Feb 11; english! wal-mart! paris baguette! Today is the day things get brighter.

Day 6

We started off our day with a 2 hour-ish welcome meeting with all the other teachers. In those 2 hours, the head administrative VIP talked about goals for this year in terms of teaching, policy, canteen food, etc… All the teachers in the room were off doing their own little things: reading, chatting with their colleagues beside them, writing notes… Yes it was quite the experience. Especially for us foreign teachers because the meeting was all in putonghua (Mandarin).

Back at the dorm, we had an unexpected knock on our room door. It couldn’t have been the Canadian girls because they were already in our room…We didn’t know anyone yet. Were we already in trouble? We opened the door to see an unfamiliar face: a tall asian dude who spoke perfect English. And that’s how we met Jeff. A fellow Torontonian and one of the foreign teachers at the school. He took around to:

Wal-Mart - Not comparable to the one's back in Toronto, but it was so comforting

 Papa John's in Wudaokuo for dinner.

Dessert at Paris Baguette. 

Today was the day that things started to look brighter:

1)      Yay! another person who speaks English
2)      Yay! Wal-Mart – a little piece of home (Canada)
3)      Unexpectedly finding a Paris Baguette – best day ever! I now have a little piece of home (Korea) where the cakes and stuff are actually cheaper in Beijing than they were in Korea!
4)      Italian food – something I haven’t had in a reaaally long time.
5)      Wudaoko – a foreigners area that reminded me of Hongdae.