Friday, September 9, 2011

Jiaozuo

Well, I am here in Jiaozuo (pronounced JOW JO UH, i think). It's been a crazy day of traveling, but I'm here safe and alive. The ride to this city was interesting -- I was pretty much just squeezed onto a bus with 49 Chinese people for 2 hours. 
I'm living in an apartment by myself, on the 6th floor (I'm already tired of walking all these flights of stairs...) right above one of the orphanage homes (there are 6 of these 'homes' across the city -- I'm above # 2) on the last street of the neighborhood. Every street looks identical, hopefully I don't walk into the wrong apartment... :P
I'm apparently getting here on an odd weekend; The Moon Festival is Monday, so this is a 3 day weekend.

Jiaozuo is an incredibly small village, but has over 2 million people in it (craziness!). I got here and the director told me that I just doubled the American population... yeah, that's right, there's only me and one other American in this whole village...talk about sticking out like a sore thumb.

I met the kids in the house below me right away and omgsh, they are soooo adorable!! I'm already in love with them (and I want to bring Chung Chung home with me!!). Though, I can tell they're gonna be a handful (they're all special needs children).

I had dinner with Donna (the director) and her family (which is all Chinese, but her) last night and now I'm just settling in. The names of the kids/nannies are going to take forever to learn how to say....  Oh, and besides Donna and her daughter Marrissa, no one speaks English. And they don't even live in my building. Everywhere I'm going to be working is completely Chinese.... guess this is my time to pick up the language...

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