Yvonne, 22 januari 2012
China , Shenyang -16°

A cold welcome to Shenyang.

I’m in Shenyang!

It’s about 2 weeks ago that we arrived at the train station of Shenyang. And we were lucky, because the train station was under construction at that time. And that’s what you want around midnight, freezing cold, tired and with 6 bags. Eh… not exactly. Extra welcoming were the men at the exit of the station. They made us pay for the luggage. Apparently you can only bring 20kg with you on the train. Somebody could’ve told us…

Anyways, after being ripped off by the taxi driver we crashed at our hostel for the night. The next day Jennifer {the contact person of the university} showed up to pick us up. We went straight to the police office to register and after that to our apartment. Let me rephrase that; our temporary apartment. We stayed there for a week. Which meant that we were camping indoors and had no clean clothes left after 2 days {we didn’t know this & so we didn’t pack accordingly}.
I don’t know whether it had something to do with meeting a Murphy {sorry for blaming you, Richie ;}} a few weeks earlier, but there was definitely a Murphy around. At least his law Everything went wrong; I lost a bracelet, my shoe broke, the poster I got for my birthday fell out the bag/got stolen and it was cold outside.

But now everything is all right again. We moved to the apartment on Tuesday and it is really nice. It has a huge living room, a kitchen with a stove, hot plate, microwave & oven, a bathroom and 3 bedrooms. One is the actual bedroom, the other 2 are the laundry room and office. And... it's warm inside! Where Shaoxing was cold indoors here you're only cold when you're outside. All the houses here have central heating so when you get inside it's nice and toasty {22C.}

The last couple of days we’ve been busy cleaning everything, unpacking and organizing all the stuff.
Between the cleaning and organizing we went out to explore the city a bit. We literally explored only a bit, because the city is huge! There are several shopping areas with a lot of the same shops as in the Netherlands {Jack & Jones, Vero Moda, Only, H&M}. Although the shops are the same, the collection is very different to what you can find in the Dutch stores. In other words; H&M is the only place where I can buy clothes that I consider normal

Last Friday we got a call from Jennifer that our passports were ready. And ready means that both of us can stay in China until January 10th 2013. We can leave and come back at any time, without any restrictions {yeah to the residence permit}.
The first trip will go to South-Korea! We’re leaving next Thursday {26th} from Shenyang airport and we’ll arrive in Seoul in the evening. We have about 3 weeks before we fly back to Shenyang on the 15th of February. Places that we will definitely visit are Seoul, Busan & Gyeongju. I’m excited!

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll upload some pictures later {check my 2 previous blogs for pics}. I’m going to get ready to go outside with the sparklers to welcome to year of the Dragon. {if I didn’t know better, I would think I’m in the middle of a warzone… fireworks is all I hear}

Xnnián kuàilè!!

Naar Yvonne in China bellen kan nu wel heel goedkoop met HalloBuitenland.nl