Monday, February 15th, 2016

Today is the day when I have to be processed. Let the bureaucracy begin! 

Within the first 30 days you’re living in China, you need to register with the Government and get some sort of paperwork. The paperwork takes approximately 20 days to obtain, barring any problems. Given that I arrived during Chinese New Year, the offices were closed until today, cutting out 7 of my days. Fingers crossed, but things seem to be going smoothly at this point.

First stop: Hospital… because the Canadian health check I provided them wasn’t good enough, apparently.

Coffee and Insanity - Start the Day Right

Sunday, February 14th, 2016

Smog Level: All 3 Mountains

Hey there, sleep, glad to know you haven’t fully abandoned me. That’s right: I finally slept 8 unbroken hours. I woke up thinking about Mandarin. Last night, I felt like the language wasn’t coming fast enough. I feel like I should know more by now. The idea that I’ll never be able to speak it crosses my mind.. but then I reminded myself that I haven’t even been here a full week yet. Actually, given that it’s a week, I think I’ve made decent steps, capable of having extremely basic, functional exchanges.

It’s Valentine’s day, and we considered just staying in the house the whole day, but the idea of going back to Maan Coffee to get a Belgian waffle was appealing enough to get us out.

Check out 'dem Chicks

Saturday, February 13th, 2016

Smog Level: All 3 Mountains

Again, I wake up early. My nap carries me over to 8 hours total over the past night. I realize that I haven’t written the festival at all, prompting me to drag myself out of bed to write. If this keeps up, it will be quite strange because I’ve never consistently kept a normal 12-8ish sleep schedule.

Friday, February 12th, 2016

Good (2.5 Mountains)

Bad (No Mountains)

I’m starting to keep track of the level of smog using the mountains I can see from my apartment. As I stated in yesterday’s post, there are a maximum of 3. Each day, I will list how smoggy it is based on how many mountains you can see. The more the better! Here we go:

Smog Level: No Mountains

Today is Day 5 of the Chinese new year, which means that there’s some sort of festival going on. Shimou made plans with her Cousin, Si Si [Se Se], to go. We meet Si Si and her Fiancé at the subway station.. which we arrived at by cab. Cabs are ridiculously cheap here, by the way. This cab ride was a 5 minute ride and cost $2-3 CAD, and a 30 min ride will be about ~75 RMB, which is $15 CAD. We're talking standard cabs, which are still more expensive than Uber.

New Year Decorations

Thursday, February 11, 2016

That middle bit? There should be
three mountains there.

I’ve been sleeping on concrete. My shoulders and neck are yelling at me, and it’s 5:30am. Again. This means I’ve slept 3 hours. Hoorayyyy. The couch in the living room is more comfortable than the bed, so I move in there to see if I can catch some more sleep. I couldn’t.

Instead, I ended up reading a lot of comics on Marvel's insane reboot of their universes. Very entertaining. They basically get to take whatever heroes they want and throw them into whatever situations they want, and kill them whenever they want. It really  makes for better stories when you aren’t afraid of throwing a fan favorite away at any time. Taking a page from Mr. R. R. Martin, eh?