Knick knacks, tons of snacks, then I'm going home...

So I try to think of creative titles for my blogs, but I don't know if its working out. So knick knacks... ...
This afternoon after class Laura, Deborah, Matt, and I rode our bikes across town to a hostel to buy tickets for Mid-Autumn Festival/National Day break coming up this week. Laura, Matt, and I are going on a Yangtze River cruise to the Three Gorges Dam. Deborah came along because the hostel is located in a really cool area called the Tibetan District that has a little touristy shopping district that's inside/associated with an old temple, so after we made our reservations we walked around a looked at everything. This is a picture of the Starbucks inside (weird, huh?) and kind of what the street looked like. There were all sorts of little shops. The picture on the left is of a guy making candy animals. He heats of sugar until it melts and then waits until it is exactly the right consistency and takes a ball and blows into it and shapes and animal out of sugar. It's like balloon animals, but way cooler. The one he is making now is a Tiger. The other picture is of paper-cuts. They are very detailed and beautiful. The next picture is of another stand that had shadow puppets. They are made out of tanned leather and painted and then (the real ones) are used behind a screen to act out a shadow puppet show. This is a store that sold all sorts of weird smoking related things. These are all cigarette cases that in reality look like band-aid containers with different little pictures on them. Lots of them were of Mao. They also had old carved pipes and all sorts of things that I didn't even know what they were. The next picture on the left is on Matthew playing a game similar to the shot the star out game, except instead of a BB gun you have a wooden cross bow and shoot little wooden arrows and a straw thing with a black patch in the center. I think you have to get all the arrows in the black, but I'm not sure. Then we went to a shop where they were making silk. This is them stretching the fiber bundles to make it flat and stretched out. Then they wait for it to dry and spread it on this table. That's all we got to see, so I don't know what they do after that but somehow it turns into silk. Chengdu is famous for its silk, which I did not know until I got here. Especially its painted silk. The last shop I have pictures of is a shop where you can get your name carved into rock as a seal. It's very common to have and use these in China. They come in all shapes and sizes and some of them have little carvings on the top too. If you get a carving on the top it is usually the animal of your birth year. I decided to get one carved with my Chinese name in it. I picked out a smooth grey stone that I liked and the guy carved my name for me. It was amazing to watch. The precision he got carving into stone was really good and Deborah (who has had one made before) said his craftsmanship was really good. It comes in a little box and I also bought red clay, which is what you use to stamp. That also comes in a little box. The carving is beautiful and I like it alot. When I stamp something, I'll put it up here so you guys can see what it looks like. He can write my name way better than I can. There were lots of other little shops with more touristy wall hangings and cloths and little figurines and jewelry and things.

Tons of snacks... ...
At 6pm we went back to school because the Overseas Education School was giving us a free banquet in honor of China's 57th National Day. The President made a speech and then there was a free buffet afterwards. The speech was short, in keeping with almost all Chinese speeches, but the President did say a few interesting things about trying to make Chuan Da a international university. Right now there are about 900 international students (9% of Chuan Da's total student body) who represent something like 47 different countries. It was pretty cool. I wanted to stick around and meet some of the International students that I don't see in class, but I have a test tomorrow so I had to go home to study (then I'm going home... ...). The food was good, but not excellent. But it was free and since I've been in Sichuan, the food capitol of China at least, I know my standards have gotten alot higher. We did get to try alot of different new things though, so that was fun. We also tried a different kind of moon cake. The kind with the egg yoke that we had last night is the most traditional kind, but because no one likes those they have made other kinds. I tried one that had dried fruit in it that tasted kind of like an energy bar and one with nuts in it that was my favorite. They were MUCH better than the egg ones.

Wo shengri kuai le!! (Happy Birthday to Me!)

So I am now 21. It doesn't feel alot different than 20, especially in China. The drinking age here is 18, when it's enforced, and it was pretty much just a regular day. Laura and I went to the post office so she could send some packages and went to lunch. We went to this little jiaozi (potsticker) place on campus. There is a really cute lady that works there that is trying to learn English (like everyone) and she is so nice. We are going to frequent that place so we can make friends with her and then see if we can set up some kind of trade where we help her learn English and she teaches us how to make jiaozi.
After that I had tai ji class, then I went swimming, then I had Chinese history class. We finally got home at about 9pm. I got to talk to my mom and Mike and they both wished me a happy birthday and that was nice. Laura also bought me these little Chinese cupcakes. They are just as beautiful as the big cakes, but more fun because you can try all the flavors! There was strawberry, blueberry, chocolate, lime, lemon, and two that were indistinguishable. But they were all delicious!! We were going to wait for Li Juan to come home to eat them, but then it got to be like 10:30 and she still wasn't home so we decided it was time for cake. That is the time I was born you know... Then, right after we polished off all six cupcakes ourselves, Li Juan came home with a Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival speciality called mooncake (yuebing). I'll talk more about the Mid-Autumn Festival later, but the moon cakes are really weird. They are these little, dense, undercooked round cake things with some sort of preserved salty egg yoke in the center. The egg yoke is hard too, so I don't know what they do to it. Needless to say it was not very good. But I'm glad I got to try it. Most Chinese people don't even like mooncakes. The tradition is to by them at Mid-Autumn Festival (it celebrates the harvest moon) and offer them to people that come over. Everyone has a box but no one ever eats them because they are gross. But they do come in very beautiful packaging. Four come in a pretty big red box with yellow and gold Chinese characters and pictures all over it. Then inside the big box is 4 little red boxes with yellow Chinese characters on them nested in yellow satin. Inside the little boxes is the mooncake. Its alot of show for a not very edible thing.
After cake I have been doing homework all night. It never ends!

PANDAS!

When we went to the American Culture class yesterday a student told us he went to pick up some "foreign friends" from the airport and he asked us if we knew what the first thing they asked was. We, of course, didn't and he said the first thing they asked was "Where are all the Pandas?" Then he said "I thought they must think in Chengdu there are Pandas running around in the streets or something. Do all foreigners think this?" We told him that no, not all foreigners think this. There may have been some language break down somewhere in there and they could have been asking something else, but I still thought it was a pretty funny story. Chengdu is, obviously, famous for Pandas. There is a larger Panda Reserve, called Wu Long that is very famous and a smaller one closer to the city that is more like a Panda zoo. Yesterday we got to go to the smaller one to see Chengdu's famous Pandas. We went with alot of the other foreign students on a sort of field trip. The Panda Reserve is about 20 minutes from school and we all piled on 3 buses to get there. When we arrived and started walking around, I was amazed. It is one of the first places I have been in Chengdu that I can actually describe as beautiful. There were bamboo forests everywhere. They said they grow this bamboo to feed the Pandas in case there is ever a shortage. The paths are all stone and everything is kept up really well. We got to see a bunch of Pandas eating and walking around. We even got to see babies! They were so cute. But they were only about 1 month old and they still kept them in incubators. They kept these ones in incubators because they were the "runts." Even though Pandas usually only have a few cubs, in most cases one or two, there is still sometimes a cast off one. If the baby doesn't cry loud enough when it is born the mother won't know she had two and will only take care of the first one. So the babies in the incubators were the runts that otherwise would have died. The Pandas were really beautiful. I could stand and watch them all day. The way they eat bamboo is really amazing too. They have this really efficient way of peeling off the skin and taking a bite at the same time. They eat alot too because they have carnivore stomachs, which means they can't digest the majority of the bamboo, so they have to eat ALOT.
That was pretty much the excitement of the week, but in other news I am now officially winter swimming (dong yong). The guy told me today that the water temperature is below 20 degrees Celsius and now it is winter swimming. I didn't think it felt that much colder though. They are also really worried that I'm going to swim too long in the cold water. I might have to find another gym with a pool or something because now they won't let me swim for more than an hour and even then they are not very happy. Also, after swimming today Laura and I went out to dinner with a Chinese girl we met and her boyfriend. They are both Chemical Engineers. She is a grad student here and will graduate this year and her boyfriend, whose name I never really caught, works for a company doing something with natural gas, i think. They took us out to huoguo (hot pot) which is a Chengdu specialty. Laura and I had both had it before, but it was better this time because we got to pick what to put in it. It is kind of a fondue idea, but much better. You have a pot of hot oil with hua jiao and spicy chili peppers in it (so its very spicy) and you pick out a bunch of meat and vegetables and drop them in. Then when they are done you just pick them out and eat them. It is delicious, but very spicy and very greasy. I was SO full afterwards. But it was really fun and next time we are going to try to speak only Chinese, or at least mostly.
I also won the lottery today! Not really, but it feels like it. I checked my email and I got a $4000 scholarship from the International Programs and Exchange Office that I didn't even apply for! I still can't believe it.
So that's the news from this side of the world. Wan an!

Chinese Tea and The American Dream

Hey everyone! So not much new has happened here, but I thought I'd check in. Yesterday Laura was out all day (she went to the foreigners church and then met up with her teacher for something) so I did a bunch of things by myself, which I liked. It was nice to start to feel independent here too, but I could also feel everyone staring at me alot more because I don't have someone else to distract me or some of the attention. But anyways, I ventured out and went to the little grocery store down the street from us called Hu Hui. It's like a little corner market. There are also big huge supermarkets here, but they sell everything-like SuperTarget. I like going to the supermarket too, but it's a little far away. To get produce there are lots of little fruit stalls all over the place. All the little shops here are like garages. They are that size, or smaller, and have the garage door that comes down over the front when they are closed. They sell EVERYTHING in these little stores. There are restaurants, clothing stores, fruit stands, electronics stores, weird second hand stores, literally everything. So that is where we usually buy our fruit and I stopped there yesterday too. Vegetables are a different story. To buy good vegetables you either can go to the supermarkets, or there are these larger open air markets tucked in weird corners of the city that sell vegetables. It's like the farmers market, kind of. There is one of those a few blocks from our house too, but I didn't need vegetables so I didn't go there. After that I went to the tea house by myself and ordered tea. I tried a new kind called zi ye qian that was green and very fresh tasting.

Tonight we went to an American Culture class that one of our Chinese professors is teaching. It was very interesting to see how they taught American culture and what exactly they thought American culture was. He talked alot about American values. He identified three basic American values, these being individual freedom, equal opportunity, and hard work (self-made man sort of thing). I thought that was pretty accurate. For the second half of the class he asked us to stand up at the front of the class and make "speeches". We didn't really know what to say, so instead we just let the students ask us questions. They asked lots of questions about all kinds of things. They asked about basketball and what we like to do in our free time and what we think about all sorts of things in China and about homosexuality and the war in Iraq and what we wanted to be when we grew up. We also each said the largest difference we had noticed between China and the US. I said the thing that struck me most was the lack of diversity. Their teacher before had been talking about immigrating to America and why people wanted to go there from all over the world (freedom) so I said that because of that America has a huge range of different kinds of people celebrating different religions and cultures. I said that if they went to the US people wouldn't really notice, but when I walk down the street people more than notice. Answering some of their (especially political) questions made me realize what a horrible generalization any American culture class would have to be because of the huge range of different ideas in America. We all disagreed with the war in Iraq, but I tried to describe how not everyone did and it was a very controversial subject and some people liked the government and some people didn't and some people didn't care, but either way it was something people talked about. It was really hard to try to describe the idea of political and intellectual debate. What I've noticed so far in people's approach to the government is that most people really don't care. They don't have any choice in it and in most parts of their life it doesn't affect them much anymore, so they are just completely apathetic. I haven't had the chance to ask many people about this though, so that could change. It's just a first impression. But it was a very interesting class that made me think alot.

Learning to Cook and Sing!

Today at 3 o'clock Laura, Matt, and I were signed up for a cooking class. After a little run around trying to find the place, we walked up three flights of stairs into the kitchen of a hostel near the Tibetan District. On the table there were 5 cutting boards and 5 cleavers set out along with a myriad of spices and bowls. In the class there was only the 3 of us and a German guy staying at the hostel named Heinrich. Then there was our teacher lady and 3 other ladies who I can only describe as prep cooks. None of them spoke any English except a few key phrases, like the names of the different ingredients. She would give us each ingredient and show us how to cut it or prepare it and we would just follow her lead. We also each had our own wok and after we finished our dish we would each sit down and eat what we just made. It was really fun! And delicious. I was so full afterwards. They gave us each a sheet of the most basic instructions for the dishes in English. We made 5 different dishes. The first was sweet and sour pork, then kung pao chicken, then vegetables with sauce over crisped rice (it has a better name in Chinese), then "fish smelling eggplant" (which is my personal favorite and really misleading because it doesn't smell, taste, or involve fish in anyway. It is just called that because its prepared the same way as fish is), and lastly a spicy cold carrot and cucumber salad. It was like eating 5 meals in a row. Fortunately they were pretty small. I learned alot about how to use the spices and I feel confident that I could make them all again and will try to experiment now too. You can all benefit from this when I get home! :)

That night we went to karaoke at a club called ATT for my birthday party. Karaoke is really big in China. There are many clubs right by school and they are all GIANT. The clubs are all composed of lots of individual rooms that you rent with couches and a TV. It is not at all what I imagined, but it was really fun. This one had a big lobby with fish tanks too. Our room had a big black leather wrap-around couch and coffee tables and a huge TV. It was a "medium-sized room". They also have large and small rooms. You pick the songs on this computer off to the side and they can organize the songs in all different sorts of ways. We had them organize them by language and just looked at the English ones. We had heard that they don't have very many English songs compared to the number of Chinese songs they have. This may be true, but they had a ton of English songs for a country that does not speak the language. We sung all sorts of songs from oldies, like the Beatles and John Denver, to Michael Jackson, to Air Supply, to newer music like Britney Spears. I invited some of my Chinese friends also and they picked some Chinese songs too. There were some Chinese groups that I really liked that I might try to buy CDs for or something. We made huge fools of ourselves and a great time was had by all!
As far as the birthday celebration part, they got me a beautiful cake too. All the cakes in China are so amazing. People don't have ovens here and so everyone buys these gorgeous cakes that come in big Styrofoam hat boxes.They have fresh fruit and chocolate decorations on top and always have a filling of some kind as well. The cake itself is light,kind of like angel food cake and it is delicious! All in all it was a great day.

Good things...

<-- I don't know why this is sideways, but I don't know how to fix it.

After two days, literally...48 hours, of not leaving my house, I went to class last night. On return I promptly fell asleep. After all that exertion what can you expect? But today I went to all my classes and am feeling much better. I am still tired and don't want to do much or eat much, but I can walk around for most of the day which is an improvement. I'm going to listen to my mother's advice and rest alot and hopefully this will be the last I see of this stupid fever.

More good things have happened on the "home" front. I went to the VISA office today and picked up my residency permit. I am now officially a resident of Chengdu for the next year! Yikes!!

I have made it my goal to do one new thing everyday, and I will start logging them in my blog. The first days don't count because I probably did a million new things everyday. Today I did two new things. I bought my first black-market DVDs. Black market is an overstatement because, compared to the stolen bike market, this is very legal in China. China does not have copyright laws and does not care about anyone else's so you will see alot of fakes everywhere. The movie store is right by my class and is a legitimate store front. The quality of the movies can vary, but the price is right. I bought "The Sting", "X Men 2", "The Weatherman", and a "Pooh" movie. All classics. All 4 cost me 21 kuai, which is (if you haven't figured out the exchange rate yet) about $2.75. I think I will be back. Second new thing I did today is send mail. I finally figured out how to send international mail and it turns out it's really easy. There is a China Post right next to the movie stove (hence why I was at the movie store) and you just walk up to the window and tell them you want to send you letters to the US (Mei Guo) and they sell you the stamps. Very easy. They even had glue for me to seal the envelopes because the envelopes here don't have that convenient lick 'n' stick application like in the states.

Now this is Culture

Hey everyone. So I'm sick today. I came home from school yesterday at 6pm and didn't go swimming because I felt really tired and drained, but I thought it was because I hadn't been sleeping. I laid down and fell asleep and kept waking up periodically and feeling worse and worse. I even got up in the middle of the night and took a shower because I thought I might feel better, but I just ended up having to lay on the floor because I was too weak and I don't know if it helped at all. I don't know what I have though. Maybe a fever of some sort. I just feel tired and weak and a little like I'm going to throw up. I get dizzy alot. It's no fun at all. So I'm writing to you from my sick bed, in hopes that I will feel better soon. I didn't go to school today and asked my roommate to Qing jia for me (tell the teacher I wasn't going to be there because I was sick).
In other more exciting news, I went to McDonald's yesterday. I didn't want to go, but the rest of my friends were going and I thought it might be an interesting experience. It wasn't that different, but there were a couple interesting things that I noticed. I had a chicken mcnugget happy meal and an ice cream cone. It was pretty much the same. However, instead of apple pies, they serve taro pies and green bean pies. We tried both of them and I was not a fan. Also, they have these weird advertisements up all over the store that were slightly erotic. That was a little weird too. I also tried out the play place, which was definitely sub-par. It is probably because of the lack of kids. There were no kids in McDonald's and I have noticed a lack of kids all over China. I think it's because of the one child policy, but there are definitely all more older folks that younger ones here.

A Day in the Life

I thought I would let you guys know what my life is like over here today. So here is what I do on an average day. Today is Monday. I get up at like 6am and go for a run around the river about 2 blocks from our house. It is almost always foggy and drizzly in the morning. Then I get home and have breakfast of fruit and coffee and sometimes oatmeal or something. Laura and I leave for school on our bikes at about 7:45am everyday. We get to school at a little after 8, park our bikes and sit down to do a little work before class starts at 8:30.

I have class in a big Chinese style building that over looks a really pretty park thing with little stone tables and a pond. My first class everyday is my comprehensive, or basic, Chinese class (Zhong he Han yu). That goes until 10am and then I have a half hour break until my next class at 10:30. What this class is varies everyday. It could be listening, reading comprehension, writing, conversation, or audiovisual. Which class it is depends on the day. At noon there is a two hour break, which is kind of a national standard. Working hours in China are from 8:00-noon and 2:30-6:30 with a two hour break (or xiu xi, which means rest) from noon-2:30. This means that all banks, offices, virtually everything is closed from noon-2:30. It takes a little getting used to. During the break I usually sit on the second floor of the Overseas Program Office building on this little porch they have and eat lunch and do homework. I've been trying to bring my own lunch because eating out for every meal gets a little too spicy and greasy for me. I bring my lunch in this little compartmentalized lunch container I bought, which is really cool. I like it alot. Below is a picture of me looking up characters, which I do alot! After that my day to day schedule gets a little crazy. Some days I have more Chinese class at 2-3:30pm, but some days not. I have a 2pm class on Tuesday and on Monday and Thursday on odd weeks. It is very confusing and took me forever to figure out exactly what was going on because the schedule they gave us is written all in Chinese. Our teachers are all really nice too. I like them alot. They are all pretty younger woman, which I found interesting. I still can't figure out why.

Besides Chinese I am taking 3 other classes. These classes are a little different though because they are set up pretty much especially for us and are in a small discussion format without formal lectures or anything. I take Chinese Archeology, which is good but by far the most informal class so far. This is probably a good thing though since this class is taught in Chinese. The first class we just had an introduction to the class and then went on a tour of the museum on campus. As part of this class we also get to take a week long field trip to Xian in the spring, which I'm really excited about. This class meets tomorrow (Tuesday) from 3-5:30pm. The second class I have is Industrial Ecology. This class is really interesting and I like it alot. The teacher speaks very good English and it is very different to look at how China is talking about and dealing with sustainability compared with the US. So far the biggest difference I can see is where the burden of responsibility is placed. In China they talk alot about Industrial Ecology ideas like Life-Cycle-Analysis, Circular Economy, and ISO14000. They are all very much production based efficiency schemes that apply almost exclusively to manufacturers. In China it's not about consumption choices, it's about how we can make the choices we already make and just be more efficient about our production and disposal systems on a very large, institutional level. Contrarily, it seems like in the US the conversation is always much more about individual consumption choices. All US sustainable policy revolves around a "turn off the lights", "reduce, reuse, and recycle", "plant a tree" sort of mentality that calls on consumers to make environmentally conscious choices that will drive the market and the economy towards sustainability. The key concepts in the US are Environmental Footprint and Product Stewardship. I can't figure out if this is because we have given up on effective environmental policy coming from a federal level, or we are unwilling to "hinder" the economy with the policies, or what. But it is very interesting and I hope to learn more. I have this class every Wednesday from 2-3:30. The third class I'm taking is a night class on Thursdays from 7:30-8:30 on Chinese History and Politics. We are reading a book called Governing China that has to be ordered from the US because its not available in China. The professor is a professor of Chinese Philosophy, officially, and is really cool. He wants democracy in China and lived through the Cultural Revolution and was there during the Tianamen Square riots. He asks us really hard questions and makes us think very deeply about the material we are reading, which is really great. Other than that, I have Tai Chi (Tai ji in Chinese) on Thursday afternoons from 4:30-6pm.

After class gets out I go swimming. The pool is open from 4-7pm everyday and today I swam from 4pm-5:10 and did about 3000 meters. It's getting a little chilly, 21 degrees Celsius today, but it's still pretty good. I like it cold. Then today I met up with the rest of my group and we had dinner before we went to a meeting with Andrea. Andrea is a woman in Chengdu who has lived here for a few years and acts as a sort of mentor to us here. We meet once a week to make sure everyone is still alive and she answers alot of our questions about how to do things in Chengdu. Then I come home and do hw and go to sleep and do it all over again. I'm a pretty busy girl here, but I feel like everything takes about twice as long as it would in the states too.

Tapas in China

I went downtown with two of my Chinese friends today, named Pei Nan and Xiao Yu. Xiao Yu's real name is Wen Yu Tou, but everyone calls her Xiao Yu, which means little fish. We went to the shopping district, called Chenxilu. It was just drizzling when I got on my bike this morning to meet them at the North Gate and as I rode I got rain in my eyes and it stung. That can't be good. Also, my bicycle has this interesting quirk where if I peddle too fast the chain comes off, so I had to stop and put the chain back on twice on the way there. Oh China, never a dull moment. We walked around this big building that had about a million little storefronts in it, kind of like Pikes Place, a little. They all sold little hair things and jewelry and things that reminded me alot of Claire's. There was a photo booth there too, like the kind they have at movie theaters where you take like 8 or something but you take them in sets of 16 here and you get to pick all these different backgrounds. It was really fun. This is a picture of us that I picked the background for. The picture is actually about 1"x1.5", so that's why it looks so funny. Pei Nan is on the left and Xiao Yu is on the right. It was raining pretty hard by this point and they took me to lunch at this famous restaurant downtown. We sat down and they went to order, which I was very happy about because I never know what to order. They came back and pretty soon after that the waiter came with 8 baozi (little steamed meat dumplings) and some jioazi (potstickers) in a spicy sauce. About 5 minutes after that they stopped the waiter to ask about our "other" food. I said "we are getting more?" and they said "yes, alot more." SO I stopped eating baozi. In China you have to learn to pace yourself. Then the waiter came with a tray with about 10 little plates and bowls on it. I thought he would drop off a few and the rest were for other tables but they were all for us! So I took a little bit of all of them so I could try everything and asked alot of questions about what they all were and which ones they liked. Then the waiter came back with another 8 or 9 little bowls and plates of food. All total we ended up with 22 different things. I was amazed! We had liang mian (cold noodles), liang fen (cold rice noodles), baozi, jiaozi, other little dumpling things with various outsides and stuffings, ma po tofu, diang yu (a whole little fish), bamboo, two different kinds of beef, duck, a sweet soup, a chicken soup, a black soup, dan dan mian, and a few other things I can't remember. It was very overwhelming. And filling. They kept saying I wasn't eating very much and I was stuffed!! I guess I have to work on expanding my stomach. The dan dan mian was my favorite though. Then I rode my bike home in the rain and didn't get hit by any cars, buses, or other bikes (always an accomplishment) and did homework for the rest of the evening. I'm so busy here!

Liang ge waiguo nuhaizi (two foreign girls) strike again!

Everyday seems like a challenge here. Mostly in a good way, because it works out, but it's always kind of a surprise. Today was a good day though. I woke up and did homework for a while. boring I know, but they keep us really busy with Chinese homework here. It's good though. I feel like I'm learning alot. Which is part of the reason why everyday seems like a test. Can you go and buy milk in Chinese? Can you order lunch in Chinese? Can you buy a phone card in Chinese? After homework my test was, Can you buy a new basket for your bike in Chinese? The answer is yes. My old basket was attached with a little piece of wire and a screw that kept coming un-screwed while a rode it. Finally yesterday it just fell off. Not all the way though, just most of the way so it was just hanging off the side. I tied it back in position with a piece of string. I guess that's what you get for $10. So today I had to go buy a new one and ask them to put it on for me. I rode down the block from our house to this little bike store and asked them for a big, new basket. Then I asked them to put it on for me. It went very well and I was really proud of myself, especially because the store people spoke really thick Sichuan hua (like southern accent kind of). On top of that, me buying a new basket was apparently the event of the week and about 10 people gathered around to watch. After that I rode my bike to school for a meeting with a travel agent about going to Tibet over the fall break. It looks like it's going to work out, which is really exciting! It will be pretty expensive though, but traveling Tibet is just that way because of the permits and everything. Then I went swimming and I swam 2700 meters today, which is more than usual. My shoulder is getting stronger everyday. Then I rode my bike back home and Laura and I went to try out this tea house by our apartment. It was really pretty. We got a table outside right next to the "river." By river I mean dried up, polluted drainage canal, but that's what a river is in Chengdu. It's pretty for China I guess. We sat at a little wooden table under the trees. Then the waiter came up and asked what we wanted, and the test begins. What do we want....tea? Of course we don't know what kind of tea to order, so we ask him what kind he thinks is best and we will have that. He brought two kinds out then for us to try. One is called piao shui and the other I didn't get the name of. I'm going to keep a list so I can remember them and don't have to ask every time. Piao shui was a very flowery tea that smelled like Lillies. Laura really liked it and I thought it was OK. The other one I really liked though. It was some sort of green seed looking thing and tasted really fresh and kind of grassy, but in a good way. Then it got dark and we couldn't read outside anymore, so we went home. On the way we stopped to get some dinner to go at a little restaurant. This is actually the hardest part of being in Chengdu so far because we can't read the menus except for a few things and you can't have those things every time. So we tried to find something that didn't have anything weird (like liver or hearts or anything) and ordered it. But the lady said that we shouldn't get that, we should get cai dan, which means "a meal." Apparently what we ordered is only considered lunch and not dinner. Or at least that's what I think she meant. So we ordered something else that she recommended, the good old "what do you think?", and went home. We ended up getting some sort of pork and garbanzo bean rice soup, which was very good so we considered it a victory. Moral of the story is: life in China is always a surprise but it makes you take pride in even the smallest accomplishments. This blog doesn't have any pictures so I decided to put some random ones in. The top one is one the tea service we had back in the international student dorms, but we had a metal hot water container just like the one in the picture at the tea house.

Swimming is good for the soul

The harder part of being a million miles away from the people you love and in a completely new and different place is finally setting in. Not in a bad way, but before when I would say I missed you I was probably just saying that. Now I'm not. I have been in China for almost a month now and it's finally starting to feel like I live here. I paid 6 months worth of rent today and now officially live here. I also have a routine somewhat figured out now and I'm getting more and more familiar with the city. It feels good to start to find a place for myself in this crazy society. On the other hand, the first few weeks were such a chaotic whirlwind of activity that I scarcely had time to sleep, much less miss home. Everything was so new and exciting, there was so much to see, do and learn about in this foreign environment, all you could think about was what was happening right now. Now I can finally relax a little bit and I seem to notice the difference and the distance a lot more acutely. This doesn't mean that I am comfortable or confident here yet, that may never happen. Most of the time I feel like a bumbling waiguoren (what Chinese call foreigners) slaughtering the language and making a fool of myself wherever I go. To keep sane in this insane, incomprehensible society I swim. In the pool is the one place I still feel competent. I can get in the water and I don't have to struggle to communicate or be confused about the procedure. I know how to swim, I know how to swim well. I know how to swim better than almost everyone else in the pool and it is nice to have something I am good at here. Also, all the Chinese swimmers are always so impressed and will talk to me about swimming after. It's nice to have them acknowledge me for something that is actually a part of me, rather than the former foolish waiguoren or an English teaching machine. Alot of people want to be your "friend" here too, only because you speak English and can teach them or help them practice.
I also went shopping today with Laura and Li Juan. We went to a big mall by our house, but I didn't buy any clothes. The mall is called Tianfu and it is like the biggest Nordstrom's I have ever been to. There was a whole floor of shoes. I tried on some pants and they are all too small!! Oh well, I'll figure out something. I always do. Anyways, after a week's worth of class I am exhausted. Mmmmm, sleep.

I may never come home...

OK guys, I hate to tell you this, but I may never come back to the states. I recently made the discovery of a lifetime, or at least the year. They have Tim Tams in China!! Not only do they have them and sell them in convenient little packages of 4 cookies, they are only about 4 kuai, which is like 50 cents! China has lots to offer in the way of treats. I haven't done them with anyone yet and I'm sad you guys aren't here to partake, but I bought some and I'm sure they will be eaten soon. Maybe I'll have a Tim Tam party on my birthday. In other dessert news, they make this crushed ice thing that is like a natural fruit sno cone, but with chunks of real fruit too. And today we had another kind of sorbet type ice cream (that's Matt and Deborah in the picture). I had pineapple and some sort of delicious vanilla/butterscotch thing. I also got to try honeydew, taro, and orange. Write more soon, but right now I am tired and it is late and I am going to go to sleep. I was just so excited about the Tim Tams I had to tell you all right away.

Journey to Tex-Mex and other misadventures

It all started today when I went to go swimming at the outdoor pool. The pool is a large , concrete, outdoor, lane-less wonder. It's got everything I need though and I like it alot. It's 50m and pretty cold, which I like. I just swim in the middle of two lanes so I don't have to share ( I'm faster than most of the people that swim there) and in the morning it is not too busy. It also has locker rooms with showers (only cold water). When I went before I had gone in the morning and no one had bothered me. Today I went in the afternoon and there were alot more people. There was also a man, who was very nice, who asked me if I had a membership card. I said no then he rattled off something that I didn't quite (Laura, my roommate, and Matthew)understand. After some miscommunication I figured out that I was supposed to buy a yearly membership for 130 yuan and I said okay. Then he kind of laughed and just ushered me towards the pool. So I just got in and swam. I swam for about 45 minutes, which is about as much as my shoulder can take right now. Then I got out and tried to go get a membership. But, like everything in China, this required 2 passport photos. I should learn to just carry them with me everywhere because you need them for everything! They said I could just come back tomorrow. After that I met up with the rest of my group. If I haven't introduced them all there is Ben, Tabitha, Deborah, Laura, Matt, Sunny, Laura, and me. We all met with Andrea, an American woman who works in Chengdu and has lived here for about 2 years and helps us find our way through unfamiliar Chinese customs, politics, and traffic. We meet with her every Monday to touch base. Tonight she suggested we go out for dinner, so she took us to Pete's. This is how I ventured outside of the Chinese food realm for the first time since arriving in China and into Tex-Mex. It was not by choice though. Outside the West gate of campus there is the "foreign district". It is where all the western restaurants and shops are located. I had avoided this area (except for hao you duo, of course) because it is generally very expensive by Chinese standards and I thought I would wait until I was really craving it. It was weird how giddy I was looking at the menu, in English, with all these American dishes. It was hard to know what to choose. It was like it was our last meal or something. I ended up having a chicken fajita salad and a strawberry flurry (sort of like a shake but thicker). The flurry was excellent. The salad was OK and I felt happy about my choice to avoid such restaurants. It was nice to have moderately fresh, uncooked vegetables though. There is a distinct lack of any vegetables at all in most Chinese dishes. It ended up being 44 kuai (about 5.50), which is about 5 times what I usually pay for a meal. But it was very novel and fun to watch all the other foreigners. Plus I got to have strawberry ice cream. Hen hao chi! That means delicious!!

Your Chinese word for today is 草莓冰淇凌 caomei bingqilin it means strawberry ice cream.

Zaijian gong gong qi che (Goodbye bus!)

Hey everybody. So I bought a bike yesterday. Yay! It was really getting to be a pain having to take the bus to school everyday. It's so slow, especially in the morning. Now biking to school and around campus will be alot quicker. Buying a bike was a very interesting experience though. You have to buy your bike at the stolen bike market if you want a cheap bike. And even if you don't, if you buy a nice new bike it will end up part of the stolen bike market pretty quickly. So Laura and I met up with one of our friends from Sichuan University, Violet, who wanted to sell her bike. We walked across the river and down this side street. About 2 blocks down Violet told a woman standing on the corner that she wanted to sell her bike. So the woman took us down this other street and into a small concrete garage thing off the street. Then she brought another guy and Violet argued about the price for awhile and they finally came to some agreement. Then they started bringing out bikes for us to try. We would ride them in the street for a little while and then come back to the garage and say whether we liked them or not. If we didn't they would ride the bike away somewhere and ride back a few minutes later with another one. It was all very mysterious. So Laura and I found bikes we liked and bought them for 80 kuai each (about $10), but Violet was still trying to find one. Then the lady starts yelling that the police are coming and makes us ride our bikes away. We waited for Violet out on another road and when she came with her new bike we rode over to campus to the repair shop to have repairs done. I just had to have the seat raised and a new part put on one of the pedals. Now its works perfectly, or fine anyways. I miss my bike back home, Xiao Hongse, but this one will be good for this year. I haven't named it yet, but it is silver and light purple and it has a black basket in front.In other news, I made my first meal here. I bought peanut butter at the store the other day, thinking it was just regular peanut butter. But no, it was spicy peanut butter, which was really gross. So tonight I made rice and stir fried cauliflower, carrots, and green beans that I bought at a little market close to our house and put a spicy peanut sauce on it. It turned out pretty well and next I'm going to try something a little more adventurous and try some actual Chinese dishes. This was just a trial run. But they have wonderful markets here. It's like the farmers market everyday. But you have to be careful about checking the produce because I found a worm in one of my apples. They also sell this yogurt that I've been eating for breakfast alot, but you drink it with a straw. It's a lot thinner than yogurt in the states, but it still tastes good.

I also went running today for the second time. I can feel the pollution alot more when I run, but it's still not nearly as bad as everyone says. The only thing is all the buildings look dirty and there is dirt EVERYWHERE because of all the dust in the air (particulates). It reminds me of when people talk about London during the Industrial Revolution. I found a really nice path by this little river (also polluted) that I run on and is not that crowded. I have to find places where there aren't that many people otherwise it's really embarrassing. Everyone stops what they're doing to stare and I get alot more laowai's (foreigner) than usual. Everyone does it, I just try to find less crowded places so there's not as MANY people staring at me. I guess I expected that though. I tried to go swimming in the pool in my building complex after that but I cannot figure out when it's open. I'll try again later.

Happy Birthday Laura!

So September 5th was Laura, my roommates, birthday. We all went out to shao kao to celebrate. Laura is the one on the far left. Going around the table from her is Tabitha, Matt, Nancy (the English name of a Sichuan student), 3 of Li Juan's friends, Li Juan (who we live with), Eugene (who you can't see but is sitting next to me) and me. Shao kao is kind of like a very spicy shish kabob sort of idea. It is very good. They grill all sorts of meat from all parts of every animal and tofu and some vegetables too. The picture below is of me eating some sort of green pepper that is a little spicy. I am feeling a distinct lack of vegetables in my diet though. Everything is meat and noodles or rice. Laura and I are going to try to start cooking at home more though. It was a very fun party and we bought her a coffee maker and some real coffee for her birthday. She's a coffee addict like me and now we use it in our house and it is wonderful. I was trying to just do tea for a while but it really wasn't working out. We also got two cakes, one for Laura and one for Li Juan's friend whose birthday was also that day. We ate them both! Whoever said Chinese people don't eat dessert is lying. There is candy and little bakeries with cake and pastries everywhere you go. And popcicles too, which are only 1 kuai (about 12 cents).
P.S. Go Twins!!