I landed, waited for my luggage, - although because of what happened last time, I waited somewhat apprehensively - and went on my way, hoping to see someone by the name of Yolanda waiting for me with a sign.
I walked out, and I see two Chinese ladies and they ask me "Lan Hollis?", and I'm like "Huh?"
"Lan!" and I'm like "You're Yolanda?" and she showed me the sign she'd written "Lan Hollis", and I'm like, uh no, "Ian Hollis" (The error here comes from the font used in the Chinese messaging service WeChat being sans-serif, which makes the upper case 'I' and the lower case 'l' look identical. But why they think I'd write my first name entirely in lowercase, and only my second name beginning with a capital is entirely beyond me.
She was there with her friend Tina, another staff member from the school where I'd be working, because Tina can drive and Yolanda can't.
We drove from Ningbo airport to Fenghua - about an hour, maybe 90 minute drive - and I was hoping to be able to go straight to my apartment, unload my stuff, (like, just put my bag in the room), and then get on with things; However, this was not to be the case. Yolanda and Tina were rather insistent that I set up a bank account, even though I already had one. Anyway, it turns out I needed to set up a new one, anyway, because my old one was from Hunan, and I am currently in Zhejiang, and if I'd continued with the one from Hunan, it would have cost me a small fee any time I wanted to anything, so I began setting up a new bank account, only to be told that I couldn't without a telephone number, so off to China Mobile me went and got me a sim-card with a local Chinese phone number. I chose a number from the list, which was apparently taken, then chose another which is now mine. We went back to the bank - a slightly different, closer to the school where I work, bank - and continued setting up my bank account, where I deposited a small amount of money I'd had with me since my time in Australia where I exchanged some Australian money for some Chinese in the Sydney International (Charles Kingsford Smith) Airport.
After it had all been said and done, we went to lunch on the fourth floor - the 'theme restaurants' level - of the shopping centre which is part of the same building complex as my apartment. Tina had ordered me a peppered beef steak - I think that's what it was, anyway. Anyway, we ate our meals, talked with each other about ordinary things - what it was like for me before, what was going to happen this time around, and so on ... after which I was taken back to my apartment on the eighth floor, where I could, after having been awake for more than twelve hours straight, finally catch some rest.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment