Falling into place.

My life is starting to settle down a bit. I completed my application for grad school and I've gotten a little more information about what I'm going to be teaching next year. Dan has signed his contract and we're both making our plans for while we're home. Yet, I can't help but feel like I won't be able to really relax for a long time.

I guess I'm pretty nervous about my new job. I know I will do well, but not knowing exactly what's expected of me is making it harder for me to visualize success. It's a bizarre sensation, really. I haven't ever been nervous about a job before. What's especially odd is that I think my perception of the job is different because of the pay, as if they can't possibly want to pay me that much money to do the job I've been doing for four years now. I've had to do massive amounts of planning, creating materials and paperwork before. I've even taught up to 32 hours a week before (which was absolutely insane looking back on it)!

There are many things I'm really excited about, such as having small classes, being involved in an active school, possibly coaching soccer (they don't have a girls' soccer team and it would count as one of the two extra activities required). It's a beautiful school with a lot of resources and a lot of community involvement. Still, it will be a lot of work and a lot of new things to learn. I just hope I don't get totally overwhelmed.

Fear of failure, anyone? Dan pointed out that not only have I never been rejected from any place that gave me an interview, but I've also never been fired. I know these are good things, but they do add to the pressure to do well.

As I mentioned before, though, aside from freaking out about my job, things are going fairly well. Last weekend Dan and I took our village friends out for dinner, which was a real treat.

We met up with them at 7:30 on Friday evening and set out in search of a restaurant. What Dan and I didn't realize is that if you invite people out to dinner, you can't just sit in the normal dining room of a restaurant. You apparently have to reserve a private room. It's not like it costs any more or anything, but it's just expected. There is also apparently no concept of having a drink and waiting for 15 minutes or a half an hour for a table to be ready. Because of this, we spent about an hour driving around Changping looking for a restaurant with an empty room.

Eventually, we found a place. We ordered a bunch of food and a lot of beer. The food was all actually good, but the beer was killing me. I pretty much hate beer now. It might just be because of the way Chinese people drink. Every couple of minutes they do a toast that requires you to down your entire class (small as it may be, it's disgusting). I am sort of exempt because I am female, but I still end up having to drink way more than I want because they keep toasting. In all, though, it was a great dinner. Dan and I went home relieved. Oh, and I almost forgot, we got a housewarming present from one of our friends. It is the best lamp ever! Dan and I were laughing so hard when we got it, but I'm not sure what we're going to do with it now. A picture will definitely be posted soon!

On Saturday and Sunday, Dan and I did some climbing, but mostly we took it easy. We woke up at 6 a.m. on Sunday to go get fried dough, but then went back to bed. It was so nice to do nothing, especially because the next couple of weekends are going to get busy!

Today we're going into Beijing to go climbing and take some more stuff to our apartment, while we're at it. It means I'll have to wake up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to get back to work, but I'll be glad to go climbing. My fingers have stopped hurting (and peeling) from what I did on Sunday, so that means it's time to go again!