a new year

Ok so I've decided to give blogging a real go this year. I tried last year but I only posted once. But since I didn't even give anyone the link to the blog, you probably didn't ever see that one. So here we go. ShiyanJourney 2.0. I always wondered if I should include the minute details of everyday life in emails. (e.g. July 24 I SHOT A MOOSE!!!) But then I decided that a blog is an ok spot to do that seeing as how it's completely voluntary on the readers part. I'll try to include some interesting things in here too. There are a few people here who shall remain unnamed that are trying to make it into the pages of this blog. We'll see if they can dazzle us. So we begin.

We arrived in Wuhan on Thursday. We didn't know whether or not our school was coming to pick us up in Wuhan or not. Our phones didn't work but we were able to use a fellow teacher's phone to contact our waiban. They told us to take a taxi to a hotel in the city and that a car would pick us up the next day and take us to Shiyan. We were actually excited about having a free day in Wuhan to do some shopping and rest. So we negotiated a taxi fare into Wuhan with a really nice lady who had been waiting forever for someone who wanted a taxi. We talked to her all the way to our hotel. It was great. She didn't talk really fast like most people. She knew we were trying to parse everything she said so the said it really slow. After we got to the hotel we dropped all of our stuff off and went to METRO. METRO is like a Sam's Club. You need a membership card to get in and of course we don't have one. Luckily at this particular METRO you can just saunter past the guard at the front and look bewildered at the checkout and make it out the door with 5 kilos of cheddar cheese. We got our cheese and slept.

The car arrived early the next morning and we were off to Shiyan. On the way I finished reading Into the Wild. We got to Shiyan in the early afternoon and unpacked. Our apartment wasn't overwhelmingly dirty so that was a nice surprise. We hung out with some of the new people in the city and got together with several of them on Saturday. It's been a lot of fun getting to know them. This is definitely going to be a good year in Shiyan. Saturday morning the rain (which had been torrential since we got here) stopped and the air got really clear. We could see with astounding clarity the mountains around us and we were reminded of just how much we love it here. It really is a beautiful place.

It's Sunday morning here now. Megan is still asleep. I think I have caught up the blog. I'm sure there will be some notable things that happen today. Hopefully I'll update again soon. If I never blog again, I'm sorry if you got your hopes up. Have a great day.

John