Well, this is Tianjin...
At least it has a Metro...
Woo, I managed to fleece my parents into paying for my Visa and travel insurance for my birthday present. Bit of a rubbish present, I know, but I've been totally underpaid for the past few months, and I have 5 weeks to get myself all sorted out. I won't be with my family for my birthday anyway, and they will be functional and essential gifts - and one less thing for me to worry about, seen as I also have to fork out for a new businessy wardrobe and my graduation in a week and a half. My folks will also be sorting out my transport to an airport in London, so I guess I've done pretty well in theory.
Got a pretty cheap quote for insurance at a bargain of £122 - my first quote was £300 so I reckon we've done pretty well there.
Check me out. Insurance is sorted, my Visa will be sorted on Tuesday (Rolls-Royce are doing it for me, I just have to leave my passport with them for a fortnight), I have booked my injections for next Friday, and I have already bought a shirt and 2 new pairs of trousers! I've bought a dictionary, language CD, some other book, and a customs book! I don't think that's bad going for just less than 24 hours' work!
I still don't know how I'm going to sort out my baggage - 20kg - can you believe?!
When I went to Paris for 5 months I bought the biggest suitcase I could - I could actually get inside it! I remember having me and my boyfriend sit on it to close it, and at the airport it weighed about double of the baggage limit - so me and my parents were there bagging my essentials up, and my boyfriend had to bring some more stuff over the week after!! That's not exactly possible, but I guess my work clothes will be light, and I can wear all my heavy stuff on the plane. Plus, I'll have money to buy new clothes when there (God, what do they wear over there?!), unlike France, where I was a skint student!!
The reality of my situation is sinking in now. It doesn't feel real; I don't think it will until I have been there 5 months and have come home. I've located some British expat websites that I found when in Paris. However, in Paris we still could get hold of Cadbury's chocolate (although £1) for a Crunchie or something, and Galeries Lafayette did sell Tetley's tea and Jaffa Cakes!
I have a funny feeling that eBay and I are going to be on very good terms, as well as the Chinese postal service when the time comes for me to get all my stuff home!
I read on www.lonelyplanet.com (man, I could read that thing all day, in fact I saw some amazing Lonely Planet books in Waterstone's today. Hint, hint.) that the average income for a Chinese person is about $3,600 per annum. Okay, I'm getting a free return flight, a free apartment and free bills, to a limit (I think), and about £260 a month. I could live on that in the UK - okay, so it's not much, but when I was a student sometimes I lived on that, including paying rent!! So, I reckon I'm going to be considerably loaded in Chinese terms.
Today I also discovered that my teaching contract is only for 5 months - I finish work on 20 July 2005. My Visa has a 6 month duration, so this enables me to travel for a month if I wish to, after my contract ends...!!
This means I could be a possible shopaholic for 6 months - any money I do save won't be worth much in British terms, but in Chinese terms the money will go so much further! Cashback!
Tianjin is also probably the closest part of China to South Korea, is only 1.5 hours from Beijing, and costs about £1.90 to get to (that's RMB30, which is incidentally the average cost of a 3 course meal, or a bottle of beer?! How random!?). Looks like I won't be cooking for 6 months! I find it interesting that a McDonalds meal is about RMB20. I'm not going to be eating that rubbish mind...it's bloody expensive tho!
Kim x
Woo, I managed to fleece my parents into paying for my Visa and travel insurance for my birthday present. Bit of a rubbish present, I know, but I've been totally underpaid for the past few months, and I have 5 weeks to get myself all sorted out. I won't be with my family for my birthday anyway, and they will be functional and essential gifts - and one less thing for me to worry about, seen as I also have to fork out for a new businessy wardrobe and my graduation in a week and a half. My folks will also be sorting out my transport to an airport in London, so I guess I've done pretty well in theory.
Got a pretty cheap quote for insurance at a bargain of £122 - my first quote was £300 so I reckon we've done pretty well there.
Check me out. Insurance is sorted, my Visa will be sorted on Tuesday (Rolls-Royce are doing it for me, I just have to leave my passport with them for a fortnight), I have booked my injections for next Friday, and I have already bought a shirt and 2 new pairs of trousers! I've bought a dictionary, language CD, some other book, and a customs book! I don't think that's bad going for just less than 24 hours' work!
I still don't know how I'm going to sort out my baggage - 20kg - can you believe?!
When I went to Paris for 5 months I bought the biggest suitcase I could - I could actually get inside it! I remember having me and my boyfriend sit on it to close it, and at the airport it weighed about double of the baggage limit - so me and my parents were there bagging my essentials up, and my boyfriend had to bring some more stuff over the week after!! That's not exactly possible, but I guess my work clothes will be light, and I can wear all my heavy stuff on the plane. Plus, I'll have money to buy new clothes when there (God, what do they wear over there?!), unlike France, where I was a skint student!!
The reality of my situation is sinking in now. It doesn't feel real; I don't think it will until I have been there 5 months and have come home. I've located some British expat websites that I found when in Paris. However, in Paris we still could get hold of Cadbury's chocolate (although £1) for a Crunchie or something, and Galeries Lafayette did sell Tetley's tea and Jaffa Cakes!
I have a funny feeling that eBay and I are going to be on very good terms, as well as the Chinese postal service when the time comes for me to get all my stuff home!
I read on www.lonelyplanet.com (man, I could read that thing all day, in fact I saw some amazing Lonely Planet books in Waterstone's today. Hint, hint.) that the average income for a Chinese person is about $3,600 per annum. Okay, I'm getting a free return flight, a free apartment and free bills, to a limit (I think), and about £260 a month. I could live on that in the UK - okay, so it's not much, but when I was a student sometimes I lived on that, including paying rent!! So, I reckon I'm going to be considerably loaded in Chinese terms.
Today I also discovered that my teaching contract is only for 5 months - I finish work on 20 July 2005. My Visa has a 6 month duration, so this enables me to travel for a month if I wish to, after my contract ends...!!
This means I could be a possible shopaholic for 6 months - any money I do save won't be worth much in British terms, but in Chinese terms the money will go so much further! Cashback!
Tianjin is also probably the closest part of China to South Korea, is only 1.5 hours from Beijing, and costs about £1.90 to get to (that's RMB30, which is incidentally the average cost of a 3 course meal, or a bottle of beer?! How random!?). Looks like I won't be cooking for 6 months! I find it interesting that a McDonalds meal is about RMB20. I'm not going to be eating that rubbish mind...it's bloody expensive tho!
Kim x
posted by Kimmeh @ Tuesday, January 11, 2005
1 Comments:
At 6:18 pm,
Anonymous said…
don't rely on lonely planet as far as tianjin goes. My wife and I did when we went there and it was all wrong!!! The shops were long gone, the restaurants non-existant....the list could go on.
http://www.wonderingmind.com
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