I don’t know what happened to them, since I was in shock, my heart pounding, my eyes watering, and some guy asks me to take off my belt… WAIT WHAT?!? ........ ....
Oh its standard procedure so I can go through the metal detector, oh alright! Then I bolt to my plane, like an Olympic sprint runner running away from a drug test. I made it, last person to board the plane. DAMN what a first flight!
So here it is, the infamous 12-hour flight, sadly because of me, our flight was delayed due to some “baggage problems”, it could have been me, or maybe they did really find some drugs and Osama somewhere. I will never know, and thank goodness, since we were supposed to arrive at 2:50PM, but in the end it was like 3:59PM, even if it were me, the fact still stands that:
“Its my first day”
“moi pervie dein”
“mon first jour”
“boku no futatsu yobi”,
“Quack, Quack, Quack…”
Anyways, the food was nice; it was mostly microvable stuff like Chicken and Rice, and Orange Juice. The on Demand thingy, got an upgrade in which you could not skip the ads anymore, oh snap! There was a small loophole around this though, you could still watch the children’s shows without ads, I watched Aladdin, it was great ^__^
As I arrived, 2 smexy ladies greeted me from my school; they were holding a sign WITH my name! Oh how delightfully special this made me feel!
Is it a taste of what’s to come?
Apparently, they were waiting for me for about 4-5 hours… damn!
They are some of the nicest, kindest, trustworthy, people I’ve ever met, and I never met anyone that was all three.
So, they put me on a Bus to Tianjin, since this was August 1st, the new train from Beijing to Tianjin just opened, and with it came a million people all wanting to ride it, so they instead took the bus, which wasn’t very crowded, but took about 3 hours, instead of just 30 minutes by the Chinese Shinkansen.
Lots of stops at the toll booths, nothing really spectacular to see, it was a gorgeous day though, hot, humid, and sunny and you could clearly see the blue sky and clouds!
After the bus ride, I underwent what was going to be my first ever taxi cab ride in china. It was awesome, I was prepared for this, speeding, insane maneuvering from one lane to another, driving on sidewalks, no seatbelts, and god like reflexes on the brakes guys! Ohoho I would hate to be a pedestrian in china….!
So after barely finding my apartment, I was greeted by 2 party’s, the ‘Introducers” or Real Estate Agents and my Landlords, the Agents I guess supposedly found this Apt for me, all of them expected to get paid right on the spot, something about 4 months rent in advance, plus finders fee, and in total it came out to be 7500 RMB.
When I first met them all, I found the apartment, much too big for a single person, and was thinking that all of them were to be my roommates… you bet there was a huge “LOL” inside them room, as all of them laughed.
Anyways, in China, they expect you to count your money about 5 times, making sure its always the right amount, then they take that money give it to someone else to count. So I started counting, 123..56..10, 1 thousand, same thing again, 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K, 6K, 7K..etc now for some reason one of the ladies was laughing at how I was counting, I think I was too slow, 1 minute to count 7k is apparently too slow for them. So she decided to count them herself, and like flipping pages on a book she was done….
Or so it seemed, I think she lost count somewhere, tried counting again, more slowly this time, trying not to lose face.. she got it right, then gave it to another person. It was all set, now, everything counted, double-checked.
It was time to give someone the money…
I gave the money to the agent, because I was told so, she counted it, and took it.
So after all this was done, they gave me a water bottle, and I needed water, I was like dying from thirst, only having a bottle of Chinese Coke, which didn’t taste right, and we went on our merry way to a Police Station.
Along the way I saw how easy it is to catch a cab, even in a dark alleyway, you can find one, during the trip, I saw people Burning their clothes on the street, I asked and they told me that its tradition, to help the dead or something.
Damn, I was getting scared, and now I was going inside a Chinese police station.
I was expecting jail cells and crazy people, but it wasn’t all that bad, only 2 uniform guys sitting there smoking, although there is a DON’T SMOKE sign, but nobody follows rules or laws here in China, except those “Special” paranoid ones. Before hand, I was told that if someone asked, my landlord was my friend and I was just resting in his entire apartment building. They told me that:
“This bettah fo you, less money to you, ugh.. more money to landlord!”After that, there was a scuffle between the agent and me, naturally I didn’t say anything and she just kept on talking, and TALKING, until finally my translator said that:
“She wants know if money you counted was good”Of course it was good, damn it! I counted it 5 times, she counted it, the agent counted it!
“OK OK, I believe ;), Don’t worry, in china um how you say…”She wanted to say that Word is Law, and if you say something you better mean it, this applies to many things, such as Haggling! You never go back on you word, kids! That’s what they teach in the Chinese boy scouts.
So by this time, I haven’t slept in about 27 hours, yet I was still so exited and could run a marathon, I thought I got Insomnia, so I desperately tried to going to bed. I left Edmonton at 6:30 AM Thursday, I arrived outside into Beijing at 5:00PM Friday, that was a very long day I must say!
Oh and nobody runs in china, no marathons here, I guess with all the bad and humid air its pretty hard, or maybe it’s the fact that you can easily find a bike anywhere.
Either way, if you do run, you will look like an idiot, especially when crossing the road, since then you might not see an incoming taxi and hit it.
You hit the taxi, not them hitting you.
