One week into my new gig in beautiful Chongqing and all went very well. I've got my Z visa, FEC and RP in my bag...seems lighter than usual, or is it my imagination? I wonder. The university I'm with is one of the top in the province (I only found out when I got there).

Students here spend an obscene amount of time on studies. However, I would be wrong to say that they are studying by rote. I've never seen a bunch of twenty somethings Chinese students huddle around a dormitory brain storming a subject, in this case macro economics.

I was equally surprised when they come up to me after hours to discuss issues in near perfect English (accent is still very Chinese but grammatically correct). With such enthusiasm I'd believe that they will breeze through applied economics come next semester. 

I am in the Beibei district which is about an hour's train ride to the capital Chongqing. I am pleasantly surprised that it's not crowded like the trains in Guangzhou. City buses cost only 1RMB to anywhere which is really cheap and the university is only 4 stops from where I live.

The apartment is modern, fully equipped and fully functional. I'm glad I chose this over the ones in Hebei and Jiangxi. I really like the weather here. It's a tad cold in the morning but warms up later.

Since we are in a valley, sometimes heavy fog covers everything, it is as if we are in the clouds (I'm not talking about the smog in Beijing and Hebei). Food here is okay, hot and spicy which is fine with me. There's the usual KFC, Mackers and the usual fast food joints. If I wanted better food, I can always hop on the train to the city where there is a slew of western, Indian and Thai food.

The traffic is not as crazy as Guangzhou where everyone wants to kill you. With Tomb Sweeping Festival cominG up, I will have 3 full days to explore the city. Originally, I wanted to go to Wuhan but Beibei changed my mind. I'd rather be spending my holidays here. I'll shop for a bike tomorrow so I can ride to school and around town since traffic is so light. 

Well, I think I'm going to enjoy my stay here in Beibei. I will continue to write updates on my teaching journey as I go along. Until next time....