First day in xi'an
Trip Start
Jun 04, 2008
1
2
79
Trip End
Feb 20, 2009
Xi'an,
China
Saturday, June 7, 2008
After a bit we returned to the apartment with breakfast in our stomachs, cleaning supplies in our hands, and a little hot-water-maker. It wasn't until 12 when Mark called. He told us we had a date with Maggie at 3 and we were going to go to the police office to register with the Chinese government as resident foreigners. Maggie called and said we should have lunch near the history museum and then head over to the police station. After staring at a map for 10 or fifteen minutes, we realized that the history museum happened to be around the block from our apartment. We are geniuses.
We had lunch and then headed over to the museum. When we got there, it was total confusion on what the heck we were supposed to do. We went to a door. Nobody answered it. Maggie told us to wait there, so we sat down to wait. A few minutes later, a police officer came up to us and started speaking in Chinese. We just kind of looked at each other and shrugged. He looked nice enough. He called his friend who came up a minute later. His friend, in broken English, asked what we wanted. We tried to explain, and probably just confused the guy. The two police officers talked to eachother, then talked to us, we stared blankly, and the one guy said follow him. We tried to explain that we were with someone, who told us to wait there. He said follow me. So after a few minutes of confusing charades, we followed him. Well, this led us to an office where another guy 'spoke English.' I say that in quotation marks because I think there is a rather subjective definition on the word 'speak' when people say they speak English. Well, both sides (we and the Chinese officials) talked some more, although I don't think either side understood the other. Just as we realized how confused everyone was, and that we were better off sitting on the floor, Maggie showed up. "Where were you?" She asked. We tried to explain what happened, but whatever. They were trying to be helpful, we thought they knew what they were doing, they couldn't understand what we wanted, we couldn't understand what they wanted us to do.
Next, there was some sort of problem with my passport or visa. I am really not sure which. All I know is that Maggie and the Chinese police officials spent 45 minutes staring at the same page on my passport and looking at some random document. I have no idea as to what they said or what happened, and all Eric and I could do was raise confused eyebrows as we stood there like idiots. All things said an done, I think we got registered.
After this we went to have photos taken for I don't quite know what, and then we went to the school we will be teaching at. It is a small, private school, 3 stories high, and with 15 classrooms on the second floor (where we will be teaching).
It must have been 6-7 when we got home. I turned on the hot water maker for some coffee since I was downright drained. And now it was time to superclean. It felt good to crash onto our bed, dirty or clean or whatever, it was a bed. And it felt dang good. Eric plopped down next to me. I woke up an hour later, realizing our "five minutes" had slipped away. It smelled like a campfire, probably from the restaurants in front of the apartment complex. I got up figuring I would brush my teeth and change into pajamas. I walked into the kitchen, half awake, and it looked like smoke. And it smelled like smoke. I turned on the light in the livingroom-it was smoke! The hotwater pot that I plugged in an hour ago was smoking! It was smoking!! I unplugged the water pot, opened all the windows, opened the water pot, and flipped the thing over. The connection between the pot and the plug had melted. The wood it was on had been burned and was smoking-it was the source of the campfire smell. We have b een in china for ONE DAY and I dang near started our whole place on fire????? What?! And Eric lay peacefully sleeping in bed. After staring at the water pot for way too long, freaking out cuz I was on a good start to getting us both killed, I finally put my mind at ease that everything was now fine. I was up for a solid hour though, completely paranoid about ember re-kindling, a little more smoke, and then a having a huge fire develop that would swallow this apartment. Eric didn't wake up until I went to bed. I told him what happened, and he just kinda dozed back off. I stayed up for another bit, waiting for the campfire smell again. Eventually I finally fell asleep.
