First day of School

Our first day of school was today. I have three classes for which I facilitate. Third year: FGB380- Basic Financial Management (Dr. Kim) and RIL211- Intro to Insurance (Professor Simmerman). Fourth year: FGB390- Advanced Financial Management (Dr. Crain). Stephanie and I use rooms 601 for 4th year and 603 for 3rd classes. Which is on the 6th floor...lots of stair climbing as there are no elevators...but what the heck...it's good for you right?

To the pics...top pic is a little path that I take through the gardens as I walk to school. Second pic is looking up the hill that our school sits on...that I walk up. This is part of the campus infrastructure. Third pic is the front of our school building. We primarily utilize the western end (left side) and LNU has other college classes. The fourth pic is a pic of the freshmen. Before the freshmen start classes, they go throug military-like exercises led by instructors from each school. The first few weeks we heard them outside our class windows doing their drills, so I brought my camera a snapped a pic.

LNU is a very large campus. Our building is just one of many. The campus is split by a major street called Huang He Lu (English translation: Yellow River Road). I live just west of campus. It takes me about 10 mins to walk down the hill from my apartment, across, and back up the hill to get to our building. It would be half the time if I could just walk straight across. But such is life ;)

Comfort Food and Companies from Home

One thing that has been helpful in living 6000+ miles away from home is finding all kinds of American companies and their advertsiements. Above are just a few pics I snapped of some we have seen/patronized.
Despite the fact that average salaries are maybe (I am being generous here) 2000 RMB per month (~$294 US), people flock to these places to eat all the time and pay relatively high prices. At McDonald's (there's one on every corner practically) a Big Mac value meal is 18 RMB. Pizza Hut charges 50 RMB for a supreme pizza (BTW...Pizza Hut is far nicer here than at home...go figure). Dairy Queen charges 14 RMB for a Peanut Buster Parfait. Starbucks charges 20 RMB for a tall frappucino. Imagine how we would react if these places charged those same prices in dollars (eg- $18 for a Big Mac meal).

The biggest surprise is that KFC is the most popular American fast food chain in China. The Chinese love the Colonel's chicken.

Mary Kay has been in China now for a couple years. It was great to see the billboard and be able to show my mother since she is a Mary Kay consultant (soon to be director for the Kucharski Kickers...love ya Mom!).

My Home Away From Home

Here are some pics displaying my apartment. I live on the second floor. You can see my kitchen window (the extended section of building just above the minivan) and my bedroom window to the right. The entrance to our building section is below the kitchen window and to the left.

Next are some pics of the stairwell that I wrote about on 9/14. The stairwell gives the impression that our apartment is a dump. But really it's not as depicted in the remaining pictures. Yeah the bathroom isn't the most glamorous but it gets the job done. Plus the hot water is frickin hot (which you would love Doug!).

I have 2 bedrooms (10' x 14' each), one bathroom, living dining combo (10' x 21'), and my kitchen (5' x 10'). Great for one or two people...but a whole family would be pushing it. I would guess this apartment building to be about 15-20 years old. Our associate dean and family has a new apartment which is much more western in design and on larger scale.

The last pic is a shot outside the front of our building which is Lantian Street. We have a little fresh produce store, a Quik Mart, and another little convenience type store. We also had a little Chinese restaurant but it closed recently....unfortunately. Their sweet and sour pork was great.

26 Hours Over

My good friend Alex saw my site and asked what kind of planes I flew on over here. SO I thought I would share...and make this the official beginning of the trip.

Our first leg of the flight was on United Express from Springfield, MO (SGF) to Chicago O'Hare (ORD) flight number UA5999 departing at 6:00 AM (8/19/08) and arriving I think around 7:40 AM (the stub doesn't say). We flew on a Canadair CRJ-200 (top pic). I sat in seat 2B.

We had a 5.5 hour layover in Chicago but that allowed the 5 of us flying over to Beijing together to get to know each other. Dan, Stephanie, Matt, Dr. Elissa Lewis, and myself. Our flight from Chicago to Beijing Capital Airport (PEK) was on United Airlines flight UA851 departing at 12:43 PM and arriving at 3:20 PM (8/20/08). Total flight time for that leg was about 13.5 hours. I was assigned to seat 50H but actually had the whole row for H,I, &J since the plane was only half full. The aircraft used was a Boeing 747 (middle pic).

When we arrived to Beijing we came into the world's largest terminal (I think)- Terminal 3. Easliy made our way through customs showing our passports and visas. In the midst of all of this we learned we actually had a 6th person in our group from the east coast. His name was Bill. AFter meeting Bill, we said good-bye to Dr. Lewis who was flying to Qingdao. From there we had to go to Terminal 2 to catch our flight to Dalian, our final destination. Fortunately we had a 4 hour layover and an assigned tour guide name Sunny to get us from terminal to terminal and help check us in.

Our last leg was on an Airbus A300 (bottom pic) operated by China Southern. Our flight number was CZ6140 departing from Beijing at 7:30 PM and arriving Dalian (DLC) at 8:40 PM (8/20/08). I sat next to Dan on a very full plane in seat 18F.

It took nearly 26 hours from take-off in Springfield, MO, USA to touchdown in Dalian, Liaoning, China. We were certainly ready for bed!