Spring is arriving in Xinzheng! I went for a walk in the river park with some friends yesterday. We were hunting for fishies and we caught some! Harry was out in the middle of one of the koi ponds balancing on the pots, it’s a miracle we didn’t end up with a soaked, stinky Harry 🙂 the trees were flowering, the weÖather was lovely, what a great day!
a large city about 1 hours drive from Xinzheng, my new hometown. Xinzheng is considered a rural farming town out here in China, but it actually boasts of about 600,000 people living here. While it has a ton of normal shopping, the prices can be a little high and the variety of items is small. Consequently, a lot of the foreigners and students prefer to go into the much larger Zhengzhou (8 Million Inhabitants ~ the size of New York City) for a greater selection of products and more opportunities for bartering prices down.
One of the things Zhengzhou offers that Xinzheng doesn’t is a far larger number or walk-in clinics, including one that works solely on Job Physicals or Physicals required by Visa Applications. So this past week we were sent into Zhengzhou to visit the clinic to have our physicals for the Permanent Residency. This was really our first major foray outside of the College Campus, since we have been so busy moving in and settling down. It didn’t help that classes were starting last Monday and we had to instantly jump into lesson planning. But all that aside, this was really our first adventure and we soaked up every minute of it. I’ll post more about the physical itself later, but here are a few things we noticed in our drive through the city:
Two lane roads that suddenly have five lanes of cars, scooter and taxis driving down the sidewalks, huge poles holding up the overpasses above suddenly appearing in the middle of a driving lane, no merging lanes, and a complete disregard for any road signs contributes to what seems like absolute chaos. It’s truly amazing that there are not more accidents than we saw. There are NO traffic laws ~ at one point we had a four way corner with cars going from each corner all at the same time, crossing three lanes of traffic in any given direction. The only exception is that you are responsible for everything in front of you. Conversely, you don’t have to look behind you at all, whoever is behind you is responsible for not hitting you. It’s pretty confusing, but they work it out. Makes for a lot of butting into lines.
Hello one and all! I have a job Woot!
Mom and I will both be teaching Business/Law courses at Sias International University the Henan Province of China. This program is a cooperative program with Fort Hays State University in Kansas. Basically we are teaching Fort Hays classes to the students in China. We will have 5-6 classes of 50-60 students each. Classes start Sept. 1; we’ll be leaving in mid-August. Here is a map of the biggest city (Zhengzhou) next to where we are moving this fall. If you zoom out, directly south you will see Xinzheng, our new hometown. We will be right next to the Longmen Grottos, Shaolin Temple (home of kung fu!), the Terra Cotta Soldiers, beautiful mountains, temples, etc. Zhengzhou also has cheap direct tickets to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing! The school itself is pretty sweet–it has a beautiful campus, we will both get an apartment, we have 3 meals paid a day, good salary, three months off a year, awesome benefits, a great community, and what promises to be great students. So Exciting!
“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city” ~ Roman Payne
Language Translation
Deceptively Blonde 