Arriving in Jinan
Trip Start
Oct 19, 2007
1
15
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Jinan,
Shandong,
China
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A quick google confirmed my fears that to get my excessive amount of luggage to Jinan, I was going to have to pay through the nose. There was not much I could do about it at that stage. Due to Olympic postal regulations, I couldn't send my DVDs and CDs to Jinan. Unless I was willing to throw my shoes and DVD collection out the window (fat chance, I would rather throw myself out the window than part with my silver heels, or two-tailed fluffy bunny boots and as for chucking Mayday CDs out the window, it's bound to be sacrilegious or something...I wouldn't dare), they had to fly with me. Crap.
Em and I put the monster suitcase, backpack and bag on the scales. They came in at a hefty 50 kilos. 30kgs over the limit. An estimated 1440RMB for the luggage. Ridiculous since the ticket was only 900RMB after taxes. When I got to the airport (in a stinky mood because I was going to have to fork out lots of money) I had a pleasant surprise. I was only 20 kilos over and only had to pay 250RMB. In my sleep-deprived state, I thought I had misheard and it was 2500 RMB until the cogs turning in my head finally caught up with my ears. I would have been bouncing about the airport, like a happy bunny rabbit, but my batteries were out of juice. Not Duracell apparently.
I snoozed for most of the flight despite the stink of the guy sitting next to me. Not sure why he was so smelly, but after one trip I took to Paris, stuck next to an enormous woman with really putrid BO, I was thankful that he wasn't quite that pongy and that the flight time was only an hour or so instead of 13. I was picked up at the airport in a swanky university van and taken to my humungous new apartment. The space thing is still weirding me out in the same way it did when I went home to Perth for a visit last year. I am used to hearing people about me all the time. And now I can here crickets outside. And the sound of heavy machinery at the construction site nearby! Fortunately it is very rhythmic so it hasn't caused me too many problems getting to sleep.
There is a view of trees from the windows in all the rooms. After unpacking, sweeping, mopping and lunch at one of the campus cafeterias, I had a nap on the bed and woke up bathed in sunlight with a breeze coming in the window. I don't think I've had this feeling since I lived in Australia. I had to sweep a great big beetle out of the house too which I don't think has happened since I lived in Perth either. The next morning I had to bat two enormous hornet-like flying monsters out of the bedroom which was quite exciting (I yelped and swore a lot in both English and Chinese). It turns out they were quite eager to escape once shown the door, which makes me think they were less like invading hoards on wings and more plain lost. That's the problem with this nature business. It comes in the house. Mind you, nature used to come in the house in Wuhan too. Cockroaches and rats. So far I prefer beetles and flying monsters, but if any great big hairy spiders start inviting themselves in, I am going to need to get myself a fairly stiff drink. If only spiders were like vampires and they couldn't come in the house unless specifically invited!
I wanted to come to Shandong because it is more to the north. Needless to say the accents (curled tongues) are amusing me so far. Although having to come to terms with yet another dialect is frustrating. Also, after a very long chat with one of the people who works downstairs, I've learnt that Shandong people have a couple of pretty different ways of saying things. Everybody seems to get called laoshi, or teacher as a title. And here I thought everybody I met actually was a teacher. But come to think of it, I was kind of surprised that a teacher would have to work at the front desk of the foreign lecturers' residence in her spare time and another teacher would take it upon himself to haul a 23 kilo suitcase up 4 flights of stairs to my room for me! I had another bimbo moment when I commented that a guy who had walked past spoke really good Korean (he was speaking loudly on his cell) and was told that he was in fact Korean. I had assumed that his accent when speaking Chinese was a little big odd because he came from a part of China I'm not familiar with. After all, every place seems to have its own accent and dialect... Hopefully my ditziness will decrease after some sleep.
Living on campus has a neat feeling about it. Reminds me of when Mum and I used to live across the road from UWA. The women at the cafeteria and the shopping centre seem to have taken a shine to me as well which has softened some of the blow of leaving friends and being surrounded by strangers again. It also gave me the same feeling of being taken care of that I used to get from the shopkeepers of places I went to in Wuhan (especially the ladies at the shop on the ground floor of our apartment in Hankou... one of them even took me out watermelon shopping once because she was worried I'd get ripped off if I went on my own. She even warned the fruit seller not to rip me off if I came back by myself. Afterwards Em and I found out he had actually been giving me a better price on the grapes!). I asked the woman at the campus cafeteria which dish had the most vegetables in it. She said to order whatever I wanted and she'd make sure some more vegetables were added. Sure enough the noodles came out with half a cabbage in it! Maybe not for everybody, but being a big fan of cabbage, I was over the moon.
I've already started teaching, which was a little earlier than expected, but in some ways this is good. I've been nervous about starting this job and the only thing that was ever going to boost my confidence was to start work. 5 minutes into class last night, I knew everything was going to be fine. Like a fish back in water. The office staff are really nice and helpful and the students are fantastic. I have a couple of English majors (they are not even my students) who have taken it upon themselves to accompany me places when I have errands just to make sure I don't get lost.
I know I am probably at the beginning of a honeymoon period with Shandong and the university. But today when I was walking along a tree lined road lugging groceries back to my apartment, I looked up and saw a great big haze free blue sky above my head (something I've not seen since I was in Yunnan) it brought a huge grin to my face and I could feel a weight lift from my shoulders. So far so good...
