Short Trip to Nanjing

I just got back from Nanjing. Since I have been in Beijing the police station where I registered my residence here kept saying I had to come back and register on the 21st of August. No one seemed to understand why until my landlady Lotus found out that they meant I had to go to Nanjing to register my permanent residence.

Unfortunately I learned this on the 19th. So Lisa at TEFL helped me book a round trip train ticket to Nanjing. Then Kayla the foreign teacher coordinator at the school I am teaching at drove me all around Nanjing to get everything taken care of. So after a 14 hour train ride to Nanjing, a whole morning and half the afternoon of filling out paperwork and another 9 hour train ride back to Beijing, everything is taken care of.

Life as a ex-patriot is so exciting. I did get to see a lot of Nanjing though. Plus since I arrived in Nanjing at 6:30 am, I was able to relax by the lake next to the train station in the relative quite of the morning. It was nice; people were just sitting on the dock watching people fish and young men paddle their thin canoe's around the lake. The main excitement was when someone caught a fish and everyone rushed over to see.

Most of the rest of the day I spent following Kayla the foreign teacher coordinator to police stations and government offices. At the last police station the officer, who processed my forms, also acted as a Chinese language teacher to me. He also suggested that I should learn the Chinese character when ever I learn a new word. That seems like good advice. While I was Nanjing, I also got the key to my apartment at the school. It is a pretty nice apartment on the inside.


So it was quite an eventful trip.

Some Nanjing photos;