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.