WE'RE IN CHINA!

Yeah! We're finally in China. It was a very long flight here. Our total traveling time from the time we left St. George on the shuttle was 30 hours. We arrived at the Las Vegas airport a couple of hours earlier than we needed to because we wanted to have time to visit with my dad and mom. Then, we had a 5 hour lay-over in Los Angeles. Due to the difference in time, we left LA at 5:40 pm on Monday, Aug. 29th, then arrived in China at 10:40 am on Wed. Aug. 31st. China is 14 hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time.

We were met at the airport in Jinan by my supervisor, Karen (her English name), whose English is very good. I have a better pic of Karen that you will see in my next post. She brought Angelo and Roddy with her who helped with our luggage, drove us to our apt., and packed our luggage up the flight of stairs to our place.

For the next 6 hours Karen, Angelo, and Roddy took us to lunch at a very nice and very authentic Chinese restaurant not far from our apt., took us to my campus, and then took us to an internet cafe to print some documents from one of my emails that Iwas going to need later. By the way, when I said 'took', you need to understand that we walked to all of these places. My campus is a 20 minute walk from our apt.

At that point, Karen and Angelo left us with Roddy at the internet cafe. But, Angelo came back with his car to take us to the police station. Yes, we have already been in a Jinan police station, but only because it is a requirement that any expatriate (persons with foreign passports,) who are establishing a residence in China, register their address with the local police. Just a formality.

We were taken next to a Bank of China close to our apt. to open a bank account. By this time, I was feeling the effects of jet lag and needed to rest. It took Truman about 1 1/2 hours to get the account squared away. Thank goodness for Angelo, he was a very good interpreter. Finally, we were able to go back to our new home to settle in and rest. Actually, I wasn't feeling very good, so Truman did the settling in and I did the resting.

This is a picture of a Catholic church that is right next to my university campus. I'm standing in a large public square, my campus is to my left. Pictures of my campus and Truman's will be in a later post.