Where is everything?

Ok, so I read that the server is updated to 1.8.1 and i'm happy as can be. But once I start I spawn in water, there are monsters, and I cant seem to find the 'city' anywhere! Also, I seem to be able to die... Don't tell me I somehow got turned into a survivalist...

It's a temporary map until Bukkit and our plugins have been updated. Just mess around in it till we can bring the server back Nearly every Minecraft server is doing the same thing at the moment. Don't worry, we'll bring back the build map as soon as stuff is updated

also, if an admin is online when you are, you can ask them to switch you to build mode and therefore won't die and will have access to all the items.