I Know Where I Live - a statement I never thought I would make with so much enthusiasm as an adult

I finally know where I live which has been a continual problem since my arrival. I got in and did a really good job of staying awake on the car ride home; however it was too much for me and when we got about 20 minutes outside of the city I collapsed. When I woke up I was in the dead center of a city of 6 million people. Despite the map that was kindly provided, no one was able to locate with any accuracy where I lived or where I worked. I was shown a large circle that was “about” in the right spot (I later discovered that it was not even close to the right area). To add to the problems only about half of the roads were labeled in pinyin (Chinese written in Latin script) so I was limited in what I could read. I was given a card with my home address and 3 others with the addresses of all the EF schools in Tianjin. With these I have been able to navigate between home and work for the past two weeks with only the words “hello” and “thank you.” I am proud to say that as of today I can declare that I “know where I live” (sort of). I promised myself that I would get a bike once I could make this declaration so stay posted for those upcoming adventures!