The First Week: Meeting the Other Newbies

When we last left our heroic traveling couple, they had just been dropped off at their new apartment in Shanghai...
Carnival Garden 4-201 is our new home, and it is far more beautiful than we could have imagined. Three large bedrooms, two bathrooms, large main living/dining room, laundry room and kitchen, and more storage than we needed even if we had brought everything from home. The floors are either terrazo tile or varnished wood, and the A/C works beautifully (which we might regret when we get our first electric bill). Our abundant luggage was waiting when we pulled up, and the bus driver and a few doormen got it up to our apartment, where we were met with the lauded fruit basket, one key, and yes, the famous stacks of money. We had to count it before we signed for it. We have two beds, one "king" (which might be larger than our king at home) and a "twin" (which is definitely a double), and the only drawback is that a Chinese mattress consists of springs covered by probably a 3/4 inch piece of solid wood, encased in material about the thickness of corduroy. It is, as promised, harder than anything we could have imagined, and we are eyeing the overstuffed leather couches as a potential alternative. Jet lag did hit hard the first day, so we took a long nap at noon, then got up, put things away and took a walk around the neighborhood.
Having no phone or internet service for the apartment, we headed over to school as soon as we could the next morning (which was quite early, as the time adjustment also meant we woke up around 4:00 a.m.), and Skyped with Joe's parents, then Rhonda and my mom. We had a little tour of the local shops, including the French sponsored Carrefour, which is much like a Super Wal-Mart, except with very little English and a cat in the vegetable/fruit section. We also put some faces to email names and started working on setting up utilities and finding someone to fix a stopped toilet (the school sent over a maintenance worker right away). The weekend found us again at Carrefour, where we met some of our new colleagues and had a nice dinner at a little diner. We had an initial unintentional subway ride on Saturday evening, when the security guard ordered some tickets for us and sent us on our completely unguided way. We managed to make it home again, and had a better experience on Sunday afternoon when we took off to find the Shanghai Community Fellowship, a great non-denom evangelical church with excellent A/C (that is becoming very important to me) and an even better preacher. The sermon was from Psalm 121 and was about how God guides us through the most confusing of circumstances if we will only trust Him, a much needed word in a long weekend.
The first week was a series of meetings and tours to different places: a hospital, a shopping mall, Ikea, the health inspection (not too bad). We met the Gribbles from Seattle, Amanda from Tucson, the Watts from Australia, and just about everyone else. The school fed us both breakfast and lunch (although after the first day, breakfast was just muffins and fruit), and we had one nice dinner at Big Bamboo, an American-style restaurant in a food street (Hong Mei Lu). We managed to get our bottled water service started (through Nestle, but not much English), had more toilet issues, and everyone started getting sick. Montezuma visited most of us, just cramps and such in our house, but some were running rather high fevers. I was the sickest on our Ikea day, and have vowed never to go back unless I must. We do need a few more things, but I'm going to try to get them online and delivered from the local store! We also met our ayi, a lovely tiny woman named Luo Yan, who will start next week if we can get an extra key and door card.
By the end of the week, we still didn't have internet or phone at home, but we had our school laptops and could run back and forth for email and Skype purposes. We also got a few electronics matters handled (good old Carrefour doesn't do clock radios) in the special electronics mall, which is conveniently close to the Shanghai Best Buy for anything else. My email buddy Steve Venema, who is unbelievably tall, led that expedition, and it seems that whatever you need, Steve knows a guy. Very handy.
We got a crash course in Mandarin and received a four page "cheat sheet," with lots of phrases in Chinese characters and pinyin, the English equivalent. Our tutor, Shirley Huang, teaches Mandarin at the school and is fixing us up with her university son, who needs to polish his English, for some language exchange. The cheat sheet is an amazing entree into the Chinese world; as soon as we bring it out, smiles break out everywhere and we are quizzed (and corrected) on every page of the guide, followed by instruction in more words and phrases as our Chinese friends deem useful. Our Mandarin, while still quite pitiable, is increasing every day, and we practice, sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity, like when we went to the apartment management office to get an extra door card for Luo Yan. It is frustrating to be so hogtied by a lack of language skills, and we are certainly experiencing lots of adjustment, but the city is exciting and we are seeing so many new people and places that we have hardly had time to be homesick.

Flying and Landing

We've been in Shanghai now just over two weeks, and I have more to post than I ever imagined, so I'll try to break it down into manageable chunks, which is not my strong suit, so good luck, dear reader (always loved that phrase).
The flights were both great. Southwest got our bags checked with a minimum of fuss; it seemed when we were okay with paying for the extra two bags, nobody really cared how much they weighed. I did have a little moment during boarding because my carryon was too stuffed to fit in the overhead, so the flight attendants had to check it from the plane. I didn't figure I would need very much in a one hour flight, so that was fine with me.
LAX was an easier gig than I had expected. To begin, it was total fog when we landed around 7:00 p.m., so that made for a nice walk from one terminal to the other. We had our ten bags loaded onto two SmartCartes (a very well named device) and were hustling up on the elevator in the terminal where we landed to find our Korean Air gate. Silly first time travelers! Fortunately, we made some small talk with a maintenance worker in the elevator, and when he realized what we wanted, he got us directed back downstairs and out to the sidewalk, where we found an LAX volunteer who pointed us to the international terminal. There was no way we were going to unload all those bags into any type of motorized transportation, so we just started pushing, and after about 15 or 20 minutes, we got to the right place.
Korean Air is a complete delight. First, the baggage check was very simple (once we found the right desk) and the desk clerk politely told us that we could put more weight in the checked bags if needed (something about our pounds to kilos conversion). Hallelujah! We moved a ton (or at least twenty pounds) from our carryons to the big red duffles, and wheeled our lighter selves away. We had some Mexican food, more or less, and headed to the gate. LAX does not appear to offer wifi, free or otherwise, and the boarding process was less than orderly, mainly because our gate had absolutely no seating, so people milled about like sheep. We sat on the ground near a plug to juice up the laptop and wouldn't budge even when a gate agent was trying to set up some boarding lines. I told him if he wanted me to move, he would have to find me a new outlet (it was nearing midnight and I was getting pretty tired), so he backed down from the Ugly American.
Did a lot of sleeping on the big flight, and that is definitely a good preventer of jet lag. Our seatmate was a very quiet young Asian woman, and we really didn't talk to her until we had landed in Seoul. The Seoul airport was a bit hot (oh ha, I didn't know what was coming), but we managed to settle in and Joe napped while I gratefully surfed the web and did my last Facebook posting and chatting. The connecting flight was more organized in the boarding and we got a little bit of immigration paperwork done, as well as a pretty good nap. The Shanghai airport seemed completely deserted to us, and we almost didn't find our way off the jetway. After the wonderful service by the Korean Air staff, the Chinese airport workers seemed a bit distant, but I'm guessing it was more of a language barrier. The immigration line was swift and easy; not only did I not get hauled immediately to prison, I'm not even sure the clerk looked at me. I tried my best "ni hao" and "xie xie," maybe even "zai jian" to no effect. Baggage claim was also simple and everything made it, much to our delight. We cruised through customs with nothing to declare (our musical instruments probably exceeded the dollar limit, but we don't have valuations and weren't going to make extra trouble), and no inspection of our bags.
The pickup by the school was just like a movie, with our names and the school name on a butcher paper sign, and I'm sorry I didn't ask for the sign then, because it has since disappeared. Our Head of Schools, Mike Donaldson, was there to greet us and he knew us right away, probably due to the ten bags. He loaded our luggage into a school "bus" (which is really a 15 passenger van), loaded us into his very nice car, and off we went to our new apartment and life.

The Longest Week

Well, yes, I'm a bit overdue on my blog post, but I'm not really talking about temporal matters here. I can't even remember back to when I last posted; the last few days have been so full and busy that I thought they might never end. However, now I'm sitting in Sky Harbor ("the friendliest airport in the country"), our SIX bags are checked (more in a moment), and we're waiting for our flight to LA, where we will connect with our flight to Shanghai. This is it!

On the house front, the renters decided to stick with the original three-bedroom plan (oh thank heaven!), so we stuffed the entire studio with our personal belongings, at least those that didn't end up in luggage or the Salvation Army, where the staff now recognizes us by sight. We found a second twin bed on Craigslist and outfitted everything with new quilts. Dan tracked us down at our last La Fonda Friday night dinner and got the keys, so the house is no longer our own. The rental idea had one unexpected consequence learned in our Tuesday meeting with Gerry the CPA; if we rent our home, we are not allowed to spend more than 14 days per year in the house. The more alarming statistic was about exclusion of our Chinese income, however. If we don't want to pay US taxes, we have to be out of the country for 330 days, which means we can't come home until July 7th. That was a pretty big shock, considering that our teaching year ends on June 17th, but we did take some comfort when we realized that Canada is NOT part of the US, so we can at least come back to the North American continent. We're working on a big family trip so everyone can see us sooner (my brother-in-law wanted to know if the dogs should come as well). It makes me feel slightly like some kind of weird draft dodger.

The luggage was packed, re-packed, and packed once more, and we were still overweight on all four checked bags, so Joe called both airlines (Southwest and Korean Air) and found out that we'd be better off paying for two extra bags. Jill and Rhonda were conscripted into baggage transport, having made the mistake of offering to drive us to the airport. The Southwest guy could not have been nicer, although I think he was a little surprised at so many bags for just two people. Family farewells were hard, but Joe's family was kind enough to gather together for one final Skype, and we managed to break up most of the goodbyes to my family over the last two days. My mom had knee replacement surgery yesterday at the same hospital where my father had his open heart surgery, and it was very hard to say goodbye to her while she was sitting in a hospital bed, but she is quite the good soldier and wished us her very best, while amusing us with her morphine-induced conversation. That is one fun drug to observe!

Little things from this week: we had a great lunch with my former accounting professors, the Pitts, and their son Brenden, who taught for two years in Japan. Ron has also recently traveled to China, so we got many good tips, and the food was fantastic (Kay is a good Oklahoma cook). We transferred title for the Corolla to Aaron, who has already washed and waxed the car, tinted the windows and fixed just about everything that was wrong. He loves that car more than I ever did, so I'm glad it's in his hands. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, claims in a blog post that he has a FB network in China, but he didn't mention how I could connect to that network. Very helpful, Mark. Finally, a piece of advice: when you need to cry, find a nice public place. We had our last dinner with Faun and Randy and Mira and Bruce on Saturday night at Horsemen's Lodge, a great Flagstaff steakhouse. Joe needed to do some shopping at the mall (very unusual for him), and I finally got to tired to walk around, so I took a seat outside Dillard's and did some people watching. At some point I realized I wouldn't be near Faunie again for a good long time, and I just started to cry. Although there were lots of people all around me, nobody came over to try to help me or ask what was wrong; they just let me get it all out. It was terrific, and I'm going to remember that probably quite a bit in the next few days/weeks/months.

I hope to post again very soon, but have some patience. Next post, Shanghai!

Single Digits

We are nine days away from getting on the plane. Holy cow!

Parties have continued with our return to Flagstaff. Monday night (Joe's actual birthday) found us at our favorite haunt, La Fonda, for a party with some of our FUSD colleagues, plus Bruce and Mira, Shirl and Bob. We were another party of 13 and we skipped the speech this time, but we managed to make little postcards with our new email addresses and our blog site, so everyone can go read all about it. Joe's Cromer colleague Carole brought us small travel gifts including Tush Wipes, much to the amusement of all. Oh yes, we also got to admire Faun's latest broken extremity, her left foot, which she broke stepping off a curb while on vacation in Colorado. She called us to tell us the news, but only told Joe, fearing a wild rant from me, so I just posted an oblique reference on Facebook. Saturday was a big party at Faun's house with friends coming from all over and lots of fun. We visited with the Shaws, the Cooks, the Schwartzes, the Horowitzes, the Juliens, Cindy and Jimmy, Paul, Leslie, Jill, Nancy, Bret, and of course, Faun and Randy. The burgers were great, the weather was perfect, and we took enough pictures to plaster our walls. We gave the speech and then Mr. Shaw asked if we could do it again, but this time with Joe speaking and me interjecting. Everybody's a comedian!

We also had a great visit on Tuesday with our friend Rick and his gorgeous wife Darla, coming through town on their way back to Mesa from their Montana hideaway. Rick flies to Korea on Tuesday, so he gave us his Vonage number and got us caught up on his progress, which is pretty good. His school has been in very close touch with him and he knows a lot more about what will happen when he lands in Suwon (southwest of Seoul). Also, we heard from our friends Paul and Jing (the couple from Kansas City who we met at the fair and were hoping to get a job in China to be near Jing's family), with the good news that Paul got a job in Tianjin, on the coast near Beijing, so we will have more UNI job fair friends somewhere near.

Our SCIS email appears to be offline at the moment, but we did receive an interesting email a week ago regarding new administrative changes. Nancy Stubbs (no relation to our dear stalker Jeff) has retired from her position as director of curriculum, so Tammy Rodabaugh, who was to be our new principal, has taken that position, moving the assistant principal (whose name I can't remember, but it's nothing like mine) to principal of the Lower School. I will miss working directly with Tammy, but I am relieved that little first graders aren't going to have to distinguish between Rodabaugh and Rauschenbach. I wonder if that's why she left? Also in SCIS news, my Aussie email buddy Steve (the orchestra director) announced that he and his wife Nicole are expecting their second child, which doesn't affect us that much, but it feels like we're making friends.

The primary packing for storage purposes has begun in earnest. Anticipating a visit from Jill, her grandson Bret, and our friend Nancy, we got the office cleared out enough to put a twin bed on the floor for Bret. We have bedrails also, but discovered that we have no box spring, causing the mattress to sag pitifully, so we just ditched the rails for now. However, that sparked an email to Dan, our renter-in-chief, to ask about whether the twin mattress would be part of a bunk bed arrangement (thus eliminating the need for a box spring). He wrote back the astonishing news that they were planning to put an extra bed in the guest room and oh yes, could Jane use the fourth bedroom (you know, our storage room)? I nearly had a stroke! Joe suggested adding some extra money to the rent for the fourth bedroom, so Dan said he'd talk to Jane and let us know. I also suggested that the office would be the only place big enough for a second bed, so we'll see what we hear tomorrow (our deadline for fourth bedroom notification). We also got our rental checking account set up, Joe found the way to clean our popcorn ceilings with the Shop Vac (and they were disgusting!), and we have an appointment with our CPA friend Gerry to determine how our finances (primarily tax matters) will be handled in our absence. I went to a continuing ed tax seminar on Friday and had my eyes opened quite a bit, so I have a list of questions for poor Gerry.

Next week is the last blog post I know I can write, because I'm not sure how long it will take me to get set up in Shanghai with the VPN. I have some email groups set up to get notice that we landed, but I sure hope the communications will fall into place quickly. I still have people working on the Facebook issue, and it occurred to me today to actually send a note to the geniuses who run the site; hey, maybe they've put some thought into this!

Milestones

Joe turned 40 on July 19th, and we had a lot of fun with that during our weekend in Phoenix. We started down on Friday at noon, leaving Flagstaff with Joe, Jack, and our grandnephew Nathan, fresh from a week visiting his Flagstaff grandmother. About halfway down the hill (which is what we say when traveling from Flag to Phx), we realized that the Corolla's A/C is no longer working, and things got much warmer after that. Phoenix was having temps in the 110s plus monsoon humidity, so by the time we got to Rhonda's house, we were pretty warm and sweaty, especially Joe, who got to have Jack sitting on his lap most of the time. Fortunately for us, Rhonda and Andy were willing to let us borrow transportation with A/C, so we went to our first party on Friday night in fairly good style. Kim Marchbanks put together a party of 13 or so, plus assorted children, for friends who used to go to First Southern Baptist in Glendale. We ate and talked and laughed until well after 11:00 and Joe and I gave our little speech about how we arrived at this big decision, with lots of support and interest from all.

The second party was on Saturday, with just a few family members at the Miracle Mile Deli in the Arrowhead Mall. Joe and I took a little time to cruise the mall and Joe decided that all the clothes were either too old or too young for him, and that must be the problem with turning 40! We met Jill, her daughter-in-law Jaysen, Jill's grandson Logan, and our cousins Tib (newly naturalized after four tries and over 40 years living here), Julie, Debbie and Andrew. Miracle Mile does the only decent pastrami sandwich in this country (I tried them in NYC, no good), so we enjoyed both the food and the company quite a bit, and the cousins had lots of travel and Asian living advice.

The last party was on Sunday, when 33 people crowded into Rhonda's house for her fantastic green chile burros along with red and green tamales and everything else that goes with Mexican food. (Rhonda said we didn't need to have Chinese food, because that's not what we'd be missing.) We had Rhonda's family (children and grandchildren), David and Pam and all the children and grandchildren from their oldest son (we don't even know some of their names, there's so many), Jill and her youngest son's family, cousins Gene and Glenda, Dorothy and Maxine, friends Kay and Charlie and a couple of girls (Nicole and Mariah) who may or may not be related. We gave our speech (for those who don't read the blog), and we also had birthday cake and three family songs. In our family, we choose a tune and write alternative lyrics suited to whatever special occasion is at hand. I thought we were just going to do one song, mainly for Joe's birthday but with a bit of China thrown in. I wrote some quick lyrics to the tune of the Cincinnati Reds fight song (yes, they have one, and the Cincinnati Pops did a very nice version on an album called "Play Ball!" so look for that at whatever passes for a record store these days). However, Jill and Rhonda surprised us with a new version of "Chinatown, My Chinatown," and then Kelly's family came up with their new version of "Hey Jude" (creatively called, of course "Hey Joe). That song made it to Jill's Facebook page, if you can find it. It was a great party, and my dad would have enjoyed it as much as we did, but of course we imagine he's been busy this week lecturing the recently deceased George Steinbrenner on how much he messed up as the Yankees' owner. Sorry about that, Mr. Steinbrenner.

The plan for getting back to Flagstaff in the non-air conditioned Corolla was to leave late on Sunday night after all the festivities and drive in the (relatively) cooler night air. It was a great plan except for one thing: the Corolla's temperature gauge would not come down from the overheating position. We drove about ten miles, heater blasting (which was how we used to solve the problem in Joe's Cavalier), before we gave up and got back to Rhonda's about 12:30 Monday morning (when the temp was only 101 degrees). Joe joked that back when he was 39, he would have pushed on to Flag despite the gauge, but now that he was 40, he thought we should play it safe. Andy said we could borrow his van for the next couple of weeks, so we called AAA and had the Corolla towed to its new owner, my nephew Aaron, who is a very talented mechanic and promptly changed the faulty thermostat and will refit the A/C system for new freon. The tow truck driver (Jim) turned out to be a guy exactly my age who went to my rival high school, but not my grade school. He did a nice job taking away the first car I ever bought myself, and it will be missed. Also missing from our lives is Jack, who has moved to Rhonda's house, but I'm just not going to write about that.

Next week: we celebrate our 12th anniversary and try to clean out the office. Will we succeed?

Slimming Down

Well, not my body, but we are definitely a bit lighter in household goods. We took our grill and rain barrel over to our friends the Schroeders, who have just moved a street away and needed both things. This weekend, our friend Allison bought Joe's car and drove it away on Sunday afternoon. The garage looks strange with only my old Corolla, and I am now the official driver of the family. Yes, Joe knows how to drive a stick, but my car is a bit crochety in its old age and I know how to baby it. We also sold our push mower on Craigslist, and I took my wedding dress to the Salvation Army when I noticed several stains on the skirt. Maybe someone else has time to play with laundry magic!

I took a preliminary stab at packing my suitcases this week and met with surprising success, so maybe it won't be so hard to get everything there. We also talked to a school colleague who taught for a year outside of Beijing and she had both good and bad news. On the con side, she strongly suggested bringing all our hygiene products with us; soap, shampoo, even toothpaste. She says the products in China are just too harsh for us delicate Americans. However, she also said that we can ship things in personal boxes and they will get through customs without a hitch. She was less enthusiastic about direct Amazon shipping, though of course the company assures me that they ship to China all the time (but they couldn't tell me about customs). We figure we'll pack a box with some less important items, ship it off before we leave, and see if it makes it to Shanghai via the good old USPS.

The rest of the packing is rather slow, but we are trying to do a little bit every day. We found a wonderful local handyman who laid our flagstone patio in our backyard (see my first photo upload?), freeing us up to take a video production class through our former school district. We are learning all sorts of useful things and have great ideas for videos we could do at our new school. Jack will be moving out next weekend when we go to Phoenix for our farewell parties there, and that will certainly be tough, but I've probably waited too long already. My mother has scheduled her knee surgery for the day before we leave, and that will make for a very exciting week for my sister Rhonda, who will then have four dogs and two people needing a little extra care, not to mention her full-time job! I guess if I get grumpy about things on my to-do list, I can just think of her. Thanks, Rhonda!

Acceptance!

Happy Fourth of July! We missed the Flagstaff parade this year, but we figure that is one of those annual rituals that we can do when we come back in the summer. We also have lots of work to do in the house and quite a few farewell meetings scheduled. In other news, we have been ruled as acceptable risks by the Chinese consulate; our passports arrived this week with beautiful Chinese visas tucked right in. (Thanks Maureen and her unnamed colleague at TDS!) I put a picture of my visa on Facebook and my sister Jill started posting about how much she hates it. I told her to work on her attitude.

In preparation news, I finished two beaded necklaces, one with an Arizona theme and the other in black and silver for concerts. I have packed up the rest of my beads to stay in storage here. I'll take my tools to China, because I've found at least two bead shop addresses in Shanghai. We visited with our insurance agent this week, which was very productive, and the fellow who set up our Roth IRA, which was more of a "nice to see you." On his suggestion, I did some reading from IRS Publication 54, a fascinating look at tax rules for those living and earning income abroad. I think I'd rather just call our tax genius friend; call me lazy. We finalized the deal on Joe's car today and are hoping to turn it over to its new owner either next weekend or the following (when we will also leave Jack with his Aunt Rhonda for his new life of grooming fun, but that's another story; see the dog grooming section of PetNation.com).

The "Facebook in China" controversy continues after our friend Merle successfully posted during his recent trip to China. He had a secret weapon that I'm probably not allowed to discuss, but he did give me an idea to try when I get there, so keep those fingers crossed. While I was doing some Amazon work, I found both a China page (in Chinese, so it didn't help much) and Amazon's assurance that they ship all over the world. Now that would be a big help, so I emailed my questions about getting things through customs and will await a response.