. I'm now in the city of Hefei in the province of Anhui. I got to see lots of the country on the 5 hour bus ride from Shanghai. I was greeted at the airport by my friend Hugh who arranged my work here in China. Hugh lives in another province than I will be but he will show me around for the first few day's.
. Shanghai is also a very beautiful city. There's a river that runs through the middle of the city. There are many Victorian buildings along the side of this river. This area is called the Bunt. Not so far away there is Old Town, a 400 year old part of the city, very traditional architecture including dragons carved into the roofs.
. The air is very clean here in Hefei, but the weather is like Vancouver, wet and cold. Hefei has 1.3 million people and 7 universities. The Chinese love to shop. On ALL the buildings there is advertising & billboards. It's very westernized. You can find KFC and McDonalds all over. Chinese are very sharp dressers but occasionally you can find some of the older generation who will still wear the traditional blue uniform.
. The hard things to get used to are the toilets(or lack of). The public toilets are holes in the ground and toilet paper is at a premium.
I just moved into my three bedroom apartment with a loft today. We have hardwood floors and a kitchen. My room has a balcony and a view of the lake. We're living in a high end area, down at the end of the street there is a Mercedes dealership.
. Much poverty here, I've been giving all my small change away. The first day here in Hefei walking down the street a group of kids rushed me for money. A little girl grabbed onto my legs and would not let go until a lady came and helped get her off of me. When I give any of the street kids money they will call their friends and again I'll have a rush of kids, so I have stopped giving the kids money.

February 28

. I just got connected to the Internet today, at my new home. We have a TV and a VCD player which is different than a DVD player. DVD movies are very hard to find in China. A VCD movie is a bootleg, made by some guy with a video camera in a movie theater. You can hear the audience laughing or some guy opening his bag of chips, and if you are really lucky the movie will just end before the finish of the film.
. Since I've been here I've seen 6 other white people. Everywhere I go people want to talk to me so they can practice there English. Or If I stop somewhere too long a crowd starts to form. They all want to see what the foreigner is doing. They all know that I'm an English teacher because most foreigners are usually English teachers.
. School is going well, the kids seem to like me. Yesterday I had two kids come running up to me and tell me they love me. Another little girl, every time she sees me kisses me on the hand. And they all like to touch the hair on my arms. I guess Chinese don't have hair on their arms or face. I'm the only guy I've seen with facial hair.
. The Chinese are very friendly people. Since I've been here I've been taken out to dinner every night. Chinese also love to drink. The food is very different from North American Chinese food and is always fresh, so fresh that if you order chicken you also get the head of the chicken. This is to let you know the chicken was killed in the back room. I went to a club(they call it a disco) on the weekend, and made some friends. The Chinese also like to bounce when they dance, the floors in both discos I went to bounced. The dance floors have springs under them and If you can't get the rhythm of the bounce you're just falling all over the place. One club I went to had all these very beautiful women sitting on one side of the bar. At first I thought "why are all these beautiful girls alone", then I figured out that they work for the club and will keep you company. They play drinking games with you and tell you that your handsome. It's great until you get you the bar bill.
. I went to a Buddhist temple last weekend It's just like what you see on the TV show "Kung Fu". Big gold Buddhists, lots of incense. the building was traditional Chinese architecture, very cool.
. The biggest cultural difference to me is the way they drive here. The car has the right of way if you crossing a cross walk you have to stop for the car, because they'll just keep on driving. To get across a busy street you have to cross one lane at a time. Plus the driver is only responsible for what is in front of him, not the side or back, so everybody cuts every body eles off, but I guess it works because there are no traffic jams here.

March 4

Hugh does lots of promotion in the schools and most business is done over dinner. He likes to bring one of the teachers to meet the the schools faculty. Yesterday we went to a dinner with a big spread of food, and lots of toasting with snake wine, which tastes like snake venom. Today I went to a school to meet the students. There was a big show for Hugh and me. Two of the children danced the tango, another sang a Chinese opera. Parents and kids, even university students came to see the Canadian foreigners. I met a girl from the university who was nice enough to translate for me. After we went out and she showed me around the city.
. This afternoon my new roommates arrived from Toronto. They will be teaching primary students. I have had a cold since I've been here so tomorrow I will take it easy.