First day in Wuhan

I am currently lying in bed extremely hungover listening to the weirdest sounding bird i've ever heard. I think he's tweeting but in chinese. Yesterday was my first day in Wuhan and it was quite eventful.
I woke up and took a cold shower because i didn't understand the whole hot water tank switch thing, then decided to go for a walk around with Bobby (the teacher who also arrived last night) and his dad. We wandered the streets aimlessly, looking at all the strange shops and restaurants. First thing i noticed was the stares. Everyone will stop and look at you. We were the only foreign people we saw on the entire walk and probably the only who spoke fluent english. Nobody in this area speaks any english really except the younger people, which makes shopping and eating difficult but an adventure nonetheless.
We walked through a strange open place which had a bunch of random workout machines and a ping pong table. awesome. While there I also saw a guy driving his kid around in a big remote control car. also awesome. Feeling adventurous, we decided to sit down and have lunch somewhere. There was a long line of little restaurants and they were all motioning us to come in. All so friendly. We sat down at a tiny family owned restaurant right off the main street. The waitress spoke no english but luckily the menus had pictures. I tried my terrible mandarin out for the first time. "uhh, san..pian.. pijiu?" as the waitress left I had hope i just ordered 3 beers and not the death of three helpless kittens. She returned with 3 rather large bottles of beer for us, which i would've feared at 11:30am except chinese beer is lighter than our light beer. about 3.1%.
The menu was great because it had pictures of the dishes (except one which was just a picture of a bird of some sort) but we still had no idea what we were ordering. Bobby asked what the meat in one of the dishes was and the lady said "dove! dove." interesting. I was pumped. I've always wanted to take a bite out of those little annoying bastards. When our three dishes arrived it turned out she was saying duck not dove, oh well. sad face.
The meal was actually delicious. Around here it seems they put something called sichuan peppers in alot of the dishes which give them all a nice kick. Just how I like it. We finished up and payed the bill. Between me and Bobby we knew enough chinese to somewhat get by ordering and getting the check. It all came to about 80 RMB which is the equivalent of about $12 canadian. For three people to eat a nice meal and get three large beers in canada would be well over $50. I love China.
After returning home and having a much needed jet-lag induced nap I met one of the other foreign teachers, Shannon, who is on her 3rd year here and speaks great chinese. She took us on a journey to the grocery store and was very helpful with everything. I met some of the other teachers also. On my floor is Sean from Vancouver (and his chinese girlfriend), Bobby, Lloyd from London and Richard and his girlfriend Tara from California. All very nice people!

Later on all the foreign teachers got together and went out for an amazing meal. Thankfully Shannon was there to translate for us and order us all food because at this place there was no pictures. The whole meal came to maybe $30 canadian. Food for 7 people and two beers each thats amazing.
Afterwards we all decided to get to know eachother and drink on the roof of the school. So professional us teachers. I learnt that Sean had a band here last year but the lead singer left. Looks like i'll be doing some jammin out while i'm here also. Yes great chinese rock-superstar!!
After the roof we all went to one of the foreigner bars here called Vox. Our cabbie popped his tire on the way and we had to flag down another cab. But we made it. For a "foreigner bar" there was quite a lot of chinese people but luckily the younger crowd in China speaks decent english. I met a group from France here teaching French (a chinese person speaking french is a hilarious notion) and lots of other people whos names i cannot pronounce.
We finished the night around 4am with a trip to Mcdonalds. As if i was in China and I was going to a bar, getting drunk and going to Mcdonalds after. Am I still in barrhaven? Note for anyone travelling to China, a spicy mcchicken in china is SPICY. Me, sean and british lloyd ate our mcdonalds and stumbled back home.
So far China is great success. Everything is cheap. the teachers are all awesome and the food is great. i'm looking forward to my first day of teaching on wednesday