Above:The Baha'i House of Worship of Asia. Below:Life and times of your fellow World Citizen, Kolya

I arrived in Xi’an on Sunday afternoon by plane from GuangZhou.  The airport in Guangzhou is about an hour from the city but i was able to get a free shuttle bus from a hotel that’s very close to where my friends live.  I had to pay for my suitcase being overweight, again, and it was actually even more expensive than when i paid the overweight in Denver!  (US$25 vs. about US$33).  But i was prepared and had enough cash on me so it was no problem!

The airplane landed about 30 min ahead of when it was supposed to (based on the info we had looked up in GZ).  So i had to wait in the arrival hall for 20 min and be annoyed by over-helpful taxi hustlers, who at first just asked if i needed a taxi but then this one lady who kept coming back offered that i could use her phone to check if my host was coming or not; my explaining that i didn’t have my host’s cell number didn’t get rid of her, and unfortunately, i didn’t remember how to say that i was totally positive that my host was coming since we had communicated by email, and so she needn’t worry!  So i ended up, out of desperation, ignoring her.  And she finally went away again, and then soon after that “Andi” (a lady, not a guy), one of the foreign affairs officers from my school, showed up and we drove to XAIU—Xi’an International University or Xi’An WaiShi XueYuan, in mandarin Chinese.   She dropped me off at my new apartment which is very luxurious, compared to what i faced during my 2 year stint at the Jianghai school in Baotou (which, to be fair, was before they built the special building for foreign teachers—so i don’t know what accommodation there is like since 2003).  Anyway, my apartment has 3 rooms—a BIG bedroom, a combined living room and kitchen (3^rd room is the bathroom).  It’s already furnished and has a microwave, mini-oven, clothes washer high speed internet connection and a TV with HBO and CNN!  What a surprise!  Now i’m going to spend too much time watching English TV!