Home

Saturday afternoon, I moved to what will be my home for the next 9.5 months.  It's in a district of Shenzhen called Nanshan, which means "South Mountain."  My neighborhood is called OCT-Overseas Chinese Town.  Let me backtrack and explain that Shenzhen is GIGANTIC!  It's made up of 6 districts that are all about the size of Philadelphia so imagine 6 Philadelphias packed together to make 1 mega-city.  It's difficult to wrap your head around.

Let's just say that my new apartment makes me miss my old one in Philly, however, it is apparently nice in Chinese standards.  On the plus side, I'm 5 minutes away from everything-my school, the metro, restaurants, etc.

I went to my new school, OCT Primary School, for a faculty meeting where the only word I understood was "Shelby" when the vice-principal introduced me.  I won't actually know my schedule or even what grades I'll be teaching until the first day of school on Thursday.  This is something called "Nowism" which is just how things go in China.  Another example of nowism is when I received a call from my Chinese contact teacher last night at 9pm telling me that I had to travel an hour to the Shenzhen police department to be interviewed the following day at 9am.  I will undoubtedly learn to be flexible and spontaneous during my time here.

OCT is beautiful compared to the smog-filled skies and deafening car horns of Beijing.  There's only 2 lanes for cars and bike lanes.  It's clean and green.  The landscaping is gorgeous and there's parks everywhere.  One of the parks has all of these giant installation art pieces throughout.

I am currently sitting in the Starbucks, a place I wouldn't step foot into in the States, but I almost kissed its floors today.  It's comforting to have something familiar from home.

Last night, some friends and I went to an ex-pat area for dinner.  We happened to befriend the owner of a bar who, after I mentioned that I'm a huge Steelers fan, promptly put on the game from last weekend on the TVs.  He said he has some TV package where he can access any of the games at any time.  I'm set!