Moving Day!

So last night was the last hurrah for everyone to be here in Shijiazhuang. Sadly I slept through dinner with our director Kirk but awoke to noise that was obviously my group partying in the hallway (which reminds me I still haven't blogged about my lunch with the Chinese officials? now how did I forget that!). Henceforth I went to investigate. Upon entering I was greeted by Sean with a bottle of baijiu, some terrible Chinese "vodka", and a Tsingtao. Gotta love friendly drunks. I got my first karaoke experience courtesy of the KTV in the basement of the hotel. We were only there for about 15 minutes but it was still fun. After this some of us headed out to Mazzo. I was inside for 5 minutes before I left feeling like I had experienced a mild seizure. Outside I found Kirk and some other people. It was a nice relaxing night, plus I got hear some of what other people were expecting from this experience and what they were planning on doing afterwards.

Woke up this morning with quite the headache -_- now realizing I could've had a use for that 500 count bottle of aspirin I bought freshman year but never finished off. Tyler and I were greeted by Li Wei (our Waiban) nearly an hour early in the breakfast room, seriously? Luckily I packed before heading down for food. 

Now, up until this point I felt pretty comfortable in China. The first two days I just spent touring Beijing, after that everywhere I went I knew Kirk was just a taxi away so no real panic. Before being picked up by Li (I think this is his family name, but it’s more comfortable than just calling him Wei, so I’m sticking with Li...) I thought hey, this guy knows I’ve never been to china before surely he'll be helpful and understanding. From what I had learned all of our Waiban's had arranged time to take us to get cell phones and show us our apartments and really just talk about contracts and stuff today, well I was wrong. Tyler (the other Drake teacher) and I got downstairs to a van that Li was apparently borrowing from someone (?) and really up until this point I not met a single person who had not been at least somewhat helpful with my luggage but this was too much for him I guess. I loaded my two giant bags in the back then climbed into the van to help Tyler get his stuff in...Cause I literally commandeered the whole trunk of the van lol. We were off...to what I thought was going to be our medical exams, but no Li had a lunch appointment first. So we spent a good 20-30 minutes sitting in the van outside the restaurant...then we were off again, but not to the exams instead to my apartment. Once again I received no assistance from Li with my baggage (all 2 carry on and 2 50lb rollers), in fact he even told Tyler he should wait in the van. Well thankfully for me Tyler had manners enough to help. I’m on the fourth floor, and no there isn’t an elevator but they also aren’t very common in china anyway. Now, I knew not to expect much but I was not expecting this. The living room, bed room, and office are good but it soon deteriorates. In fact I’m certain I will be renovating the bathroom at some point in the next 10 months. If nothing else a fresh coat of protectant on the wall (I think that's a giant colony of mold on the bottom of the walls but I haven't really gotten up the courage to investigate).

After a once over and some paper signing we were off, no not to our exams, to the police department. Frantically Li gathered our passports and ran in. Five minutes later he ran out, now even more frustrated. He didn't seem to want to answer our questions and after prompting him for the 3rd time about cell phones he informed us we could get our own and he had important things to do. After this is was decided we were not going to have exams until the next morning at 9am, he would meet us at the hospital, the name of which he wrote down for us so we could get a taxi in the morning. He left us at Tyler's apartment, and so Tyler and I set off to find my apartment. Which turns out is only a 20 minute walk but we wandered around for about an hour and a half. Luckily he speaks some Chinese and was able to ask for directions. So now it's cleanin time bitches!