First Day of Beijing

Soooooo we made it! Traveling wasn't too bad. Our plane took off two hours late because it took them awhile to get the water working in the plane (which is a pretty good excuse for not leaving) so we got there at 3am EST instead of 1am. We had fun convincing the taxi driver (unsuccessfully) to take both of us and our 4 huge suitcases in one taxi so we had to take two. I tried to answer the taxi drivers questions, but I was so tired some of the words that I wanted to say to him ended up being Spanish...and then I almost fell asleep. We were sleeping by 8:45 which means that we woke up a little after 5 am. We met the person who I signed a contract with - amazing person. Since we hadn't bought cell phones yet she took us and another guy from "Arizona" (neither of us thought he was from the U.S. and he has a really heavy accent from somewhere) to buy them since there was some deal going on and her mom showed us a duplex that they own which we're going to move into on Sunday. It's right in the center of the city, kinda in between where Dan will be going to school and where I'll be working, so it works out really well. It's a really small place, but it's cheap and it'll work, there will be pictures up later, probably in my next post. There's no one else living in the duplex right now so if anyone wants to move to China and live up there...that would be fun.
I have an interview with a primary school tomorrow which the lady also set up. She said it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll get hired and I'll be able to start on Monday. She remembered that Dan was studying Monday through Friday (like I said, she's amazing), so she found some schools for me that have classes then and not on the weekends.
My Chinese is horrible, so I don't talk much since Dan and I have gone everywhere together, but that will change. I've found that I can understand people fairly well, but I don't know how to answer them.
We walked a lot today. I was going to say how great it was and how much exercise I'm getting, but I think I pulled a muscle in my foot...so nevermind.
We figured out how to hack into facebook, and my blog, since it was also blocked. I'm also trying to write a lot because I'm trying to stay awake. Our goal is to stay up til 10, sigh, I want to go to bed now.

What we're doing

First off, I wanted to explain my name. Dan chose it, said I should think of my favorite Chinese dish, which is scrambled eggs and tomatoes and get a name from there. Also, after I thought about it, I realized that at Towson, when I told one of my Chinese friends my name in Chinese, she said I had called myself a tomato. So, the blog name makes sense.
Here's a picture I stole off Google:

Dan and I are leaving for Beijing on August 24th, flying from Vermont to Newark to Beijing, so we should get there sometime on the 25th (I know nothing of flight times). We will take a cab to our hotel and the next day I'm going to meet with the agency I signed a contract with, and hopefully, with their help, we will find an apartment pretty soon after getting there. I will then have interviews with schools, and hopefully get a job within a day or two (things move pretty fast in China with teaching). There was a man I was in contact with who had an interview, got hired a couple hours later, and started the next day.

I'm not completely sure what will be in this blog. I'm hoping there will be lots of funny stories about my interactions with Chinese people, some things to pray for, and just general information that we're still alive. I'm going to try to be on facebook consistently, I'd love messages or emails from people (my email address is on facebook) just to know how everyone's doing. So yeah, I guess there's more to come in a couple weeks.