Hello From China

I was experiencing technical difficulties which is very hard to deal with when all instructions come up on the computer in Chinese - literally. Plus I think it was fate's way of not letting me rant about my first few days. I have now adjusted and am settling in to my next eight weeks of China.

So here are the highlights so far:

• Flight - long. So long that when I finished two movies and asked the nice steward how much longer, expecting one maybe two hours, I was shocked to find out I had another 5 hours to go. Ouch.


• Beijing - uneventful and didn't see much. We were only there for one night.



• Nanjing - HOLY!!! China kinda hits you between the eyes when you get to this city. 8 million people, way smoggier than Beijing, people everywhere. EVERY WHERE. It is chaos in the city.

So I walk into my apartment which is likely larger than the average apartment. Bonus BUT filthy. The bed sheets are supplied but dirty, no towels, no cleaning supplies (which is likely why it is filthy), the kitchen sink drains onto the floor if you put too much water in the sink and the ice cube trays have some type of bacterial growth that I don't want to identify. It was awful. So I tore off the sheets and slept my first night with my jacket as a blanket. Go ahead - call me a princess but if you had seen the state of the rest of the place you would too. The next day we all took a trip into Nanjing to the Walmart. This was not a North American style Walmart. Two HUGE floors of everything and anything. The second floor had all of the groceries, fresh fruit and veggies and your meat and reptile market. NO JOKE. These little beauties were sitting at the end of the live fish and eel tanks:

They don't even make cute pets. I haven't seen anything that ugly since the cane toads in Australia. Food should not be that ugly.


I have no idea what part of it that the toad they eat and quite frankly none of the parts are particularly appealing. My commitment to vegetarian eating was reinforced with that little discovery.
We got all of our food and cleaning supplies (after four hours of shopping/site seeing in the store) and headed home or 5 hours of cleaning. Now my place looks like this:






Much better. I'm much happier now that I have a clean place and the internet. I was starting to panic about getting on line.
So lots more to tell but for now I am off to make my won ton soup and get some work done.