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.
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