The ant sensation

Hello!!!!!

I´m sitting here in front of my laptop, wondering how may I explain why since I came here I do have such a strange feeling, "the ant sensation".
Have you ever been in a massive concert or have you been in the FC Barcelona stadium when they play an important match? and have you had this feeling about how small am I?
Well here this happens everyday, the crowded wide avenues, the massive buildings, the traffic jams...everything is big, great, unthinkable, incomprehensible, disproportionate, massive...not enough adjectives to describe it.... you feel the sensation of power and greatness almost everywhere and you realize why this city has been the capital of "the empire" .... I try to figure out the sensation of a country side person or a farmer coming here the very first time, nowadays or 1000 years ago, it doesn´t matter at all......
Everything it´s bigger than your mind can really figure up.

On the other hand, the " ant sensation" makes me feel anonym and free of any ties, somehow I realize that nowadays I´m in the right place to avoid having any pressure and learn, study, play, read, cook, rest...whatever I ´d like to do without the western social pressure over me!!

Just some thoughts...

David

Almost settled down

Hello,

Here we are in Beijing, it´s been a bit more than three weeks since we arrived and there´s been no time to update the blog, but obviously many things had happened.
We arrived here on the 1st March and I´ve started working as a Media&Marketing and E-business teacher at the ICB university since the very beginning , we´ve been pretty busy since our arrival, the lectures, Visa paperwork, get a bank account and a credit card, a mobile telephone...and buy the stuff we need for the apartment... and so on.
After that I started feeling a bit like at home,eventhough, we just knew a bit of our area because this city is huge!!!

Thanks to some fellow teachers working at the university, it´s been much easier to get to know some basic things about the area and start having some social live, we´ve met an english teacher who lives in our building who´s been a great help for us, an american couple and his son kid Seth, he´s such a cute kid, or Mike an american teacher at the ICB, they´ve been all very nice to us.

But let´s talk about feelings and Beijing experiences, since we arrived, today it´s been our first sightseeing day, we´d gone to the City center and we walked through Tiananmen square and had quick look at the forbidden city, but we had not entered because we´d like to do it more calmly, also we went to the main commercial street in Beijing and we had a walk throgh some malls and a traditional food market where you coud buy scorpions, snakes....and many things you should see by your own...I felt very happy to do so, because It´s like start getting into the country knowledge and get to know the city where we live...I´d say our city???

I felt like an ant when I walked down the street with so many people and we arrived to Tiananmen and we saw see that massive buildings.....

Regarding the last weeks it´s not been easy to adapt to a new city and a new job, both don´t have anything to do with what I did before..but I do feel happy about how has it been and it is a really awsome experience to relate with the students, because though I speak english during the classes, they help you out of many doubts with your first chinese words and they´d explained me quite a lot of things about Beijing or about China.

Well, the last thing I´d like to say but the first by importance is THANKS TO MY WIFE!!! without you I wouldn´t be able to do anything of this.

Cheers,

David

Preparing the trip

Hello.

I´m living in Barcelona with my wife and we´re moving to China on the 25th of February.

Nowadays I have a good job nearby Barcelona, working as a Marketing director and we have a comfortable life despite the crisis .

Therefore it´s a bit weird that we are going to move to China and leave everything we have here,but sometimes all the things get together and suddenly direct you somewhere without an apparent reason.

Without any idea of what happened you have to choose between stability and a comfortable life close to your family and friends or take an unexpected chance to change your life and turn everything upside down. What should I do?

My personal answer has been fast and I haven´t had many doubts though, from my point of view I´ll have always the chance to come back and carry on with my life here, but when I´m going to have another chance to learn about China and its culture?

After speaking with my wife and seeing that we have the same ideas and concerns, we decided to give up our jobs and move forward to arrange our trip to China, now we´ve just started to realize all the changes and things we must do before going on, and all the fears we´ll have to go through and overcome before moving to China.
What are we going to do? how´s it going to be? it´s sure that we´ll miss our family and friends but it will be easy to get to know people there? .....

A lot of questions but a lot of exciting moments as well, it´s great when you sort something out and you go through to the next step in order to move there but I do feel scared also when I stop and start thinking about China...

The solution : no answers until we are there..

let´s work on the things we can arrange or control by ourselves and never expect anything, let´s allow that China surprises us.

Let´s prepare the baggage!!!