Destination: Xinxiang

We quite possibly know where we'll be living and teaching in China!! I say possibly because our director is still fine tuning the details, and until he says everything is for sure I don't want to jump the gun.
But we're pretty excited. The whole Hefei and Zibo ordeal was quite stressful and though we said no to Hefei, I didn't want to have to go through that stress again. Xinxiang just feels right, and it has a WAY sweeter name. (I'll keep it short and simple, we looked into teaching at other schools and though they were great, something didn't feel right about them. Especially the apartment conditions, which the director warned us about. After seeing moldy rooms and hearing not so pleasant things from foreign teachers who were currently at those schools, we decided to pass).
OK, so the details. We'll be teaching in the Henan Institute of Science and Technology in Xinxiang, in the Henan Province in China.
This school looks legit (pics below) and I'm loving how well-rounded all the amenities are. The location of the city isn't quite as >amazing< as Hefei (supposedly, because I've like never been there?) but it is in the south western area of China, about 6-7 hours south of Beijing (all calculations based on public transportation), 11-13 hours to Shanghai and about 23-24 hours (a whole DAY!) to Hong Kong. But that's all pretty good. Of course there are huge cities everywhere, Xinxiang has a population of 5.5 million, but those are three cities we really want to visit. Mostly because we've heard of them? Haha there is so much of China no one has ever heard of, even though the cities are enormous and wonderful. But Shanghai has some of the sweetest photos and the LDS temple is in Hong Kong, so I'm sure we'll make at least one trip to both in the year we're there.


Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the university we'll be teaching at that our director sent us.





Here's what we know about the university, city, and apartment:

1. Name of school: Henan Institute of Science and Technology
2. Location (Province, City): Henan, Xinxiang
3. Population: 5.5 million
4. Number of students in school: 33,000
5. Number of students in each class: 30-60
6. Number of foreign teachers the school employs: 5
7. Amenities the apartment includes: kitchen, computer, Internet, phone, TV, furnishing, private bathroom, western toilet
(OK we know much more but I'm not going to type the whole list)

This is a picture of one of the apartment's living room in the complex we'll be living at.


How all of this info makes me feel: I'm super excited the school has a manual for us to use but also let's us create our own lessons. And I'm glad they have a copy machine for us to use, because this means they quite possibly have other supplies for us to use. Also- a gym and pool! Sweet!
Also, I hope we get a two bedroom apartment! Just in case anyone ever comes to visit (Am I dreaming here?) The only thing missing from the list is a washing machine, which I'm hoping the apartment has? And a DVD player, but we can easily buy one of those. Is it weird we consider a DVD player a necessity?