Getting Ready...

Well basically today I just did some shopping buying up the necessary stuff for the trip like shower gel, deodorant, toothpaste etc. I also ended up buying a nice English-Chinese / Chinese-English dictionary, i think this will help me a lot on the trip haha. I'm a bit pissed off though mainly because every time i need money I have to go to the bank because my debit-card doesnt work GRRRrrrr ¬_¬ .

I thought it would also be a good idea to buy some new clothes that would be better suited to being a teacher. I don't think t-shirts 2 sizes too big and hooded sweat-tops would go down that well in the classroom lol. So I think I have bought everything that I essentially need for the trip, all that's left now is to put all this new stuff into the suitcase.

Since around 10pm today i've been making some CDs to take along with me. This task is a little laborious but I figured if I wanted to listen to some music out loud I would need CDs init lol. So I just have to bare with it and do it.

One other thing I also picked up my Chinese Yuan today but the stupid post office gave me 39 元100 bills. It kinda ridiculous, I asked the lady at the counter if they will be mixed when I ordered them and she assured me they would be. But look they are not mixed and are all 100 bills. Anyways gonna have a get together tomorrow, just really to say bye to some people. The next post I make will most likely be from China.

Why I Chose The Title For The Blog

Well you may have noticed that the title of the blog is a play on the title of the Chinese novel "Journey to the West". If you don't know what this novel is about here is a brief summary:

The novel is a fictionalized account of the legends around the Buddhist monk Xuánzàng's pilgrimageIndia during the Táng dynasty in order to obtain Buddhist religious texts called sutras. The Bodhisattva Guānyīn, on instruction from the Buddha, gives this task to the monk and his three protectors in the form of disciples — namely Sūn Wùkōng, Zhū Bājiè and Shā Wùjìng — together with a dragon prince who acts as Xuánzàng's horse mount. These four characters have agreed to help Xuánzàng as an atonement for past sins.

So I thought it would be a good title for the blog since I'm going to China and will get a chance to learn more about Chinese customs and culture. Unfortunately some one had already chosen this title for their blog and this the reason there is a "da" in the title instead of "the".

One more thing, if you didnt know the story of Dragonball created by Akira Toriyama was inspired by the story of Journey to the West.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonball

Background Info About the Trip

I decided to create this blog to document my trip to China. I will be living in China for a minimum of 3 months while teaching oral English. As the days go by I will try and add pictures and videos of my time living in the country.

I will be leaving for China on Thursday 4th and according to British Airways the flight will take around 10 hours. I will arrive at Beijing International Airport where I will meet the agency that will assign me a school.

I will update this blog with more posts as my time to leave draws closer.

About

Welcome to my Asian Blog aka Journey to da East!

I originally created this blog back in 2008 for me to inform everyone about my time in China whilst I was volunteering as an English Teacher. I decided to create this blog was because I had not seen any other blogs about teaching in China coming from a black persons perspective. Because of this I thought it would be a great idea to document my experience there using this blog. However I later realised while I was in China that this would not be the only time I would visit Asia.

Earlier last year (2010) I went to Tokyo for a holiday were I was able to visit a lot of interesting places as well as meet a lot of new people. Japan for me has always been somewhere that I found interesting and before I went to China I wanted to live and work in Japan. Before I got the opportunity to go to China I applied to teach in Japan via the Jet Programme but I was unsuccessful.

Late last year I decided to apply to teach in Japan once again. I felt now would be as good a time as any to go to Japan. At the time I didn't have any commitments here in London so nothing was really holding me back from exploring Japan to the fullest! Unlike China I plan to stay in Japan for at least 1 year. Depending on how much I enjoy living and working in Japan that year could turn in to 2 years or maybe more. So the majority if not all the posts you will see on the blog will be about my time in Japan. Unfortunately I do not know when my next trip to China will be.

If you have anything you would like to ask me or something you would like me to discuss on the blog please feel free to leave me a comment on any post or you contact me at this address:

journeytodaeast@gmail.com

Thank you for taking the time to vist the blog. Please also check out the blogs facebook page, twitter account and youtube channel.

last updated: 12.03.11

Contact Information

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. If you would like to contact me in regards to something on my blog or something about Japan please use the email address below:

journeytodaeast@gmail.com

Dorian