Ah, time. In the scheme of things, this should have been the hardest week of all but it was pretty smooth. I agreed on and moved into an apartment; did my first lessons; had broadband installed; sat through endless bureaucracy and have settled into a nice routine.
Moving in was a little bit of a crisis in itself. Working late into the evening and then settling into my home without bedclothes nor crockery, I was a little bit panicked to get some of the necessities of life. Fortunately I have a massive supermarket close to my place that has everything.
Just 100 metres from my apartment is a daily food market with the freshest most wonderful vegetables. The long eggplant I had yesterday was as close to perfection as you can really get in life, art or the sciences; there were mushrooms galore; the choi-sam came with a gift: when I put it on the chopping board, in the corner of my eyes saw something dark moved under a leaf; lifting it found a creature that moved like a little like a worm, one end of it stretched into a pointy tentacle that reached out into the direction it wished to go, placing it and peristaltically creeped ahead. It was leech. The first I'd ever seen. The only drawback is what a colleague referred to as WAT (white-added tax); some of the prices sound dubiously high (by chinese standards) and usually I just refuse - they may expect bargaining but I'm hardly in the mood.
Tomorrow morning will be my first real chance to explore my unpolished gem of a neighbourhood. Tomorrow will also entail having a lesson observed by the boss. Since she grilled a senior teacher just yesterday, I'm hoping (a) that everything goes dreamily; (b) that if it doesn't she shows some leniency for someone finding their feet in our system.
It's nice to have proper home.
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