Flying to Tianjin

To get to my summer school job in Tianjin, I took a 4 hour flight from Wenzhou. You can also take a train to Tianjin but I wasn't too keen on a 20+ hour trip even if I did pay for a sleeper cabin. Also, some of these arrived in the middle of the night and I didn't think my new employer would be too impressed if I asked them to pick me up at some ungodly hour. Thanks to my friend May, she was able to book me a cheap flight on Tianjin Airlines for just under $150. Because I was leaving the day after the Dragon Boat Festival when people would already be back at work (or for kids, sitting their end of year exams) I was able to get these at a much better price.

So, on Tuesday 23 June I was up early doing a final clean of my apartment and packing the rest of my things ready to meet May at the bus stop at 8am. Because I hadn't caught many buses in Wenzhou and didn't know which one to take to get to the airport she decided to come with me to make sure I didn't get lost. So, off we went. Firstly, we had to get to Wenzhou so on the bus we hopped to catch the ferry in Obei. After we made it across the murky river we were lucky enough to see bus number 42 a few minutes later that would take us directly to the airport. That trip probably took about 45 minutes. We arrived at the airport at 11am, well before my flight at 12.35pm.  The airport was small but very busy, so as we waited we looked in the gift shops to pass the time.

I arrived in Tianjin at 4.35pm after a brief stopover in Qingdao and was picked up by one of the Chinese workers from English First. After a 30 minute drive we arrived at the apartment I would be staying at in the middle of town. There I met the HR assistant Rita, who let me in and showed me how everything worked - everything is written in Chinese of course, even trying to work the washing machine and the remote on the aircon can be like a puzzle sometimes. However, it is so nice being in a big city and I am surprised by how beautiful it is with it's old buildings, statues, parks and the river that is perfect to run along. I am definitely going to like it here.