We started our morning off at 7:30 with breakfast, and then following, we sat in a conference room for nine and a half hours. It was typical orientation stuff, and pretty much a reiteration of everything that was said in the handbook.
The morning was kind of slow, but the site-specific information was interesting. Xi’an gets to go to western China and see an old movie theater/movie set and film a scene there. I want to say that they did this because of me, but it’s probably a coincidence.
Based off of what was said, it seems like Xi’an gets the better deal for most everything except for the phone situation. Changchun gets smart phones as their program phones while we still have old bricks.
Other than that, today was kind of slow. They gave us a smoke detector, a textbook, and a tee-shirt, and then we were free. I was able to chat with my RD (although I had to use a lot of translations, yikes), and I went out to lunch with Cayleigh and Dianna. Our last American meal were chicken sandwiches, and while it’s no chick-fil-a, it was good.
I’m nervous to start the language policy, but so far, I’ve been able to understand people/get the most basic meaning out of what they’re saying, so hopefully I’ll be good. My goal main goal is to avoid the lowest level language class, and that’s mainly for my self-esteem. There are six levels, and I’m going for second lowest, but my hope is to be in the dead middle (so the level 300 class.) I’ll be sad if I’m lower than 202, but at least I’ll know how to improve.
So, here’s to my last full day in America, and the joys of a 36-hour trip to China.