Chicken feet and noodles

Greetings from China! We made it - though it took several days of flights, airports, shuttles and an overnight in Guangzhou.

In the Guangzhou airport, Scott and I decided to try our first real Chinese meal. Guangzhou, formally known as Canton, is famous for its dim sum. A server walked over to our table with a cart of bamboo steaming baskets and we pointed to the ones we wanted. One of the baskets of what at first appeared to be szechwan chicken, turned out to be deep fried chicken feet! Scott took a big bite and spat it our on his plate. I tried to be brave and nibbled at a toenail, but couldn't eat more than that. This was our first awareness that eating in China was going to be complicated.

Two teachers from our university met us at the airport in Kunming. Driving through Kunming was a blur of high-rises, scary traffic and lots of pedestrians. Our apartment consists of a bathroom with western toilet, sink and shower, a sitting room with a mini-fridge and a large bedroom with a queen-sized bed (very firm mattress), TV, desk and two comfy chairs.

An English student from the International Business Department, Noah, took us on a tour of the campus. There are around 20,000 students at the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics and the campus is quite large and filled with gardens, fountains, basketball and badminton courts and quite modern buildings. Later Noah took us on a walk to a large supermarket and a noodle restaurant for dinner. We ate a famous Yunnan dish called Under the Bridge Noodles. You are presented with a plate of raw meats, a plate of veggies, a bowl of noodles and a big bowl of boiling water with a layer of oil on top. You dump all the ingredients in, wait about five minutes and dig in. Delicious. Definitely a step up from the chicken feet.

Yesterday was Chinese National Day and the entire week is a holiday for the university. We were basically left to fend for ourselves - so today and yesterday we walked to the supermarket to load up on essentials for our apartment. Tomorrow we're going to brave the bus system and attempt to head downtown.

We got our schedule and so far we only teach one class a week each on Wednesdays. Both are English writing classes. Good thing we're on salary! Our class load is supposed to increase in a few weeks, but at this point it looks like we can start looking for additional work at other schools.

Walking from the campus to the supermarket takes about 20 minutes each way and has some interesting sight seeing along the way. We pass hair salons where young men create wild, punk hair styles for their clients that match their own - something I thought died out in the 80's. Being tall and white calls for many stares, some people have to pull over on their bicycles just to gawk. We haven't seen any other foreigners since we left the airport.

Everything here is quite cheap. The noodle dish we ate at the restaurant cost us $1 each, kiwis cost 10 cents a piece and a new pair of jeans is about $5. We bought badminton rackets and shuttlecocks today for $2 altogether.

Communication here is next to impossible due to our limited to non-existent Chinese and the complete lack of English spoken here. It should make for an interesting year! Sorry, no pictures this time as we don't yet have the Internet in our apartment hooked up, but stay tuned next week.