Getting settled
Well, I’ve been here five days. Won’t say I’m a native yet but settling into things. Haven’t really started work yet so there is no routine right now.
Spent the first couple of days just getting to know the neighborhood. Couple of nice coffee shops, lots of little places to eat, easy walking distance to the subway station. Big “western” and multi-ethnic population, lots of students and business folks.
I do really like my room. Spend most of my time in it because it’s big and bright and comfy. The living room is kind of dark and not as comfy. My roomie, Amanda, is really cool. We’ve talked a few times and I like her a lot. She’s easy-going and very smart. She’s only 22 but feels like 35. She’s from Denmark and very straightforward so I think we’ll do fine. We still have no idea about the other roommate…
Had a hard time yesterday, as I figured I would eventually. Tried to get a cab to the school. Left very, very early because I know getting a cab can be capricious. I had the address and what I thought were directions but two cabs initially said no, they wouldn’t take me. At least I think that’s what they said. Went back to the apartment and got better instructions. Again, two taxis wouldn’t take me. Finally found one that would.
Good thing is the school is very, very close. Was kind of thrown into teaching a “try out” class with very little instruction on how to conduct the class. I was given two workbooks to try to work from but I knew they wouldn’t work. These are six-year-old children who barely speak English. I ended up with eight cute little kids with their parents hovering anxiously. I finally asked my boss to have the parents leave and the kids loosened up. They did fine, and I had to spend some time trying to convince parents they should sign their child up for more classes. Seemed to be fairly successful.
My boss told me she had a bicycle for me, which would make getting to and from the school so easy. Cool.
I waited after class and suddenly realized she had disappeared. I thought she was still dealing with parents then realized all the parents were gone. I finally found her after sitting for more than an hour. She handed me a key and said she had a bike for me. Great. Where? Which one? Oh, yeah. She had someone finally walk me down to the bike. A bit old but would do just fine. I just had no idea how to get home. Again, had to track my boss down and she had someone basically bicycle with me and lead me home. Good thing is it’s about a ten minute ride away, so that will be good.
Oh, and I lost the key fob to get into my complex and into my building. Around $35 to replace it. Trying to see if I can manage without it as my nest egg is quickly running out, with what I had to take care of before I came here and putting together all the basic necessities once I got here. Amanda has been great about sharing hers so maybe we can make this work.
It rained for two straight days, which wasn’t fun. But I have my nifty thrift store rain boots, so that was fine.
Today, I spent most of the day at the 798 Art District. Imagine an area the size of Disneyland filled with art galleries, shops and cafes. It’s built around an old munitions factory and is so terribly cool. I took a ton of photos but don’t have the right thing to load them into my iPad Mini yet so those will come later. I only got through maybe half of it. I did want to see the steampunk exhibit there since no one seemed to really know how long it was going to be there. It was only 35 RMB, which is about $5 American.
Though they had some cool stuff, the exhibit was a bit disappointing overall. A lot of photos of pictures, a few cool pieces, but nothing terribly exciting. Oh, well. It was a fun way to spend the day.
One thing that I did love were the Chinese paintings. Some were traditional, some more contemporary. But what struck me about them, as always, is their simplicity overall. One was a beautiful watercolor of a crane. Just a strong outline created in a single stroke with a handful of brilliant, confident strokes defining the rest of it.
And that’s when it hit me.
It takes courage to be that simple. To be that confident. To be that certain with that single stroke. Though it probably took a thousand single strokes that sucked to get to that single stroke.
But I realized that I think this is what this journey is about. Finding the courage to be simple. To strip away all the noise and all the bullshit and all the crap I’ve been carrying around. And just get back to simple. The courage to be simple. Sounds easy. Sure. But I think that’s where my writing is going to take me, at least to start. Finding the courage to be simple.
Because I think that’s what speaks to me about being here. Without the noise and distraction of the internet (cuz the internet intentionally sucks here), without endlessly scrolling through Facebook and spending hours comparing myself to everyone else on there and coming up short, without all of that noise, I’m starting to be able to think. And we’ll see where that takes me.
Tomorrow is my first day of actual classes. I have two classes, apparently. Going in early to get a bit of training since I am picking up someone else’s classes.
Oh, yeah, and in the typical Chinese way, the agent who got me the apartment sent me a WeChat message at 1 PM saying I needed to get registered with the police by 5 PM today. I got the message at 3ish, while I’m sitting in the 798, which is at least two hours away wit walking and subway. So spent a while doing that runaround, trying to get home ASAP and knowing it was moot since they couldn’t do anything after 5. So get to do all that runaround again in the morning.
Sorry, not feeling terribly creative tonight. My neck and my knee are killing me from all the walking at the 798 today, but it was worth it. So I’m covered in Tiger Balm, watching “MI: Ghost Protocol” on my weird Chinese version of Netflix and just trying to relax before the real work starts tomorrow. Hope everything is in your world…