Wondering and Wandering

The New Year dawned for me in Hawaii, but on January 3rd I flew back to China via Seoul, Korea. You know how I lived December 21 twice? Well I lost most of January 3rd and 4th. Getting into Seoul at 5:30 p.m on the 4th, I missed the one early afternoon flight a day to Dalian. So I had an almost 24 hour layover in Seoul. I found an airport hotel and promptly slept like the dead for twelve hours! It was a great way to transistion to Asian time, but I missed out on the few daylight hours that I had to see anything in Seoul. Oh well, the Incheon airport is gorgeous and there are a million shops to wander through and delicious food to eat.

I was picked up at the Dalian airport by a school driver and of course the first question I asked was whether I was going home to the apartments or back to the Kerren Hotel. Happily the reply was that I was going to my apartment!!! At long last, I had a home. The month of January was spent making forays into a Costco like store called Metro. There I was able to outfit my apartment with bedding, towels, cleaning supplies, area rugs and cupboard organizers. Metro and the Anshan market in KaiFaQu supplied basic food supplies as well as weekly groceries. Who would have thought that I would be thrilled to be housekeeping again. But after 4 months of hotel life, it was simply pleasant to be cooking, cleaning and doing laundry for myself! Okay so now that more than a month has passed, the hrill is gone, but it lovely to have a place to cozy into and given how small the place is I can clean it stem to stern in about an hour. The construction dust that gets kicked up on the grounds does mean that a thorough cleaning is necessary each weekend, like it or not.

So I have a home sweet home here in JinShiTan and it is swell to come home from school, kick off my shoes and fix dinner. There is a wonderful market each Saturday in the village of JinShiTan proper and it is a lively place to find fruits and vegetables. There is also a school van that one can take into town (KaiFaQu) Tuesday and Thursday evenings if you want to visit the Trust Mart grocery. And also each Saturday, the van goes to the big Metro store so I can pick up those western staples that I am sometimes craving.... cheese, bread, peanut butter, brownie mixes.

There is also a great village just up the road from the apartments about a 15 minute walk. The shop keepers and villagers have gotten over the shock of westerners appearing in their doorways. The first visit that Leslie and I made we each bought a gallon of water and fruits and veggies. We happily carried our goods home only to discover that the gallon jugs of water that we had bought were in fact "firewater!" The smell is quite potent and our first exeperiment to see if the liquid was actually flamable flopped miserably. The jug now acts as a useful doorstop to hold open the small patio door each night. We joke about taste testing the rot gut, but I value the health of my liver and I can find really fine Jameson Whiskey and good Grey Goose Vodka which suits my taste much better. The ROT GUT purchase does make a great story though. Illiteracy has its drawbacks.