So you have packed your bags and boarded the flight. You are happy that the suitcase full of headache tablets and cold medicine seemed to slip by unnoticed. Relieved that you are no longer a walking pharmacy and comforted in the knowledge that the Beijing winter can do its worst. You have enough cold and flu medicine to help a small army recover.
If you are like me then you will have spent more time worrying about what to pack rather than the logistics of making the long trip alone and arriving in a huge and let’s face it, daunting city. I set off on my trip full of the joys of life and as it turns out completely unprepared.
Things go well at first. Bag is not overweight and I have a couple of hours to take it all in and to make a last few weepy phone calls. Two hours into my flight and the pilot announces an emergency landing. Not the best news for a nervous flyer. Then I start to think of the logistics. This means I’ll miss my connecting flight. Now my lack of preparation becomes stunningly apparent. I don’t have the school’s address on my bag. Wait! I don’t even have the school’s address. Any contact numbers are in my email and who’s to say I will be able to access that.
Cue a dash through Abu Dhabi airport and an unexpected few hours in Shanghai. By now my scheduled flight has arrived in Beijing, but I’m not on it. I try my best to contact the school from Shanghai but that’s a no go. Alright get to Beijing and try to figure out what to do from there. I finally arrive in Beijing, as I expected my luggage is missing. Ok just head out and try to find the school I guess.
Walk into arrivals and there it is. My name on a piece of paper and a very friendly young woman holding said piece of paper. I have always wanted to have my name on one of those pieces of paper at the airport. I tell you I could not have been happier. Jesse and Sam had waited for me all day. The school had been frantically trying to find out where in the world their newest recruit was. We all had a good laugh about it after.
After a long journey full of mishaps it was such a relief to know I was going to work for people who care. It becomes all the more apparent that you are going to work for good people when you have an experience like mine.
The city itself is as crazy as you expect. The smells are interesting, the people are rushing, you will be stopped in your tracks several times a day, you will have moments when you feel overwhelmed, you will have moments when you feel underwhelmed, you will get lost, people will “look closely” at you, you will try and fail to speak some Chinese and you will have the best experience of your life. You will work with, play with, moan to, gossip with, experience with and laugh with a great group of people. It’s cheesy and perhaps a very Irish mentality but we are a community if not a family. Like I said Beijing can be daunting but you will have the best resource a new comer could ask for; a group of friendly, ridiculously helpful and quite frankly pretty remarkable people to help you when you arrive.
So if you are thinking about making the move to Aihua or if you are already booking flights to join us, be prepared for travelling mishaps, have numbers and addresses. Be ready for delays and diversions but be assured that someone will be there to greet you.