Kathy & Paul's Adventures Abroad

We expected that being in a big city of a foreign country where we couldn’t speak the language would be a culture shock, but we didn’t quite realize just how much of a shock it would be!

After we brought our luggage to our room, Crystal, one of the people who works in the Foreign Teachers department, gave us a food card which she told us we could use to get our meals in the hotel cafeteria. However when we went down to get dinner we were surprised to find out that we needed to bring something to put our food in. We also realized that we were expected to have other items in the apartment such as cutlery, towels, and cleaning supplies. Since we were not been informed of this before we came we needed to get to a store to buy the necessary items, and by this time Crystal had left. We had no idea how to find a store and most of the people around us could not speak English.

We went down to the hotel lobby to ask for help but the desk clerk could not speak English. Luckily for us two young English speaking Chinese teachers  walked into the hotelat that time and saw our distress. They very kindly offered to take us to get the things we needed.

We were both stressed out the first night and we didn’t sleep too well. The next day I phoned Xialong Shi, who is the York Region School Board representative in China and explained to her that we needed someone to help us get settled in our new environment. Later that day she came over to the hotel and told us she would help us with any problems we encountered. That made us feel a bit better and not so isolated.

When you are in a situation where you don’t speak the language it is a very helpless feeling because even though people may be willing to help you they can’t .

On Thursday as promised, Xiaoling came to our apartment and took us shopping for more of the things we needed, such as an iron and an adapter for the laptop computer. We had brought one with us but it didn’t work and so we needed another one, as well as a transformer, because the power output in China is 220 as compared to 110 in Canada.

The best way to get around in Beijing is to take the subway since it is very fast, efficient, inexpensive (25 cents Canadian), and safe.  Even though we are on the outskirts of the city we were able to reach the subway after a twenty minute walk. Then Xiaoling came with us to a big superstore called “Carrefour”, similar to a Walmart Supercenter in Canada. We were able to find most of things we needed except the transformer/adapter.

The next morning, Friday, Xiaoling brought a transformer/adapter she was able to find,  to the hotel. I was very excited to be able to get connected again to the internet. The old saying is true “You don’t know what you have until you lose it”.

We all had a lovely lunch in the hotel with the director of foreign teachers, Wang Yue, and then Crystal and Xiaoling took us to a Bank of China to open an account. Later that day I met some of the other foreign teachers who will be teaching English at the school. There were people from many different countries including the UK, Scotland, Mexico, the US and another teacher from Canada (London, Ontario).

All in all it was a very busy day!

Although the school is on the outskirts of Beijing it looks more like downtown Toronto. Below are some pictures taken from our hotel window. The red brick buildings are part of the school campus.

School

Busy Intersection near the hotel