Day 78: Harbin to Qiqihar

-So we really had no idea when we were supposed to be up and ready for the day. Eventually someone came around and told us to meet in the lobby at 11:20am. Everyone but me went to open up a bank account, apparently I will be getting one in Qiqihar. I met Charles, an American guy from L.A. I would guess he is around 50/60 years old. He has taught in Qiqihar for almost three years so it was nice to hear a little about the area from him.

-We then had a big hotpot lunch with everyone, including the two men running the company. They didn't speak a word of English which made for an interesting meal. Of course the Chinese way is to ganbei with beer and make lots of different toasts. So at 11am I was chugging the local Harbin beer with my new boss. Casual first day. It didn't help that I was running on a combined two hours of sleep. I wasn't a huge fan of  the meal but made sure to try most things.

-After our meal I felt even more delirious than I did before. We wandered over to a classroom in the school only to find out that Kai, Wesley, and Bob were supposedly at different schools than they originally thought. After much talking and calling our CIEE together we found out that Kai was at the same school in Daqing but Wesley and Bob were in different places. We ended up not signing the contracts they gave us due to lots of little things wrong with them. Luckily Charles helped us out when talking to LiDan and Sabrina. Hopefully nothing was miscommunicated! I was then allowed to go gather my things before I left at 4pm for Qiqihar. I was sad to leave the comfort of my American friends but swallowed down the tears and headed out.

-I took the train back with Fiona and Charles, but first, and most importantly, we stopped at McDonalds. Turns out there is no McDonalds in Qiqihar! I don't know what I'm going to do. They were bewildered that I only bought chicken nuggets and fries because apparently you can get that at the KFC in Qiqihar. Anyway, we were early to the train station and waited in the long queue that always forms at Chinese train stations. Lugging around my huge bag was not fun. They really don't make it easy- there are no elevators!

-The train ride from Harbin to Qiqihar is about 2.5 hours. Luckily we had seats and didn't have to stand like some people. I napped a little, then played some games with Fiona and Charles on her iPad. One lady ended up giving a math lesson in the middle of the train to try and sell some of her books. Once in Qiqihar we took a cab to the school. My room is all the way on the 6th floor and there's no elevator so I had to lug my bag up there with some help from the security guard. He was busy complaining about how heavy it was.

-My living arrangement: there are six rooms on the floor. All of them are now occupied but one. One room is shared by a couple from Australia and the Philippines. They love to blast music super loud which isn't great considering our super thin walls. I also get to share a wall with them, yay. We all share two bathrooms- or wet rooms, and a small kitchen with some very basic appliances. On the hall there are also two guys from South Africa who have been here for about 6 months. Then there is a Filipino guy across from me. I'm not really sure who's downstairs but I think there is a Filipino girl who hangs out with the guy across the hall.

-On my first night here my room was swelteringly hot and my mattress was a brick, literally it felt like a brick. However, I was so tired once I got in and tired of carrying around my now broken suitcase (the handle ripped off of course) that I just went to bed.

Day 77: Orientation Day 4 and Journey to Harbin

-I woke overwhelmed with the thought of leaving and heading to the place I'll be spending the next 5 months of my life. It's a pretty nerve wracking thing when it actually comes down to it. We had our last Chinese lesson and then met up in our groups to finish watching the practice lessons. Turns out my friends Elizabeth and Blythe weren't leaving Thursday as they originally thought but would be leaving Friday even though the other guy in their city was leaving Thursday, very confusing.

-I found out I was leaving at 5pm so had some time to go on the walking tour in the afternoon. We went over to Tianzifang (see Wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianzifang). It was a really cute artsy area full of little cafes and lots of shops. My favorite was the toilet themed cafe where you sit on toilet seats and there are urinals hung on the wall. I bought a Shanghai t-shirt for my future t-shirt quilt but couldn't buy anything else out of fear my bag was already overweight. Blythe, Elizabeth and I stopped at McDonald's on the way back for some McFlurries and fries. I also have no clue if Qiqihar has McDonalds (future me, who is writing this, now knows that it doesn't).

An entrance to Tianzifang:

Lockets for sale:

I want this:

I found the horses head in China:

Puzzlessssss. I wanted to buy them all but have no room in my suitcase:

A lady sleeping at the vegetable market we found:

-Once back I had a few hours to do some last minute packing and skyping. At 5pm me and five other people in my group- Jennifer, Michael, Bob, Wesley, and Kai, met in the lobby for our departure. We were all hired by the same company but placed in different areas around Heilongjiang Province. I am the only one in Qiqihar. We made it to the airport and successfully checked in. I had to pay around $30 for my overweight bag. The baggage allowance is only 20kg here (44lbs), so it wasn't too heavy! Just 15lbs overweight! I blame my peanut butter.

-We checked in and made it through to the domestic terminal. Since it was domestic all of the food was Asian. We had some dumplings in a little restaurant, which resulted in a sneaky picture taking by a man nearby. Westerners eating food! Oh my god! We then played this 'contact' game which I had never done before. It was a lot of fun. Our flight was delayed a little bit but not too long. I read my book and slept on most of it.

-We landed three hours later at Harbin Airport. You could tell from the bathrooms that we were now in real China (squatters anyone?). Two girls from the company, Sabrina and Fiona, met us at the gate. They said they knew it was us from out passport photos, that and us being the only four lost looking foreigners in the airport. We had to wait for Wesley and Michael who were on a different flight for some reason. We took the most surreal bus ride into Harbin. First our bags were chained together and locked on the bottom of the bus. Then they kept playing the equivalent of Chinese disney music. The lyrics were all in English, but it was that kind of music. I lost it when the Shakira song came on in Chinese. Bob was right there with me, deliriously cracking up at the absurdity of the situation.

-Once we made it into the city, then squeezed ourselves and our bags into three taxis, we finally made it to the hotel. Because we were so late to check in I was going to have to share a room with the two ladies from the company. I was a little uneasy about doing that so ended up sharing a room with Bob. Probably one of the strangest nights of my life, sharing a room with a guy I met three or four days ago. Of course the strap on my big suitcase broke (Beijing purchase, it was bound to happen) which made lugging it up the stairs pretty difficult. Then once I finally made it into bed I couldn't sleep at all and seemed to spend what was left of the night staring at the ceiling.

Day 76: Orientation Day 3

-Again, I'll leave out the boring details of orientation. The only thing you need to know if that I learnt I was leaving on Thursday, not Friday like previously expected. We also did some fake speed dating in our Chinese class. I was a broke driver who collected stamps on the side. What a catch.

-After lunch Bjorn and I performed our practice lesson on weather in front of our group. It went much faster than predicted so we didn't use all the time we had allotted. It was really hard standing up and making a fool out of yourself in front of all your peers. We survived though and received some valuable feedback in return.

-We then had a race to see which group could meet at this statue on the Bund first. I was really not into this racing aspect, especially because it was boiling hot out and I had just found out I was to leave tomorrow. We all made it around the same time and managed to squeeze in some picture taking of the Shanghai skyline.

The statue we met at and the Bund:

Me with some tourists in front of the Shanghai skyline:

-First up on the evening agenda was a river cruise. It was really cool to see all the buildings from the river, even though it was a little crowded on the boat. I was pretty busy stuffing myself with pizza since I have no idea if there's going to be any in Qiqihar. For some reason they provided us with about 20 bottles of Coke and nothing else.

Our boat for the night:

View from the boat:

I'm on a boat:

-We then walked over to the World Financial Center which was amazing. The building kind of looks like a big can opener and we were able to go all the way to the viewing platform at the very top, 474m high. The elevators were the funniest thing. They counted the elevation along with some strobe lights and interesting sound effects. It felt like we were in a mix of Tron and Willy Wonka. We were so thirsty at the top that we even bought the rip-off water that cost 6 kuai (about $1), a complete overcharge in China.

View on the walk to the Financial Center:

The Financial Center on the left, it's actually taller than the one on the right:

Elyzabeth and I at the top of the building:

View from the top:

-After staring at the gorgeous view we made our way back to the hotel around 10pm. After that I packed away getting ready for my journey to Qiqihar.

Day 75: Orientation Day 2

-After another early start it was another full day of orientation activities. I'll save all the boring details, and I pretty much covered the whole point of orientation: be flexible and patient.

-In the afternoon all of us (except the people from Chicago who's visas didn't arrive in time) boarded buses for an excursion to the Shanghai Museum. It wasn't exactly my favorite thing in the world, the stuff inside didn't interest me all too much. The funniest part was seeing this Asian man taking pictures of things in the most absurd positions, including a little booty shake into a squatting pose. Also the traditional outfit from Heilongjiang province, where I'll be teaching, was pretty much just thick furs. Good thing I remembered to pack all my furs.

Some cool characters at the museum:

I love Vallina and Smurfs flavor ice cream:

Cute little girl:

Elyzabeth checking out a really cool vase:

These boys were just too cute:

Traditional clothing from Heilongjiang Province:

The Shanghai Museum:

-We then headed to a very early dinner at a fishy smelling, sweltering restaurant. The food was interesting to say the least. We had a fun time guessing what everything was and trying bits and pieces when we dared.

Some oyster things at dinner:

The table:

-Last on the agenda for the evening was an acrobatic show. I had seen one in Beijing when I studied abroad, but this one was much more Cirque du Soleil like. It was amazing some of the things they could do, including having eight full speed motorcycles inside a little metal ball. I was completely zonked by the time the show was over. I met with Bjorn to finalize our lesson plan for the next day then completely crashed.

Day 74: Orientation Day 1

-After some breakfast in the hotel cafeteria (they had toast!) we had a welcome to our orientation and to China. I had no clue there were about 70 people on the program, so many! Most of the teachers are recent college graduates like me, but some have been out of school for a few years now.  We broke into smaller groups for a 'survival Chinese lesson.' It reminded me just how much Chinese I forget when I don't use it. Surprisingly lots of people on the program have never been to China before or studied Chinese.

-We had a very Chinese lunch after which I ate a leftover pastry from the night before. Elyzabeth, Blythe (who will be teaching with her), and I found a convenience store nearby so stocked up on some Diet Coke and water. Well, we thought it was water but it turned out so be sparkling salty water. No idea why they sell that here.

-After some more orientation, mainly discussing how patient and flexible you have to be when dealing with the Chinese school system, we were paired up for a practice lesson. I was paired with Bjorn, who will be teaching close to me in Daqing.

-Next up was our welcome dinner at a Sichuan style restaurant. Sichuan food is known for being very spicy. There was also a performance of the famous 变脸, bian lian, a Chinese art where performers changes their masks in the blink of an eye. It was really cool since I had watched the movie 变脸王，Bianlian Wang, in my Chinese class and now I was able to see it in person. It really is impressive!

Here's an example of 'bian lian:'

A strange food they served us:

Watching the show:

Days 73: Shanghai

-I luckily received my passport in time to leave for my orientation in Shanghai! I'd never been before so was super excited about the chance to see the city. After almost missing my flight there, I arrived in Shanghai to some confused CIEE workers, who apparently didn't have my name on their list. After some calls they figured out that, yes, I was part of the program and lead me over to a waiting area. I met Elyzabeth and Shane who were both taking part and we boarded a mini-bus to Jiaotong University.

-We settled into our 'Faculty Club' hotel rooms for the week and then wandered out for some lunch. It was clear from the start that Shanghai was a very different city from Beijing. The buildings are lower and more spread out, but also they are a lot more Western looking. The whole city has a much more Western vibe than Beijing. It's almost like a mix between Hong Kong and Paris. We ended up on a  random road and had some delicious pho for lunch. My extremely rusty Chinese slowly started to emerge again. Let's just say you wouldn't know I've been studying it for four years.

An art museum we went into:

Lunch, for real:

Lights I liked at lunch (for you mum):

A really cute street somewhere in Shanghai:

Wifi telephone booths?:

-On the first evening there we were on our own for food and such. Elyzabeth and I wandered around Shaanxi Rd, eventually finding a cute little bakery where I had a couple pieces of pizza. We then headed back and went to bed early before officially starting orientation tomorrow.

Day 66-72: The Rest of Hong Kong

The rest of my time in Hong Kong was a blur. I stayed at the Jack's house for five nights. I was super lazy and was spoiled with Sarah's big comfy bed. Their rescue dog Charlie warmed up to me by the end of my stay, even allowing me to pet him. I tried lying on the beach (which was swarmed with Chinese tourists) and going on a run, but it was so hot outside the best option was lying in the room with some air conditioning.

I met up with two friends from elementary school, one of whom I hadn't seen in over eleven years! It was so fun reminiscing about the stupid things we used to do and what everyone is up to now. We also went out later that night meeting up with a few more people from the past.

Morgan and I. I hadn't seen him since we were 10 or 11 years old!

After my visa freakout I decided the best thing was for me to send my passport back to the US to get it. I went into Central early one morning to send it and its due to arrive the day before I leave for China! Fingers crossed.

Lynne and Duncan were kind enough to have me back after staying at the Jacks. They spoiled me rotten with some last home-cooked Western meals. I read to and was read to by Jamie and Ian, the cutest little boys. Other than that I just lounged around until my very flight to Shanghai.

Another gorgeous view from the MacFarlanes:

I had a great time in Hong Kong being lazy and catching up with some old friends. Now I'm just ready to unpack a bag!

Day 60-66: Staying with the McFarlanes

For five nights I stayed with Lynne and Duncan and their two boys Jamie and Ian. I had never met Jamie and Ian before but they were the most welcoming, talkative, lively boys. They accepted me straight away and within five minutes were showing me their TinTin books and lego.

Jamie and Ian:

Over the week we did a lot of swimming at the pool close by. Luckily for me I had the excuse of taking the boys to swimming lessons, when I got to lay poolside and do nothing. We also went to see Brave, which made poor Jamie cry, but was a great movie overall. We visited the Aberdeen Marina Club, where my family and I used to go when I was little. The outside looked the same but the inside had been completely revamped. We ate at the Italian restaurant there one night where I had some delicious gnocchi. Lynne also kindly treated me to a haircut, which I desperately needed.

The view from Lynne and Duncans:

 The Adventure Zone in the Marina Club:

We prepared for a typhoon on Friday but it turned out to be a measly T3 so nothing to worry about. I even got burned at the pool that day!

Some random footage of the typhoon coming in:

There was a bit of a freakout on my part when I found out my original plan of getting my visa in Hong Kong wasn't going to work and I would have to ship all my stuff to the US. Of course I only found this out on Friday, which left me full of worry the whole weekend. Hopefully it will all work itself out though!

I had such a lovely time with the McFarlanes and was so thankful for them letting me stay with them for that long!

Journeys lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. 

Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.

Day 59: Hong Kong

For Marco’s last day we lounged around some more. We had a fantastic lunch of burgers and steak and then a delicious dinner. We ate some ice creams overlooking the water. Funnily enough we were there in time for the laser show and our trip seemed to end just as it had started. At 9pm Marco took the shuttle to the Airport Express and sadly we had to say goodbye.

Eating lunch by the harbor:

Day 58: Hong Kong

After a lazy start, Marco and I finally went to go see The Dark Night Rises. Of course an IMAX ticket here costs $20 USD each, but it was definitely worth it. We didn’t do much else until dinner at an awful Indian restaurant (my bad). Luckily drinks at Deck N Beer, which overlooks the harbor, was great. 

Day 57: Hanoi to Hong Kong

-We finally arrive din Hanoi around 10am and took an overly expensive taxi to the airport. We used the last of our dong and started watching Seven Years in Tibet, which was not that good. There were mosquitoes swarming everywhere and they would not go away. Not too pleasant to wake up to after an uncomfortable nap on the benches. Finally around 5pm we could check in. We even got moved up to emergency exit row seats.

-After landing in Hong Kong and making it to Kowloon we found out we had missed the free shuttle to Tsim Sha Tsui so took a cab ride over before crashing for the night. 

Day 56: Hoi An to Hanoi

-Before we left for our second 18-hour bus ride we had one last meal at our favourite restaurant, Café 43. We’d been there so many times that the waitress did my hair for me. I really suck at braiding my own. We bought some movies before we left so I’d have something to do during my two spare weeks in Hong Kong.

-At 1:30pm we boarded the bus and did nothing for the next 18+ hours but read and sleep. We stopped occasionally for some food and a bathroom break. 

Day 55: Hoi An Day 5

-Marco had to go for his final suit fitting in the morning. I stayed at the hostel thinking it would take an hour max, a few hours later he finally got home, at which point I was pretty grumpy from being cooped up. We went for the local white rose for lunch; I wasn’t a fan so we then went somewhere else for some western food.

-In the afternoon we met up with James and Katie to go to the beach. Somehow James convinced Katie to rent one, even after their crash into a fruit stall in Chiang Mai. We went over to the beach Marco and I had found yesterday and swam around. Marco and I stayed until sunset, taking in the beautiful view.

Looking nervous for their motorcycle ride:

Swimming at the beach:

Riding back at sunset:

 Some panoramas from the day:

-Once back and showered we went to have our final dinner in Hoi An by the river. There were these hilarious kids sitting behind us talking about the funniest things. One of them was getting really cross at a family friend for smoking a cigar, telling him he was going to die in two years. Lovely.

We then made some last minute purchases before meeting up for drinks with Jamie and Katie. We went to another place by the river and had the most disgusting cocktails ever. It was humorous how bad they were. Luckily I had ordered a bear so didn’t have to endure the disgustingness. We then went to the local mart to buy some chocolate milk, the natural follow up to drinking.

Hoi An at night: