The Kindness of Strangers

We have had a great stroke of luck. Three of our new group can speak excellent Chinese and they have be very helpful. With them in tow, we have been able to complete a number of chores that would have take us a lot longer. Sweet!

The apartment is officially home. We have already had our first couple of couple of cocktail parties. Mostly to thank Will, Leah and Tom for helping us out. Leah has just finished reading our cell mail boxes and deleted a bunch of stuff that was clogging up the works. Will and Leah are a couple. Will is teaching at HIT and Leah is exploring other opportunities for work in Harbin. Leah is from Boston and Will from England. Both have graduated from Oxford this past spring with degrees in Chinese studies. Tom is an Edmonton boy with a degree in psychology along with a couple of years of Chinese.

Our first week in Harbin has been great. It has all the basic needs including McDonalds, Pizza Hut and more KFCs than you can shake a drumstick at. We have been doing most of our meals on campus in the dining halls. There are at least three that we have found so far along with a number of small private and cheap restaurants. We have not been to adventurous yet. Mostly eating rice and things that sort of looks like the Chinese food we can get at home. Looks can be deceiving. In six days we probably have not spent more than $60 to feed Nonie and I up to three meals a day. We will enjoy this for a while but I suspect Nonie will want to do some cooking soon.

We are splurging and are getting our laundry done for us. I have never had my underwear ironed. It makes me feel special, except for those pesky creases. The wash is done in a small washing maching about half the size of what we have at home. Then everything is hung to dry. This slows up the process so we have to wait three days to get it back. Well worth the wait.

We have recieved our class schedule and have taught our first class. More in a future blog.

Zai Jian
Brett