October 14 - Before Leaving

It's currently 5:19am as I write this. I point out the time because I've been practicing staying up all night right up until noon in order to get used to the twelve hour time difference between here and Zhengzhou. An entire month of sleeping completely crazy hours just so I can avoid jet lag. Yep.


Of course, this might be more impressive if I actually slept at normal hours on a regular basis. But I don't. I'm a night owl, sadly, and, with my twisted sense of logic, staying up all night until noon is actually an attempt to fix my poor sleeping habits. I'm a lost cause.


Tonight though, I'm having problems staying awake. For some reason I was having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open, so I decided to write this here blog post as a way to stave off lapsing into unconsciousness. So far it's working.



Still, another reason I've been having sleepless nights is that I am supposed to leave in six days and I still don't have a letter of invitation from the university in China let alone the required travel visa. After being hired in April, a bunch of bureaucratic bungling (always wanted to say that in context) and unfortunate misunderstandings have caused delays in my application process to the point that my departure has already been pushed back by two weeks from October 7 to October 20 and I still don't have the necessary papers. I'm thinking it will all work out in the end, however.

Apart from worrying about the visa, I've still got other things to do to prepare in the meanwhile, including preparing lesson plans for my teaching job at a university in Zhengzhou, figuring out what to pack (and what not to pack), converting my Canadian money into Ren Min Bi, and getting a haircut because I look like a tall skinny hobbit.

The lesson planning is turning out to be a little bit of a challenge because, while I know (broadly) the material I am being asked to prepare, I don't really know the desired curriculum. Even more importantly, I don't really know the English level of the students, so my ability to pace appropriately is suffering. I have a feeling that there will be a lot of adjustments to be made while I'm there.

Now to the fun stuff: what do I bring with me? I've been told that an absolute necessity is deodorant. Apparently very few stores in China sell deodorant. I guess the philosophy is: if you stink, take another shower. Unfortunately, at this point I've heard a lot of horror stories about the water supply in China, so I am a little bit leery of taking multiple daily showers. At one point I was contemplating boiling bathwater. I guess I will see once I get there.

I'll also be bringing my computer, of course, in order to keep this blog updated. Blogspot (along with pretty much every other western blog site) is blocked in China, so I won't be able to see my blog while I am there, but I can still post to it. Any comments you post here will also be sent to me by email.

I'm torn about what to bring for clothing, and how much, because I've heard some great things about the inexpensiveness of clothes there, but at the same time I am well over six feet tall, which could mean trouble when looking for something that actually fits. I have a plan though - I'm going to bring about two weeks' worth  of clothes and then get anything else tailor-made. I have grand visions of prancing about in dapper suits that would cost a fortune in Canada, but can be purchased cheaply in China. Practically speaking, though, China's summers are supposed to be ridiculously and oppressively hot, even in Henan, which is in a relatively northern part of China (by the way, for those of you looking to figure out just exactly where I'll be staying, you can check out the map at the end of this post). As a result of this heat, I am more likely to be prancing about in my underwear in front of a fan than I am to be going outside in suits. Speaking of which, I am not sure what the dress code for teachers at my university is like. I'm hoping it's fairly casual. The Half-Windsor and me, well, we're not exactly old pals. Apart from that, from the videos I've seen about life in Zhengzhou, clothing appears to be fairly conservative in cut, but casual also. I'd say I would fit right in, but a number of Chinese people I've met make fun of the fact that my clothes are usually loose (*giggle* your clothes don't fit *snort*). I can't believe the longest paragraph in this post is about clothes.

Anyway, I've got toiletries, clothes, computer, cash, haircut, lesson plans, visa and other documentation pretty well handled, I think. If you have any other suggestions for me, please leave me a comment.

Here's a map or two of Zhengzhou:


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