Ni Hao

After some intense pressure from certain parties who will remain unnamed, I decided to give an update to my great Chinese Adventure.
After a wretched run in with the people of Fed Ex which ended in me going to the Fed Ex facility to pick up my Visa just hours before I left for the airport, I boarded a plane bound for China. It was a really easy 13 hour flight and I felt very calm about the whole moving to China thing throughout all of my preparations and during the whole flight until we started our decent into Beijing. Then this horrific feeling of "What have I done?" came over me and lasted until we landed and I started busying myself with finding my luggage, exchanging money and and figuring out how to find a taxi. The taxi cab driver told me that he knew the address when we were in the airport but as we got onto the highway he admitted that he didn't know where he was going. He asked several people on the road for help and finally delivered me to Steve and Chelsea's apartment and the very far north end of Beijing.
Steve and Chelsea, being true Canadians and all, are the kindest and most awesome hosts in the world. They took me to go see the kids at their school and then after work on Friday they took me to the markets. The markets are huge building filled with little stalls were English speaking Chinese girls sell cheap knock offs of purses, wallets, shoes, clothes, watches etc. They also sell jewelry very cheap but you have to bargain with them for everything and let's just say that blue eyes add another 50 yuan to every price.
I love Beijing! It is a lot like New York City; lots of people, lots of pollution, tall buildings, congestion, lights, constant motion etc. I feel very comfortable here.
I went to church on Sunday and there were about 200 members in the Beijing branch. All of them are Expats from the US with just a couple of exceptions. Most families are either very young like one or two babies, or very old, like retired and all their kids are gone. The branch feels EXACTLY like any ward you would go to in Utah or California or wherever. Great leaders, great lessons, sound doctrine, and great music.
I spent all week last week looking for a job on the internet and interviewing at like six different places. I was offered a job everywhere that I interviewed but none of them actually offered what they advertised. There is a lot of false advertising here. So I continued the search. During that week I learned several new Chinese expressions, became familiar with subway and taxi systems here and ate some GREAT Chinese food.
The pictures below were taken on Saturday. Chelsea and I went to the market in search of some jewelry and we bought a sweet potato on the way. Nobody has ovens here but there are guys that ride their bikes down the street with oil cans strapped to the back filled with cooking sweet potatoes and hot rocks and coal. They are so good and sweet. So one is me eating a sweet potato by a street musician. The other one is at an outdoor market where lots of Chinese people from the countryside come in to sell their junk claiming that they are valuable Chinese antiques.
I am leaving Monday morning to go to a small town about 5 hours Northeast of Beijing to teach English during the Spring Festival. It is freezing there and it is real rural China so I will write more from there.