Megan and I waiting at the airport

My parents saying goodbye to me at the airport

It has officially been over a week since I have been living in China.  This is usually about the time that I tend to leave when i'm on a "trip."  Its really starting to sink in that this is my life.  It has been good and hard and happy and sad.  So many emotions that I feel throughout each day, but over all of those is a peace that I am in the right place.  I know that God is going to teach me a ton, because He already has taught me so much.  

This past week has been a lot of trying to learn the city we live in and where to go for what we need. The administration planned several trips to the regular places, because a lot of times, unless you are led there,  you would otherwise have no idea where it is.  First of all, every sign is in Chinese, but second of all, sometimes you have to walk into a building, up the stairs, down the hallway and cut through a side hallway to then finally arrive at your desired store.  We spent a day at IKEA getting stuff for our apartment, another day getting our phone numbers set up, and then we went to the grocery store, and the "wet market" which is all fresh vegetables and fruit.  Its been nice getting used to way cheaper prices on things.  Their currency exchange rate is about 6.15 RMB/1 USD, so we walk around with several hundreds as opposed to twenties.  It makes us feel rich, haha.  Most things found in the U.S. can be found here, it just is a Chinese version.  I'm not a fan of anything dairy.  The milk and ice cream taste kind of weird.  They have a  walmart here also.  Its like the opposite of our walmart, having all Chinese food with a one aisle import section for Americans.  I now know how Chinese people feel when they look at the "Asian" section of walmart and lose all hope for ever eating normal again.

The Ramen Aisle (or as they call it "cup of noodle")

American section: pepperidge farm

oh yes, i would love to buy a turtle to cook for dinner!

Needless to say, it has been a compiling of lots of little cultural experiences that have made up this past week.  The school wanted us to be able to feel settled in before we dove into going over the curriculum and making lesson plans and such.  Some things that are hard to get used to: the heat!  it is so hot all the time, but thankfully a lot of places have air conditioning, so there is some relief.  the cockroaches in our kitchen!  Thankfully they sell raid in China.  the language barrier! I know this is obvious, but its amazing how hard everything becomes when you only know how to say hello in Chinese.  I feel like the spanish language barrier in the U.S. is way easier because we all know a little bit of the language to figure out mostly what is trying to be communicated.  There are some people who speak a little English, but a lot of the time we just have to smile and try to tell them we don't know what they are saying.  It will hopefully get easier with time.  We are desperately trying to learn how to say where we live and the main places we need to go so we don't have to rely on others to get around.  Its fun though!