am feeling really refreshed, and we headed out to find the Tai Chi people. We eventually ran into a group of about 50 people or so all practicing Tai Chi. Many of them were doing Tai Chi with swords. We brought our cameras, but we felt that we should let them get a little more used to seeing us around before we bust out the cameras. So we'll hopefully have pictures of them soon. We're going to try to go every morning until they invite us to practice with them, and then we'll start doing Tai Chi with them.

That morning around 7:15am the streets started filling up with people who were walking to the subway which is about a five minute walk from where the Tai Chi people were, which is about a two minute walk from our apartment building. So we decided to follow the crowds to the subway. We found several breakfast street vendors near the subway where tons of people were eating. I saw some interesting food (I'll get some pics later with the people who make the food, they're way nice). I asked one of the ladies what she called the type of food she was making, and she told me the name and said she would show me how to make it. She poured some type of a batter on a hot frying surface, cracked an egg over it, put some green onions and cilantro in it, threw some sort of spicy sauce on it, and then placed a fried waffle looking thing in it to give it some crunch. It turned out looking like an omelette, so we went ahead and paid for it and ate it. It was delicious and only cost 2.5 Kuai, which basically means bucks and is pronounced Kwaee with the fourth tone. The currency is 6.8 Kuai to the Dollar, so that breakfast only cost like .30 cents!

I think we're just about the only Americans in our community because everyone stares at us as if they've never seen white people before. People are really friendly to us. Whenever we talk to people, they get so excited it's not even funny. Last night I went to one of the local Chinese restaurants that's just below the building just next door to us. When I came in, there was an older fellow playing some funky Chinese-board game with some of the waitresses. I ordered my food and decided to wait near the cash register while my food was being cooked. The old man came up to me and started talking to me. He had the thickest Chinese Beijing accent I have ever heard. I could hardly understand him, but whenever I would say anything, he would look me straight in the eyes totally excited and say, "You're Chinese is great, it's just great!" Even though I was only saying things like, "So, did you grow up around here?" So basically whenever I talk to anybody, lots of people crowd around me to listen in to the white dude speak Chinese because it blows there mind a white man will even attempt it. So all of the waitresses gathered around me as the old fellow (named Ban by the way) and I had a really confusing conversation (because I wasn't really understanding much). Anyway, we're best bros now, and we're going to play that funky board game together really soon. I've already gone back to their restuarant several times because they have a sweet beef and rice dish that tastes like Panda Express, and it only costs like a buck for a meal. The older fellow (Ban) happens to be the owner of the place, which is why he was playing that game with the waitresses (the waitresses are teenagers and live in the building above the restaurant with their families and work at the restaurant from 10am to 10pm every day, and on their breaks they play board games with the owner).

Friday afternoon we took the subway for the first time. The subway is extremely convenient and easy to take. It actually has Chinese and English on all of the maps and signs, and when you're going from stop to stop, you hear the name of the stop in both Chinese and English. We have a subway and buspass, and it's really cheap to buy. You just prepay a few bucks on the card, and you can get around wherever you want on the subway and the bus for about a month, depending on how much you use it of course. So we took the subway to the New Oriental head quarters where we will start working really soon. We had to get off at the second subway stop to transfer to another subway line, then we went about 6 stops and got off in the Hai Dian District. We arrived at around 2:30pm, but we didn't need to arrive at head quarters until 5:30pm, so we just walked around for awhile in the different shops, bookstores, we went to an internet cafe and to a bookstore. Hai Dian is filled with students and foreigners. It's much faster paced than our community, and no one stares. It's basically a college town and everyone is young. We got on the bus around 4:30pm to go to headquarters. The buses were a little trickier than the subways because the bus stop signs are only in Chinese characters, but we were fine, we're getting around just fine with my Chinese skills.

We spoke with our manager at headquarters for a couple of hours just asking questions and finding out different options of where we can teach. We have three different options: (1) We can teach corporate, which means we go to companies and teach employees business English, (2) We can teach at summer camps that are eight days long each, and we would have to travel to different locations and stay in hotels for eight days at a time, or (3) We can teach regular English classes at one school every day, but Sam and I might get assigned to different school locations with this option, which means Sam would have to get around on the subways and busses on her own. We haven't decided yet, but I'm pretty sure we're going to tell our manager that if she cannot put us in the same school location for the third option, we will most likely do the camps (we would be at different locations every day with the first option too).

Today our landlord took Sam and me to the mall to buy things for our apartment. We first sat down for lunch. This place was packed with people and there were countless places to choose from. We chose a beef rice bowl and shared it. It came with some seaweed soup which Sam tried, and she made a face like she was disgusted, so I didn't try it. We paid for our landlord's lunch too, and the whole lunch cost around only $2.50.

The mall was huge. They have cool escalator ramps so you can bring your shopping cart with you as you go up the different levels to get grocieries or whatever you want. The escalators are magnetized so that when you put your shopping cart on the ramp, it sticks and doesn't slide down.

Well, have fun with the pics!!




Here are some eels. Don't they look delicious?
dragon fruit
Stinky fruit