First Week In Beijing
Greetings Everyone,
And once again, hello from the other side of the world (for
most of you). However, this time our
flight was a relative breeze, as travel time encompassed a mere 24 hours from
Lima to Beijing; in our days of living in Dhaka, we could anticipate a minimum
of eight more hours of transit, so we felt fresh as a spring shower when we
landed in Beijing (okay, a slight exaggeration. . .).
Anyhow, I wanted to provide a quick little update on our
travels, to verify that we indeed did arrive and to give you a report one week
in Beijing. Firstly, the new jobs-we are
just shy of ecstatic that we have landed at this school, Western Academy of
Beijing. From the beautiful campus
(photos to follow at a later date) to the vibrant learning community,
Marianella and I feel as if we have arrived at a special place to work. Of course, the honeymoon is early and being
the grizzled veterans that we are, we aren’t getting too ahead of ourselves,
but we are excited, which is a wonderful state of mind to occupy when
considering work.
But enough about work-I certainly didn’t start this blog to
describe our daily grind. Onto the fun
stuff, like the neighborhood where we are currently living and our first of
hopefully many trips together to The Great Wall.
798 Art District
For the first two months of our time in Beijing, our school
is putting us up in temporary housing along with our other new co-workers. While our actual apartment is big and
non-descript, the neighborhood outside our door is Beijing’s artist quarters,
housed in massive brick buildings that used to serve as munition plants, sat
dormant for some time, and for the last several years has emerged into art
galleries and a cottage industry of restaurants and shops. Whether we have been gazing out our ninth
story window or walking the sidewalks, the people watching is fantastic. Through the interwoven streets we have come
across interesting and provocative art, quirky and fun shops, and delicious
eating establishments. That it’s in our
backyard has made our adjustment to Beijing rather blissful.
A great gift idea!:
The Great Wall
On Friday morning, at the end of our orientation week, the
school worked in an outing to The Great Wall which gave us a taste of this
spectacular wonder. We were only able to
spend approximately a half-hour at the actual site, as we had to return for
afternoon commitments, but as we sweated profusely in the haze of the humid
morning, we were struck by the fact that we were able to make a morning run to
one of the world’s extraordinary sites and our little nibble has whetted our appetite for return trips when the weather is more agreeable and the time not so rushed. Ohh, and outside of the
grandeur of the Great Wall was our spectacular descent from its heights. As we took a chairlift to gain access to the
wall, we had a choice to descend with the chair lift again or to steer a luge
down the curving track; we elected to tap into our inner Winter Olympian and
sped down the track in the simple contraption.
As we get a bit more settled and expand beyond the familiarity of our
neighborhood and daily life, I will certainly be updating the blog to try and
capture our life in this immense city and country. But as the last few photos I am sharing below
will illustrate, I believe we have landed in a place where our day-to-day life
will prove to be quite engaging. Until
next time, take care!
The fluffiest dog we've ever seen:
Look closely, these are finely carved carrots:
At IKEA, where families come to really relax:
The remnants of our $2 breakfast:
Does it get any cuter than this?:
Comments
~Hamida