My third day here in Chengdu is just coming to an end and you can't even imagine what a hard time I'm having sitting on my bed, concentrating on this entry while the 15 mosquito bites all over my body are crying for attention. Very very loud. Maybe at some point those silly creatures will lose interest in my sweet German blood. I seriously doubt it though. But I'll keep you posted on that one!
Soo, my work day ended cleaning up the kitchen after Rex and I made some homemade watermelon ice cream. He is great to cook and bake with, very patient and careful with all the tools and respectful to every step the recipe calls for. The cookbook I brought him as a little gift from Germany was a total hit! This morning we stirred together some delicious omeletts and he happily gobbled his up. Amy was not so interested, but as main meals never get her attention (oh, just wait for snack time though), I was happy she drank all her Yak and Cow milk. I should taste that Yak Milk once. I can't even imagine a taste for it.
The afternoon I spent together with Rex, playing made up games, practicing his counting skills and ended up playing shopping. Man, this boy loves to shop! After many, many 'hold on, I need this too, and I could get this!' his bill was up to $575 and he happily payed the cashier (me) with a lego toy connection piece. If real life would be that easy...
Dinner was delicious again, like I said, Canjie always cooks up several (at least 6) different dishes and gathers them in a circle around a big soup filled bowl which can contain tofu, meat, pumpkin, chestnuts,... YUMMIE! I could eat that stuff all day long, well, let's say my mouth can, because other than my taste, my stomach can't really handle the very hot Chuan food so much. I noticed that Chinese never drink anything next to their food, whereas I can easily sip down half a liter during one meal. But I figured when I drink a lot before dinner and a lot after it works for me, too :-) one happy Ronja. Rex' homework went fine as well, so that afterwards we still had plenty of time to look at some English books together that he brought home from school. I forgot how relaxing it is to look at a book with a 7 year old and to discuss the different pages. Let's me think of Gavin and Joshua, which I had lots of fun with in Burlingame :-) well, and our ice cream making rounded up a nice day. Tomorrow I will have my first Chinese class via Skype. 4 hours. I don't know how the battery of my Ipad will handle that, but we'll both try out hardest! As I am together with one other girl the only Cultural Ambassador in Chengdu, there is no sense in arranging a hole class in a school for just 2 people, so we'll meet online. I'll let you know how it went! Now I will get my AC working, so that after my effort of getting ready for the night my room will invite me with some cool air. Which will last for maybe 1 hour. Then I will wake up at 2am sweating all over. The latest. No covers needed for that szenario. Just a normal night in Chengdu, China

Monday morning, alarm clock rings. Feeling way too tired to get up, but after realizing where I am and what this day brings I can almost jump out of bed in a second. Coming into the kitchen after getting dressed and clean, I meet Nainai and Canjie, who are really sweet and caring, offering me all kinds of food for breakfast. I end up eating Mantou, some sort of steamed bread, and jogurt w/e fruit aka smoothie. The bread barely tasted like anything, but together with some apple it wasn't too bad. Smoothie was really delicious, cold and freshly made. Yum. I met with Becky at 10am, and we went through the schedule which she confirmed twice with my agency to make sure we follow all the rules. She showed me around the house, the washing mashine, my TV, etc. In a couple of days there will be a bike available for me to use, so I can get around this huge community better. Living in Lushan (that's the name of my community), it takes 2 bus rides and a 30min subway travel to get to downtown Chengdu. So in total about 1,5 hours. When you get lucky to catch the bus, which only comes every hour. My good planning and organization skills come in handy here :-)
The housekeeper of my family, Aoi from the Philippines, offered to take me to some place during the day, so I get an idea of how things especially public transportation works. Great! We got picked up around noon by the fu zhe, one of the many community owned golf caddies that give people rides around the place. Felt like in a holiday resort hotel. He dropped us at Luxe Town, the "main street" of our community. The bus came straight at 1pm, and trust me, people arriving one minute later have no chance to get on that bus. At 1pm straight he headed for Century City, the closest subway station around. On our ride there I was pretty blown away by the many constructions they had next to the street. Huge house next to huge house. One probably fits 500 families. It's crazy.
Arriving at the subway station, we went through security, which every subway station has, where you put you purse on a belt like at the airport to be screened and you walk through a scan, too. They really keep their public transportation safe and by putting a police officer in every train there is basically no chance for crime. Good to feel safe! We meet with some friends of Aoi in Tingzilin, a bigger town closer to Chengdu. They just finished their Mexican food. In China. Served and prepared by Chinese. You can imagine how that looked like :-) unfortunately we couldn't stay long, as I told you it takes quite some time to get around here. So we returned home just in time for me to officially start working, which meant play time with Amy. She just came back from school and swim class (4.45pm) but still had plenty of energy left. No idea how she does that. So we played in the humonhous playarea downstairs, drew, puzzled, played with her dolls until it was time for dinner together with Canjie, Aoi, and Nainai. Oh yes, I was really excited about dinner. From Aoi I knew that Canjie is a really good cook and she didn't exaggerate one bit. Like I imagined, there were about 7 different plates on the table, all filled with different kinds of dishes. As I promised myself before my arrival, I was willing to try everything they served me. So guess what, I grabbed my kuazi (chopsticks) and dug in. Hot peppers, potatoes, bamboo sprouts, undefined vegetables, eggs and fish, I had all of it. And I have to say, it was DELICIOUS! Everything had a great flavor, perfectly seasoned. And I couldn't even believe that I just ate fish and I liked it. Feels like a revolution. I am a little proud of myself. A tiny bit. I was stronger thab my mind. After 8 years of not eating seafood. Good girl, Ronja.
After dinner Rex returned home from school (it was about 6.30pm, he had both swim class and piano lesson), had to sort of rush with dinner which was served another full time for him and his mom - all new - to start his homework right after. He was also full of energy, even though I could tell he lost concentration during our 1 hour working time. No wonders, he was up since 6.30am, going from school to swim class to piano to homework til 8.30pm and he is only 7. Wow, different world here. But he did his best, and after finishing we high fived each other. You could tell he was more than ready for bed. After saying goodbye to all the family members, I too made my way downstair to my room, to get some rest. I was really tired, not really from working (which work might some of you think :> ) but from everything new and unfamiliar, from the time difference and the Chinese around me 24/7.
Well, first day of work: check. Tomorrow morning I'll start at 6.45am, helping the kids to get ready for school and eat breakfast. I'll let you know more :)

So this is officially the first entry written from my new temporary bed. It's actually one of the two beds in my room that I could choose one from. Haha, well, I chose one and my dirty clothes chose the other ;-)
After almost 30 hours of travel across half the globe, I finally arrived in Chengdu, China yesterday evening. Flight went pretty smooth, I can really recomment Etihad Airlines, just not their chicken congee - gosh, I never ate something that reminded me on throw up both formally and tastewise that much. But besides the food fiasco (which wasn't too bad as they had plenty of other stuff on the plate), the experience there was really smooth. But I tell you, flying in an airplane with mostly Chinese people you better be on that plane fast, as I had the feeling that they robbed all the duty free shops at Abu Dhabi Airport and tried to make EVERYTHING fit into those overhead bins. Which should actually hold my luggage. But luckily those bags of mars and snickers bars aren't as sturdy as my suitcase. So I won that battle. Ha. Still, those people either pretend to overhear what the stewardesses say or they really don't understand it (even though there was a Chinese translator), but, still rolling into our parking position at Chengdu Airport, those dudes get up and try to drag all their squished duty free conquests out of those bins again, and trust me, they don't care about being shaken all over the place and they certainly don't give a **** about falling into someone. Poor stewardesses trying to make them sit down again. No success.
Anyway, first thing I noticed, trust me, the very first thing when I exited the aircraft was this awesome smell of food. Haha, isn't that a sign that my first experience of China is the smell of good food. It has to be!
After passing the passport control (without any problems) and spotting my checked suitcase on the belt (thank God!) I happily walked through a little labyrinth right into the arms of my waiting hostfamily. First row, hostmom waving her hand like crazy right infront of my face and saying my name about 5 times to make sure it's really the right girl (too cute!). I was so happy to see them all (besides hostdad, but he was on a business trip), especially to see my first pictures of the family back home matching with the people infront of me in real life. What a relief! Becky, my hostmom, hugged me right away and the kids' faces were lit up, even though still shy. Just what I expected.
At home there was the nainai (grandma) and canjie (nanny and cook) waiting for me, welcoming me warmly as well. Both only speak Chinese, so I tried my best to communicate. Not too bad. No real conversation, but we will get there. Slowly and with a lot of effort from my side, but we will. After showing me around a little, and ending up in my room, I said goodnight to the kids and the rest of the family, treating me to a much needed shower. As I wasn't even a bit tired, I used the rest of the evening to get settled in my new room, putting away all the things I brought. I have to say, there is not a whole lot of room, and sharing a bathroom with 2 other women certainly doesn't give me the right to claim the whole counter (which I would have needed for all of my stuff), so I ended up storing some things in my suitcases and under the bed. No big deal.
Not feeling any more fatigue, I decided to read some more in my new and comfy bed (as if I haven't read over 6 hours that day yet) when I eventually turned off the light and the fan, and pushed some more buttons on this hightech control on my wall. As Becky took a day of Monday to introduce me to the whole situation, both job and house wise, we agreed on meeting in the morning at 10am to start our first say together. And guess what, I slept like a baby in this bed, feeling way too tired to get up when my alarm clock rang at 9am :-)