September 17, 2017

We're not in Kansas  any more--or Iowa, or Utah!

Hi everyone! We begin this post on Sunday night at 7:00, trying valiantly to stay awake, because we’ve been up since very early this morning. Jet lag is real.

16.5 hours of flying to get to Shanghai. We are traveling with Clay and Tammie Anstead, who will also be teaching English at Tongji University for the China Teachers Program, part of BYU International Studies.

Our apartment building--for foreign teachers at the university

We began familiarizing ourselves with the area the first morning we were here, beginning with sampling some local dumplings (large, delicious, soft-but-not-soggy stuffed dumplings for $.40). We checked out the university and did some shopping at local markets. We realized we weren’t in Kansas any more when we passed a fish market where they had eels in plastic bins full of water, one hopped out into the gutter, and the store keeper picked it up to put it back in with the others. Then a worker started picking the eels out of the bin, nailing them to a board, cutting off their heads, slitting them down the middle, scraping out their innards, and plopping them in another bin. We shall not be buying any eels to fry. 

                                                                                                             

Today we attended our church branch by taking two subway rides and walking a couple of blocks. It took an hour and fifteen minutes each way, and we were proud that we did not get lost. Over half attending were just arriving (like us) or here on a business trip.  We understand there are a lot of young single adults--we'll get to meet more of them soon. Wonderful people we met today!

The entry into our apartment

Now for a tour of our apartment...

Our living / dining / office room. Rather spacious, lots of books,

 office supplies, and comfortable seating.

Our bedroom - plenty of room for us with a king bed
composed of two twin beds put together.

Pretty normal bathroom, except you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet.  

It goes into a garbage that gets emptied daily.  The item on the left is a small

washing machine.  Clothes are dried on a rack.

Our kitchen--small but well stocked by 15 years of BYU China teachers

Checking out Tongji University

So far we are finding that food is inexpensive.  We can have a nice lunch or dinner out for $4 each. Our apartment has a water cooler (5 gallon water bottle). A bottle of water is about $2.00 delivered to our door.

The people have been great, but not many speak English and we know little (very little) Chinese. Some signs have English, but many do not--stay tuned for further communications adventures.

Well, we decided to go to bed before finishing our Sunday post. But on Monday we found out good news! We now know what classes we are teaching: four "Oral English" classes and one "Business English" class apiece. It's nice to know when and where we are teaching.

We are having a wonderful time with our new adventure.