30+ Hours of Traveling Later...

Ni hao everyone! We made it! We left Needham at 4am on Thursday, June 20th, flew from Logan to New York, had our last American meal consisting of nachos, french fries and quesadillas, and took off at 12:30pm. Before we left, we bought matching Brookstone neck pillows, which we can thank for any of the sleep we did get. We landed in Tokyo 13.5 hours later for a quick lay-over and then were off to our final stop: Beijing International Airport. We breezed through customs and our bags were a few of the first ones off the plane. We were greeted by Ann, a fellow teacher at our new school, who was holding a sign that said "Jacky and Charlotte." We got into a minivan that was bumping loud pop music and we headed to our apartment. It is a lovely, bright and currently smelly place (we're working on the last part - need a new mop and some more scented candles!) There is a bright orange couch in the living room, bright orange cabinets in the kitchen, and two bedrooms - one larger than the other, but neither bed is comfortable. We flipped for the bigger of the two rooms, and Charlotte won the coin toss. We did agree, however, that if I come back for another 6 months after Christmas, we would switch. I see what she did there... 

Before the long journey began...

When we touched town in our new city!

First sign at the airport

We slept through the night, both woke at 5:15am but were able to fall back asleep until about 9am. Ann came to our apartment to walk with us to the grocery store where we got some food and things we needed for the apartment. It was surprising to see how many familiar lables we saw, but with brands names written in Chinese. When we came back to the apartment, we couldn't get the door open. Side note: we had an issue last night and this morning as well, but not as bad as this time. We tried for about 10 minutes until Ann called another teacher we will be working with, Julie. In the meantime, our neighbor came to help, with two of her friends. It was quite a site to see these three Chinese girls (our age) trying to open the door. When they still couldn't get it, they called the landlord and invited us in to the apartment next door. Julie had the best English out of all of them, so when she left to talk to the landlord, we were on our own trying to talk to these girls. One of them was brave and used her English skills to string together enough words for us to have a conversation. She said the three of them were sisters, but then said that they don't have the same parents but same grandmother. We looked up the word cousin and we are pretty sure that is what she meant. They all seemed eager to learn English and we told them that we would love to help them if they would help with our Chinese! We exchanged numbers and are hoping to see them later on for some food, drinks, and language practice. 

Helping us with our door.. 

The door was finally opened for us so we settled in, unpacked our new things and put away groceries. We were finally successful with the wifi, and I feel like I'm a million miles closer to home than I felt last night. All is good over here on this side of the world - much love to you all!

Zai Jian (goodbye)!
Jacky and Charlotte