What up blog readers! I made it alive :)

Ni hao peeps!
Well here we are, you reading a blog and me writing one (which I never in my life thought would happen), thanks for taking an interest in my Chinese escapades!  I am coming to you live from Dalian China, for all of you who don't know where that is its on the most northern part of the coast of China.  Dalian is, surprisingly, one of the smaller major cities in China with a measly 5.8 million inhabitants.... so tiny right??  The city is gorgeous and so is mountainous country side and ocean that surrounds it.  My fellow students and I have been her for.... 4 whole days now! Four down only 179 left to go! haha Since we have been here we have gone to multiple shopping centers which are like nothing any of us have seen before.. except for the one that reminds us of Sams Club haha.  We also went on a bus tour of the city and visited a temple outside of the city, that is where the picture is from.  You would not believe some of the crazy things we have encountered thus far, including but not limited to: the way everyone drives, how many people live here, some of the foods they eat, and how much they loveeee foreigners!
I am going to try and blog as often as I can to share some crazy stories, tell you about my job here, and maybe even teach you a little bit about China!  I am working in a 5 star luxury hotel called the Shangri-La Dalian.  This company has 72 hotels all over the world and has plans for many more to be opened in the next couple years.  This hotel has 563 rooms, 3 restaurants, 2 bars, and a huge amount of convention and meeting space.  I started my orientation today and will start work on Friday!  We learned a lot about the hotel and its mission today and I can't wait to get started.
But, since it is 10:25 PM here, I should probably call it a night before more training tomorrow! yippeeee.... Thanks for reading, I will post more soon, and I love you all!

Hugs, J

P.S.- a special thanks to my family for being so amazingly supportive of my choice to be a part of this program, I am so proud to call you my family and I miss you tons!  To all of my friends and groupies out there (I know I have some! haha) you all keep me going and thanks for the support and encouragement!  Miss you all!