Rubber hits the road

Your humble narrator is now in the fabled Middle Kingdom, which was in large part the whole impetus of this blog.  No more will there be tired posts about how bad the food is at the G-Vegas Ale House (Which has made me feel bloated and full of liquid lard on a couple of occasions) or such triflings as sighting a moose in the backyard. No from now on this Blog will be synchronizing itself with the daily circumstances surrounding living and working in China.

I got into Beijing yesterday at about 5 PM local time and was met by a very friendly and well spoken assistant to one of the teachers who works for the agency that got me here.

I should also point out that your narrator has no intentions of offending against China's strict visa requirements. It is very possible that I will be back on a plane very soon to get my work visa because I am technically here only as a tourist.  Please do not let that fact get back to the Chinese authorities, oh my gentle reader.

Initial impressions of China are really not possible.  I took a shuttle to the hotel, ate some KFC, and watched some Chinese TV while dozing.  In a moment of cosmic kismet, the only english program on the TV had a singer named Sarah Connor who was signing Ray Lamontaigne's song "Crazy" (which is more infamously known by it's cover artist version by Gnarls Barclay).  Stumbling around a foreign hotel room in serious jet lag and KFC induced torper, hearing that song made me laugh, as indeed I might be considered by more sedate and reasoned people to be kind of crazy for coming to China in the first place.

I want to be here because my life had hit an impasse and I needed to make it work again.  Depending upon how my career as an ESL teacher goes, I fancy myself doing alot of traveling and teaching over the next years.

It is not that I do not want to go back to practicing law.  I love it.  I know I am pretty good at law.  In many respects, my midlife crisis type foray into being a Chinese english teacher is symptomatic of burnout.  Yes, to place the motivations for this Chinese teaching jaunt into perspective, it is pretty much a period of professional re-evaluation and assessment with an aim of putting my mind and career back on track.

My mind is good right now.  I feel very good and am optimistic that this is going to be a very fun and enlightening experience.  My idea of fun might not align with the ideas of fun held by my readers. Fun is perhaps not the best word.  Intriguing might be better.

In a couple of hours I am flying to Wuhan to meet another teacher who will hopefully get me ensconced at a school where I will soon be working.

My apologies to my readers for the delay in making posts.  The past few weeks have included alot of downtime and not much in the way of happenings.  I will be sure to summarize any posts of interes