So its been a few days since my last post and I am sure you are all wondering what I have been up to?! Well, I'll start with today and work my way back.

Wed 9.20
I woke up to:
a) no electricity=no coffee, no air conditioning, no light, no yoga,
b) no internet=no ability to check my mail
c) no cash=no ability to buy the coffee I couldn't make, no food
d) no ability to use my ATM card-this just fucking sux

and this all happened before 9am. awesome.

but don't worry, as usual, my panic attacks amount to nothing and everything gets sorted out in the end. I'll address each issue one by one.


a) found out that due to the development in my area, they shut electricity off in everyone's place and you just had to flip the switch to turn it back on. thank g-d i speak chinese or poor me would be sitting in the dark this evening.
b) internet is getting set up in two days. as it turns out a local resident needed to open an account with some kind of id card you get as a chinese citizen--either way, its all set up and it costs $125USD per year (Highspeed DSL) . I love China.
c) I actually had some cash (like $10USD) so I did buy a cup of canned coffee(yes I settled) and lunch...And then the head of my office gave me a lot of cash-more than enough to last for a month...Until my bank stuff got sorted out.
d) I found a bank across the street from my office that will accept my Citibank card. I love Citibank.

Disaster averted and i'm no longer a total basket case. good.

Tues. 9.19

I realized that it was a major Jewish Holiday this weekend! So what did I do? I googled 'Jews in Shenzhen' to which I found a contact and will be spending the holiday at some random's house. There will, however, be 8 kids. oy vay.
small world story-the lady I contacted is from UWS, NY and works with a guy that Jeff went to school with...And in fact the guy Jeff went to school with sent out a job opening to the j-school list serve...And this job opening is there because the lady is moving to beijing. random.

oh and I bought a cell phone.

Mon. 9.18
First day of work. Suprisingly uneventful. Met everyone at the office, they are totally cool and I love listening to them switched in Chinese. I don't talk much because I'm so out of practice for stuff beyond day to day dialogue that I stumble over my words, get embarrassed, and start mumbling...then I usually get a blank look. I'll get up to speed soon-its only day 4.

Sun. 9.17

Haishang shijie (water world)
The 'expat hangout'. Figured I would get it out of the way soon.
ok, so I found like 5 expats; 3 of which were old men accompanied by young, cute chinese girls.
little weird. The other two were cool Spaniards but I refuse to make friends with expats because i need to practice Chinese. This 'area' is like a block long and covered by a starbucks. not very exciting. I left after about 20 mins.

WA-ER-MA (walmart)
total anarchy.
omg. so many people.
purchase list: yoga mat, yoga dvd, cd, pillow, OJ, and a headset.
couldn't wait to get out of there.


Ok folks, thats enough for posting. I'll tell more later.