Can a brotha pick out his own toilet paper?

So today has been pretty good. Woke up at 6:45, which is better than waking up at four, then went down stairs to check out the computer lab and then had breakfast. We starting with meetings at 9 this morning for the new guys who came with purpose and I really enjoyed it. I enjoy listening for those of you who do not know that. It is a quality I have began to learn to use more of here lately and in my own opinion it is a great quality to have. Anyways, we had lunch at this noodle place that is about a five minute walk off campus. This place is delicious and I will be going back in the near future. Anyways, I got my class schedule today and it's not too bad. I will be teaching Freshman Oral English to nine different classes. I have four accounting classes, three financial management classes and two management classes. We will not begin class until next Monday.

I just went to the little store on campus to get toilet paper and mouthwash. So I go to get the toilet paper first cause I know the ladies working there will hand you stuff to suggest you to buy it. So I get around the back corner and I am looking for the toilet that I was suggested to buy, not even close to the one I am looking for. So one of the ladies working comes back and gives me this toilet paper and points to the price, 9.9 yuan. In America that is a little over a dollar so it's really cheap. So not to be mean or disrespectful I go ahead and take the toilet paper. Anyways, if you ever come to China and need toilet paper, beware, the workers will find you.

I am getting excited about teaching and getting to meet my students. I am probably gonna find a tutor to help me learn Chinese cause I want to be able to talk and order my own food. But a couple of teachers, Gabe and Sarah, have invited me to come down to play games so I am out.

Orientation

So today we began our official Foreign Teacher Orientation. Some of it is a little boring but most of it really is helpful. I just hope that I find some way to teach English because I have no idea what I am doing. We should be getting our text book really soon so that should help out tremendously. Tomorrow (Sunday) we will get to go observe a classroom and get ideas on how everything works. This weekend they are doing classes on Saturday and Sunday so we can get all next week off. Next week is the fall holiday for what I heard is for the end of the harvest. So classes will start a week from Monday for me and new freshman. I am beginning to know to teachers I am working with so that is helping me get around and getting things done. Florida State plays Colorado this weekend so I'm hoping the Seminoles can get a win cause our defense needs it after a really good game last week. Hopefully the quarterbacks will show up and play this week and if it needs to be done put Drew Weatherford back it. Weatherford could have done much better than the other two last week. Anyways, enough about my boys from Florida State and time for me to get off and get some sleep.

Am I pregnant?

Let me tell you what just happened to me along with five other individuals. We are required by the University here to get a physical. It was not a big deal to me at all cause I did not have to pay for, but the weirdest thing took place. Everybody had to get an ultrasound. I have never heard of a guy having to get an ultrasound, EVER. Along with the ultrasound we had to get more blood drawn, and EKG, height, weight, blood pressure and a chest x-ray. During the chest x-ray, the lady would put our arms on our hips for us and shove us onto the x-ray machine. I felt like a criminal that had just been sent to life in prison here. The blood work stung a little but I'm still alive. Little doctor dude jabbed the needle up in my arm so I will probably have a bruise tomorrow. They did the blood work two by two with two separate doctors, and they lady beside me was crying her little eyes out because she did not want to do it. The doctors were laughing hardcore at this lady, I would have been pissed. So I get to my ultrasound. Awkward, to say the least. Lay back and pull your shirt up was not a problem. Then, SPLAT, the freezing gel was put on my stomach and rubbed around. It tickled for a little while until she started using her little hand held thing to go under my ribs and chest. I feel sorry for you women that have to do this stuff, but I'm also glad that I don't have to do it though. After our physicals we got McDonald's. Spicy chicken sandwich with fries and a drink. This, as well as the physical, was free of charge. The chicken on the sandwich was delicious and in my opinion it was much better than the spicy chicken sandwich in America.

Last night was our opening freshman candlelight ceremony. I enjoyed parts of it, especially the end because student groups put on dances and performances. It was really entertaining and pictures will be posted very soon. Tomorrow my training starts for teaching and next week is our trip to Xi'an, which I am soaked about. Anyways, I have a meeting to go to so I will post more later.

So, I just played ultimate frisbee for the first time since we had the intramural championship in college last November. My legs are killing me right now and am almost positive I will be sore all weekend. But it was a lot of fun and they guys I played with are fun to play with. I am a bit rusty though so hopefully when I get used to this air I will get my game back. I am hoping something fun goes on tonight cause there is nothing planned for us right now. Right now ESPN is showing the Colorado vs West Virginia game for the third time this week so I am hoping something new comes on afterwards. Anyways, I'm gonna go take a shower so I hope my shower provides hot water for me. If not, I might just put off a shower until later tonight.

Celebrity Status?

So today, about an hour and a half ago, I had my first group of people stop to take pictures of me. Completely random but I enjoyed and made them smile. The foreigners (Americans) were walking around looking at more of the campus because we did not look to much yesterday and there were four girls just chillin with their phones and ipods/mp3 players while we talked about the campus and how it has grown over the past year. A few girls went to talk to the girls while I talked to Joe, a returning teacher from LA, about normal things and stuff. The four girls took pictures with the the girls from our group and us guys watched and smiled. Afterwards we start to head back toward the rooms and adminstration building, the girls stopped me and only me. I can not speak chinese yet, well I can say thank you (Pronounced shayshay), but they all had their cameras up so I just put two and two together and assumed they wanted to take a picture of me. All four girls took pictures so I made funny faces, smiled in a few, and I just had to do my pose (big smile with a thumbs up). They loved it. They laughed and giggled and they said thank you and call said "bye-bye) and faced each other like they were the luckiest girls in the world. Man it is great to have red hair.

Anyways, at 4:00 the leaders are going to take up downtown to go shopping and explore Chinese culture. I am really excited about it cause it is kind of cool here and I brought no winter clothes. I was gonna have mom send a package before it gets cold but looks like coldness came to early. Oh well, I will be fine. So I woke up this morning at 4:00am. (3:00 pm in Texas). It was the first time I made it to breakfast withone any alarm clock or human assistance in years. I thought breakfast was at 6:00 so I went to the cafeteria and noone was there so I just walked around campus for a little while. So in about an hour or two I will probably be really tired. Orientation for freshman begins tonight at 7:00 so I hope I am awake for it. I get to dress up in teaching attire for this occasion so no jeans or tennis shoes are allowed.

I am one of the lucky few on campus that gets ESPN. I am very thankful for that, but the only bad thing is that it is out of Austraila. So I get a lot of soccer (which is fine) and a lot of billiards and track and field. At night we can get baseball games sometimes so Joe and I watched some of the Dodgers and Giants game last night. But hey, I get ESPN and lots of other guys dont. PARTY IN MY ROOM. Nah....but seriously.

Jet lagging stinks...my writings from DFW to Sias University

DFW:

Soooo is 6:36 p.m. on September 22, 2008 and what am I doing? I am eating at McDonalds at the DFW Airport. My trip, originally scheduled for 6:55 (15 minutes from now), was running about two hours late. I was scheduled for Frontier Airlines and they transferred me to United Airlines for no cost. Awesome, so I get my boarding pass and receipts and go through the security stuff, I am stopped. I did not know that liquid items (soap, body wash, etc) had to be 3 ounces or less. Freakin fabulous….so I had to go back to the desk and check in my bag. It could be worse I guess. Frontier allows the first checked bag free of charge, but United charges 15 dollars for the first game then 25 dollars for the second. I then get that taken care of and I am going back through security. Guess who get selected for a random search, yes, yours truly. I didn’t have a clue what was going on. But they guy searching me was cool about it and asking where I got some of the stuff in my laptop bag. It wasn’t too bad, I am just glad that they do random searches. But I am going to finish my dinner now and wait patiently for my flight which is now at 7:47 and is a direct flight to LA, which is good because my flight to LA with Frontier was going to have an hour and a half layover in Denver. So it’s all good I guess.

LA:

So it is 11:07 p.m. right now here at LAX, which means in Texas it is 1:07. I am not tired yet but I am sure when my plane leaves at 1:40 a.m LAX time I will be ready for some sleep. So the McDonalds I had at DFW may have been the best McDonalds I have ever tasted. I had a Big Mac Meal and I was really impressed. Anyways, I just went through security and lucky me, I did not have to do a search this time. Bummer. I absolutely loved my flight from DFW to LAX. Real smooth, really fast, friendly service, but most importantly a really really really sweet young lady that sat beside me. It is really weird because I saw her when I was eating my McDonalds and something told me there was something bothering her and I felt as if she just might be the person who will be seated next to me. I felt weird at first because I was thinking there was no one that what I was thinking while I was enjoying my delicious Big Mac was actually happened. She kind of opened up to me and I just listened. Her dreams and goals are absolutely amazing. I will never forget the stories she told me. TK, if you are reading this, when I landed at LAX I saw a free magazine with Joe Torre on the cover so I got you one. For those of you who don’t know, TK is a fan of the Dodgers so I gotta get a little something something for my dawg. So I have two hours until my flight starts boarding so I think here shortly I will go check out these stores and check out what they have to sell. I got a few pictures at LAX that I thought were cool little things. I should have picked up a word find or crossword puzzle book before I left. Oh well, I really am in deep though t right now about some of the things me and my seating buddy discussed and talked about. One thing she said was really funny that she kind of joked about doing, but I think if she did this then it would be absolutely amazing. But anyways, I want to you remember the Tiffany Limos.

Beijing:

So about 5:45 I landed in Beijing, the capital city of China. While waiting for our next flight me and Greg, a guy also here to teach as Sias University, were sitting in a Tea House at the Beijing Airport. We spent 480 RBM on Tea but it might be the best Hot Tea I have ever tasted, well by far than the Tea we had on the plane. But that equals out to be about 80.00 in America so we kind of were not paying attention to what we were getting ourselves into. Oh well, I enjoyed it and so did Greg so I guess it’s all good. The flight took forever. Kind of a weird route cause we fly up and went over Alaska and flew over Russia and finally coming to China. If you think about the fastest way between two points it is a straight line, but with the earth rotating on its axis, then the flight was a straight flight. Oh well, that was dumb information so I hope you understood that. But, at 12:00 here we are catching another flight from Beijing to Zhengzou which is about thirty minutes from Sias University. So for breakfast I had Chicken Wings, yes, Chicken Wings. These did not taste like American wings though, but they were still pretty good. The nationals here are very friendly. I dropped my computer bag and one of the workers at the Irish Pub, the place that I had the Wings, picked it up for me before I could bend over and get it myself. When we were leaving the Tea House, the workers picked our stuff up and handed it to us as we left. Out host/waitress at the Tea House taught us a few things to say in Chinese. I don’t want to mess things up so I will wait to write Chinese until I can speak it/spell it. This airport is astonishing and amazingly beautiful. I was told LAX is like a small town, but LAX has nothing on the airport in Beijing. Anyways, I am out for now.

Zhengzou to Sias Univeristy
So I am sitting in my apartment right now wanting to go to sleep really bad right now. Here it is almost time for dinner but in Texas it is 3:29 a.m. The flight from Beijing to here was really smooth, got some cool pictures of some clouds and the view from up there, in fact I got cool pictures from all the flights and they will all be added to facebook and myspace as soon as possible. Upon arriving at Sias, I have been meeting the staff I will be working with here and some of the students. Freshman orientation begins tomorrow and we have a trip to Xi’an next week I believe Xi’an is where the Terra Cotta Warriors are. If you don’t know what the Terra Cotta Warriors are then you need to read a world history book. Well it is time for me to finish setting up my room. A guy I will be working with just got my internet working so I thought I would post what I have been writing for the last oh 30+ hours.

It is official...

So it is official...I am a teacher. Just not in the states...but in China. Yes, I said China. I am leaving tomorrow (Sept. 22) from DFW Airport at 6:55 pm and flying from there to LA with a layover in Denver. In fact, this is my first ever time on a plane. From LA I will catch a flight there and fly to Beijing. I will then catch another plane when I get to Beijing and fly to Zheng Zhou then take a bus or train from Zheng Zhou to XinZheng (Where my university will be). I will be gone for about nine months, so if you would like to come see me...I will welcome you with open arms. So my last night in Texas for a while, I have packed and watched the last game in Yankee Stadium. Talked to a couple of friends, sent lots of text messages, and just started this blog. But, I need to get some sleep because the next two days are gonna to be crazy, going to five major cities in both the US and China. When I get to Sias University I will post again and hopefully have everything...lets hope that my luggage doesn't go over the weight limit at the airports, and that my first experience on a plane is enjoyable.

Good night friends,

Kerry