Life in Tianjin

So, it's been waaaayyy too long since I updated this thing. I've been meaning to for the last week or so, but I am usually too tired by the time I get home from work. Sorry this has taken so long to get out. I just wanted to take a bit to let everyone know what I'm up to in Tianjin.

The speed train from Beijing to Tianjin was really nice. It only took about 29 minutes to cover roughly 150 km. The train gets up to speeds as high as . I moved to Tianjin to start a 2 month internship with LG Electronics. I work in the R&D Center as a market researcher. So far it's been a pretty good experience! They keep me super busy and I'm learning a lot about marketing and market research. I am also living in a super nice apartment. I didn't think it could get any better than what I was at in Beijing, but I was wrong. We live on the 4th floor of the building, and we even have an elevator! The apartment has 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms. We have a really nice flat screen TV and DVD player (although we don't get to use them much since we are almost always working). So ya... it's a nice place.
Work starts at 8:00 am every day (although we usually arrive around 7:30). At 7:50 every morning everyone does morning exercises. It's kind of funny (there is this really cheesy music in the background and some Chinese guy counting in Chinese). Before the exercises start there is some sort of LG propaganda song that is played every morning. I wish I could find the mp3 somewhere. It's hilarious! Lunch is everyday at 12. All of the workers head to two cafeterias for a one hour lunch break. The food is usually pretty awful. It's particularly bad on Mondays and Tuesdays. It's even so bad that the locals can't stand it! But hey, at least I don't have to pay for it. We also have to teach English during the day to our coworkers (which luckily for me, all of my students have a pretty advanced level of English).

We usually don't get home in the evenings until around 8pm after grabbing dinner on the way home. I'm usually so exhausted by the time I get home that I usually just go to bed. So my life is pretty boring during the week, but during the weekends I try to get out and explore a bit. We live about a 15 minute walk away from a TGI Fridays, which offers a nice alternative to the crappy food we eat for lunch everyday. I don't have much else to talk about now. This weekend I'll be taking the Singaporean interns to Beijing (there are 5 of us interns in total) to show them around. If anything exciting happens I'll post about it.