Saturday Recap — First Weekend of CSC China 33

Despite just getting a few hours sleep the first night, I was feeling pretty good in the morning. I was also very excited to meet the rest of the team after talking on the phone only for three months. The WeChat’s were coming in, so I went down to breakfast. It’s included in the rate, so I’m not complaining, but I’d rate it as ok. There’s a fair selection, and the food I tried was not the best, but not the worst. There was a decent selection of fresh fruit which I’m sure I’ll be eating a lot of.

I must say, that meeting everyone didn’t disappoint. Between the voices and small pictures I’d seen, I was able to pick everyone out. Matthias, Maria, Jose, Kempton, Melisa, Susa, Payel, Bharat, Suanne, and Rafael were all there. Only poor Ivonne had travel difficulties, but would make it later that day. I also finally got a chance to meet the folks from Pyxera: Brandon, Elaine, and Karen.

We spent the majority of the morning running through a review of some of the logistics for the four weeks. We then had a fun rest of the morning with some further ice breakers with the team. We played people Bingo… finding who has which characteristics (run a marathon, has a dog, is left handed, etc.) Then we followed that up with writing down and then sharing the highlights of our life story with one of the other team members. Your partner then shared your story with the rest of the group which was a fun way to learn more about everyone else that I’d be working with the rest of the time. You also could also start see people’s personality come out when they were presenting (or being presented about). Jose was telling jokes and making up a few things along the way. Matthias was hamming it up while presenting. It was also interesting to see and hear about various people’s highs and lows… which made me realize again how fortunate I’ve been to avoid some of the challenges that the others have like loss of a parent or a divorce.

After we wrapped that up, we went for out for a noodle lunch. I got a spicy pork noodle dish which was really good. It was not too spicy but had a slow burn after the fact. After that we walked around and found a few of the local things around the hotel like an ATM and the Carrefour (similar to a Wal-mart).

Matthias and I walked over to the the Carrefour to bit up some peanut butter (to make breakfast a little better), some water for my room, and a 12-pack of Tsingdao. Matthias and I hung out for a bit in his room, which was a lot of fun. He was showing me some of the board games that he brought, but most of them required 3 or more people, so we didn’t play any. Some sounded pretty complicated, but there was an interesting one called Story Cubes where you roll the dice and then need to make up a story. About that time, I was about to fall asleep so I went up to my room, and started to unpack a bit. This was the first time I’ve ever unpacked into a hotel room, but I figured that I was going to be here a month, so I might as well.

It was at that time, that I started to find post-it notes that Korey slipped into my suitcase. I thought there was just one – which at that point I was thinking “Aww.. that was sweet. Only as I began to unpack did I start to find even more. It was probably one of the most thoughtful things that she could have done. I loved finding them, and spread them throughout the room so that I could see them wherever I went. Super sweet and immediately it made my room feel more like home. I’ve never been so excited to unpack my suitcase to see what the next note might say.

It was finally getting close enough to dinner time… so I brought down the ridiculous USA leis that I bought for my sub-team. Being that both Matthias and Maria were good sports, we donned them with pride throughout dinner where the whole group went out for dumplings together. They all were very good! We had egg and onion, pork, squid ink, and fish dumplings. As expected this was all served family style, and it was cheap. The whole meal was only 32 RMB or the equivalent of about $5 (including beer!).

After dinner we walked down to the marina and saw some of the additions for the Beijing Olympics water sports. They had the Olympic torch and some really need light displays going on during the evening. I was exhausted, and couldn’t it the pillow soon enough.