I rememeber before I left eveyone was asking me all kinds of questions and I told them not to worry I was an old hand as this China travel stuff. Things would be different this time everything had changed, I knew exactly what I was doing. Well everything was going great right up until I got to Chicago. About an hour after my last post I sat in a plane on the runway in Chicago going nowhere. It was pounding rain and thundering and lightening. I was delayed for over an hour and a half. I originally was supposed to have a 3 hour cushion when I landed in Shanghai to make my next flight to Wuhan, by the time I landed and we actually taxied up to terminal I had 1 hour to make my flight. I flew through customs, bot my bags in under 2 minutes (which rocked) raced out into the terminal and scrambled around for a preicous few minutes figuring out where to go. Once I got in line I still had 35 minutes, I was psyched. I knew I was going to make it. I got tot he counter with 25 minutes left, and was told my flight was closed. I argued, politely, for a few minutes pointing out there was still 20 minutes I could make the gate in 10 and we could take off on time. I was told I would have to wait. This was at 4:15 p.m. I was then directed to the ticket counter, and after playing go to the other window game for an hour to get a notice of delay I got a ticket on the next flight to wuhan, which left at 9:05 p.m. I was supposed to be landing in Wuhan at 6:35, because of Chinese regulations I could't enter the terminal until 2 hours before my flight. So I couldn't even enter the terminal and make use of the free wifi to tell Lily I had missed my flight until after I was supposed to land. Finally I made it to Wuahn, I had sent Lily a message and I took a taxi to the hotel and spent a lovely evening sweating and listening to Peter, The new Australian tacher saw some logs. No big deal I had survived my plane delay all the trip disasters were over, on Monday we had to do a quick medical exam and then take the train to Shiyan, no problem.
Medical exam, except for when the nurse spent 10 minutes digging around my arm with a needle trying to find a vein with my telling her to stop and try my hand, went great. Packed up and we got on the highspeed train to Shiyan. Now this is the slow highspeed train because it goes through a lot of cities it never really gets up to max speed so we only topped out at 200 kph. Which my trusty calculator tells me is about 120 mph. It was a measely 3 hour train ride to Shiyan and since I hadn't slept well I took a nap. We got to Shiyan safely and took a car to the school as I got out the car I performed waht has become an unconcious habit for me, pocket checking. Front-right: keys, check front left pocket: phone and pocketknife, no phone yet and pocketknife is still in my bag, back-right pocket: wallet, um....um....where was my wallet? Somewhere between the hotel in Wuhan and the street outside my home my wallet had disappeared. My pants have velcro flaps over the back pockets and the flap was still closed, but it doesn't really matter I had lost my wallet and it had everything in it. I didn't really have that much cash only like 100 Chinese and maybe 50 US, but both my Chinese and American bankcards and my America credit card were in there. PLus that was a really sweet wallet I had bought in China, it was real leather and it was Mexican brand name, very swanky. With that on my mind I began the long walk up to my apartment. The same one as before on the seventh floor.
It was going to be ok, I would work everything out, I had plenty of money in my Chinese account and I still had my passbook for it so I would just have to wait until the bank opened to go get it. I still had my passport as well all the other stuff could be replaced easily enough. I just had to get to my apartment and send my mom an email to let her know what was going on. I had a nice bed waiting on me and a live internet connection, that I knew how to setup on my own so I wouldn't have to wait 3 days for a Chinese guy to show up and do it for me. Then I walked into my apartment. It was for lack of a better word destroyed. There was dust, dirt, and dog hair everywhere. There where just piles of stuff laying all over the floor that the teachers from lst year had left, including dirty laundry. The fridge had food left in both the fridge and freezer and Lily didn't check it when she was doing her post inspection and she had unplugged it. Lets just say bacon doesn't keep for 7 weeks. Almost all of the bedding in my home including all 3 of the pillows where spotted with a weird brown and yellow stain. It took me like 15 mintues to realize it was dog urine. The teacher in my apartment had 2 puppies in it last year. They had sprayed the whole apartment. There is stuff just missing from my apartment that I had left and I can't find it. The computer had more viruses than the monkey from Outbreak. I sat down in the one chair that didn't look like it had been gnawed upon and the cushion had all the stuffing in it and I seriously thought about giving up. I am a very optimistic guy but all this crap in kust 2 days made me want to just take my ball and go home and eat some taco bell. Of course I couldn't I was in China. So I have spent the last 3 days cleaning, the fridge almost killed me literally, like the mold and fungus had formed into a face and hands and it grabbed me and tried to eat me. I have a pile of bed spreads that I need to get rid off, I had a cleaning lady come by and spend 3 hours doing stuff while i was doing stuff. Right now my apartment looks 100 times greater but I am still not back to where I want to be or even back to where I had left it. After spending 3 days trying to get the school internet to wrok Peter and I broke down and just ponyed up for the city internet, which works awesome. I just got it in last night, so I could write for you guys this morning.
Class starts in 4 days, I have yet to get a schedule or any instructions on who I am teaching, typical. My PS3 works fine as does Lotro, so I have no lack of entertainement, I just don't know what my job will be yet. The school here and the city look great, they added a new part to the campus and tons of water features. The city is cleaning up so it can get an accrediation from the government as a travel and tourism city. Which has actually lead to some bad things for me. However tune in next time for stories of school and the city, less whining from mea nd my endless search for the most delicious shao kao. Cheers mate! (it's australian thing you wouldn't understand)
