living in beijing
Where I live Part 2
I thought I’d start off with what we see and experience in our daily life here in Beijing. Mark took this photo yesterday morning. It took them 25 minutes to get from where he took the photo from to the overpass you see ahead. Notice the blue sky though? The day before this was taken … Continue reading
Chinese Drivers License
Getting your Driver’s License in China for a foreigner is a three step process : Get your eye exam at an approved hospital Visit License Bureau to pay fee and schedule time for test Take the written driving exam I had the help of the local company (Asian Tigers) as part of my settling into … Continue reading
Becoming Familiar
With most new situations in life you have two basic ways you can react : you can cope or go crazy. Accept and embrace or reject and hate. Find the adventure or only complain. The old adage of “attitude determines your altitude” holds true. But it’s not called culture shock for no reason. Reacting to … Continue reading
Where I live part 1
This might be a boring post to some but there are few of you that I know will enjoy the simplicity of it (I hope). I thought I would post photo’s of our apartment and where we live. I know that Mark has done a video of our place but I thought I’d do some … Continue reading
Student Led
I’ve had the opportunity over the past several weeks to spend several visits at the kids school, Beijing City International School. I had the chance to meet twice with an education consultant, John Littleford, the school had hired to do an assessment. He conducted a series of interviews I’ve already written about. I also had … Continue reading
The Familiar
Many folks back in the states seem to react in shock at times about our decision to move to China. I still meet people here (at work) who are visiting from the States : “Hey what are you doing here? (Cause they expect to see me in Seattle not Beijing) “I live here.” “You do?” … Continue reading
Seven, Tong Tong and Mao
Today I met my soon to be tutor, Seven. She chose that as her English name because her Chinese name is “Chimei” which is Seven sisters. Now that I’ve met Seven, it fits. What sounded like an interesting and maybe a strange name to choose for oneself, now just sounds right. She came to our … Continue reading
Sofi blossoms
The person I was most worried about with moving to Beijing was Sofia. She was in the middle year of 6th grade, in middle school. Never an easy time in anyone’s life. There are cliques, teasing and worrying about who is more popular etc…. For whatever reason Sofi back in the states wasn’t putting herself … Continue reading
Biking to Work
Traffic in Beijing This is a video taken while biking to work. It’s shot with a GoPro HD camera that I’ve mounted to the handlebars of my bike. I live around 1.6 miles from work and biking usually takes me around 10 minutes. Biking in Beijing is generally very safe once you adapt to the … Continue reading
The Last Logistical Bits
The last logistical bit of relocation bureaucracy is complete, our air shipments were delivered today at our apartment in Beijing. I’ll review a few details and things that I understand better now. Here is a tour of our Apartment Beijing Apartment Tour from mbgriffi on Vimeo. I wrote the about the process of getting permits … Continue reading