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| The view from the balcony this morning |
Today was one of those days that only really happens to people who travel to other countries to live. Lena and Robert faced it like seasoned professional world travellers and I was actually very impressed by how calm they managed to stay.
This post will look at the key events of the day and hopefully put an entertaining spin on some rather mundane events.
This morning we had decided to walk to school which is about 20 minutes away. As we emerged from the elevator and made our way out of the building a lady who was pushing an electric bicycle started pointing at my legs and talking in Chinese. I was wearing shorts and socks. Maybe she was congratulating me on my bold fashion statement.
Another lady joined her and even though Lena and I kept apologizing and saying we didn't understand they kept talking. In Latvia when this happened people usually just shrug and move on. These ladies obviously thought that if they kept talking we would eventually understand.
After extricating ourselves we found the walk to be quite interesting. Cars and motorcycles are REALLY quiet in China and every few minutes another one would silently sneak up on us and whizz past.
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| Robert and the "Elephants?" |
We arrived at school to meet the administration staff and from first impressions it really looks like an astounding place to work.
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| CBIS |
Although apprehensive beforehand the police station was actually the least strenuous part of our day. A female police officer processed all of our documents efficiently and she took a real shine to Robert. In fact she was the first person here in China to ask for a photo with him. I did notice that several times today people would be looking at him or paying him compliments. He is gorgeous and very cute though.
After the police we went to China Mobile to get new sim cards. This seemed to take forever as the bureaucracy seemed to kick in.
We went to 2 banks after lunch. NRC bank which will be our day to day bank and Bank of China which will be our bank for transfers back to Latvia. We were very lucky to have Claire here as she basically did everything for us. She filled in all the paperwork and all we had to do was sign our names. Lena and I are both extremely grateful to her for all her help.
The NRC was pretty straight forward. Efficient and helpful staff and Lena and I both left with new bank cards.
Bank of China, although helpful seemed to take forever to get done and in the end we will have to go back next week because the manager wasn't available.
The strangest thing happened though. When I was dealing with a bank worker in the VIP section (yes I am a VIP folks) the glass front door to the bank shattered. No one was near the door. Lena said that one second it was there the next it wasn't.
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| Bank of China door |
After the bank and nearly 8 hours after leaving the apartment we went to a supermarket to get food and a few other things. We had to rush though as Claire was due to finish work.
I will write much more in depth about the shopping experience in China in later posts.
An interesting first day and a long one. We were happy to get home and I cooked noodles and vegetables for dinner. We also ate some buns (see my earlier post) and ate some Dragon fruit. We had never had it before and it was really tasty. Like a sweet kiwi
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| Robert with a Dragon fruit head |
#cbis #chinamobile #bankofchina #NRCbank #dragonfruit
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