The Grand Tour

We waited for almost two weeks without much contact from our foreign affairs officers, neither Frank nor Joy. We hadn't heard when or our classes would officially start, but we knew school officially started with registration on Sep. 6. (I should point out that the school had stressed we arrive no later than Sep. 3-so we came on Aug. 27 just to be safe). We had no idea what kind of classes to prepare for, if we needed to begin assembling lesson plans, curiculum, or what. This made my teacher of a wife a bit nervous having never experienced such short notice in the US.

We eventually received an email indicating we would have an orientation meeting the tuesday (Sep. 8) following registration. We were picked up in a bus, where we met the rest of our Western colleagues who all lived in our building. The first half of the day was orientation by our Foreign Affairs Office, explaining (often in a painfully formal manner) the rules of our school, expectations, and other useful information. They even had the local chief of police

share some registration laws, as well as scooter and bicycle road rules (I speculate he mainly wanted to practice his English, and had prepared a speech accordingly). The morning concluded with a tour of campus and free lunch, followed by a tour of the campus museum on the 16th floor of the library-elaborting the history of our new school and

how they had contributed to Chinese scientific posterity. The day concluded with a very brief meeting with the actual English department, where we received our class assignments and schedule. And just like that, our day was over and we weren't expected back on the Xiasha campus for almost two more weeks. This is standard operating procedure in China.