Unfortunately, there's still a lot of important stuff that I need to get done before I go, not least of which is getting my visa. But sweet, patient Maria at the visa office told me yesterday "Jared, it's still going to get there on the 6th, you don't need to call every day, I'll let you know if something changes, I'm going back to work now". Thanks Maria. So it better arrive on the 6th because my flight is in the early afternoon on the 7th and after trying to go to China for years, waiting an extra day might just give me aneurysm.Still, I have a long way to go (in every sense of the word) before I get there. The first leg of my journey is an 11 hour flight from Portland to Tokyo. I then have a 5 hour flight to Beijing with a 9 hour layover before a 3 hour flight to Chongqing. In total, the trip should take about 29 hours and I will travel over 7,000 miles.
Honestly, the scope of this journey and transition hasn't fully sunk in. I've been away from home and family before and I do well on my own (I'm talking to you mom). I've been to foreign countries for periods of time too but this is just all on a much larger scale...as everything is in China. Chongqing is one of China's four direct-controlled municipalities, which from my research basically means that the city got so big and important they had to let them look after themselves. With almost 30,000,000 people and 32,000 sq. miles I'd say they deserve that right. For comparison, New York City has just over 8,000,000 people and is 468 sq. miles. There's a 16hr time difference between the West Coast and China which interestingly enough has only one time zone for the whole country....haven't figured out how they're getting away with that yet. They speak Sichuanese which is technically related to Mandarin but apparently not mutually intelligible so my Chinese major was all for naught I guess..thanks Rochester. Honestly, most people know Mandarin anyway so I should be able to feed myself and get around no problem.
But for some reason, all these challenges aren't freaking me out, they're making me excited. Love my family but living at home has been a bit.....un-stimulating so I'm excited for a drastic change of pace. I'm excited for the potential friends and adventures and skills that I'll gain from taking on a challenge like this. Plus, it's all coinciding with Chinese New Year which just seems appropriate.
So I'm not quite leaving yet but the adventure has definitely already begun. My next post will probably come from China assuming I can negotiate China's firewall, but I'll update as soon as possible.
