...And she's back!

Well, technically, I've been back almost six days. Or maybe five. Traveling for three (two?) days and crossing the date line will really mess with your understanding of time and space ("I left on Tuesday. No, wait, I left on your Tuesday but my Wednesday. Well, my Wednesday then."). Let's just say that as far as the world of blogging is concerned, I'm back. Not as soon as I'd liked to have been, though.  But, for the better part of the past five (or six) days days I've been either sleeping or talking about how much I'd like to go to sleep, unpacking, doing laundry, folding clothes, and trying to remember who I bought the fan with the roses for. But now all that appears to be behind me, and I'm ready to re-enter the world of blogging with a vengeance.

I realize that after a month of radio-silence, I owe you all lots and lots of pictures and the usual cynical anecdotes. Breaking four-plus weeks of wall-to-wall activities, classes, excursions, walking tours, stairs, bugs, and lots of Chinese people into small bite-size pieces is proving to be quite the challenge, however, so bear with me if I start off a little haphazardly.

When we left Atlanta on Tuesday morning, I don't think any of us really knew what to expect. We were going to teach summer school, and do some excursions, and hopefully make it home in one piece. Three long flights later, we arrived in Beijing late Wednesday night, and everything appeared honkey dorey. Our hotel was lovely (although the beds were surprisingly hard), the wifi was complimentary, and the breakfast was scrumptious. Our trip to the Great Wall was well-planned, the Great Wall itself was breath-taking, and everyone agreed that our lunch was tasty too. Spirits were high as we got on the bus to the airport, if this was a sign of things to come, our stay in China was going to be one awesome adventure.

When we arrived at Xiamen University about six hours later at one in the morning (thanks to a delayed flight out of Beijing), we realized it was going to be an adventure, but that perhaps "awesome" was not the proper adjective. Not only was it beyond hot and sticky even in the middle of the night, when the students walked into their rooms, they were stunned into silence. Their beds were nothing more than a plywood board with a comforter. Their bathrooms had a typical Chinese style squatting toilet, and a hose with a nozzle for a shower. Their rooms were thoughtfully outfitted with a laundry area complete with sink, hose, drain, and clotheslines, in the middle of the room. The faculty's rooms, situated in a different building, were, thank the Lord and all His Guardian Angels above, a little better. There were neither plywood boards, nor squatting toilets, nor laundry areas. Instead, I got chairs with backs that fell off when you leaned against them, an AC unit with a hose covered in a mold, a cracked window, and, goodness me, three gigantic roaches that had taken up residence in my mildewy bathroom. Not to mention grimy granite floors, a mattress where the springs were visible through the fitted sheet, and a door with no weatherstripping (and this is very relevant, as I shall explain later).

The next day did little to assuage our traumatized students. The cafeteria stopped serving breakfast at 8:30, the campus tour quickly revealed the campus to be sprawled across several mountains, which meant everything required walking up or down numerous stairs, mysterious water kept raining down on our group from random trees (again, very relevant, and I will explain later), and the international coordinator was quick to inform the group that a typhoon (or possibly two) was headed our way, and that although we were right on the beach, we shouldn't swim in the sea due to riptides and "dirt", as he euphemistically called it (we later realized the sewers run straight into the sea in China). Oh, and internet was not only not free, wifi was almost non-existent, and obtaining internet access took an act from God. Or perhaps Buddha.

Although as one of the professors, my job was to stay upbeat, optimistic, and solution-focused at all times, that first day in Xiamen was possibly the hardest day I've ever had on the job. We were tired, caffeine-deprived (as we had not yet discovered any of the coffee shops on campus), completely overwhelmed with all the new information thrown at us, and none of us was really sure how we were going to make it through the next month.

Obviously, things did get better, and although I'm not sure any of our students would simply call this study abroad "awesome", or whatever other simple adjective they picked on that first day in Beijing, they did learn to see it all as one amazing experience.

Tomorrow, I'll try to update you all on how we managed to get settled in, and things turned out not to be so bad after all.

p.s. if someone can show an easy way to set up a slide show in my blog (as opposed to uploading tens of pictures separately), that would be great!