First Night(mares) =)

2/3/2008

-Harbin! The land of magical dreams! Let me keep you updated on the comings and goings of our trip so far:

-First night. We arrived a bit later than expected, partly because of our plane being delayed 40 minutes and partly because we mixed up the time of our flight. We also showed up about a million hours ahead of time to make sure we got through the supposed hellish traffic of Chinese New Year, so there was lots of sitting around. Fortunately I brought my ipod so I was well entertained by watching UNC take out dook on their home floor in 2001. We ended up at Harbin airport around 12:30 am, quickly bundling ourselves up as much as possible before getting off the plane. I was already cold going through the walkway between the plane and the airport, so I knew we were in for some fun.

Before we could even make it out of the airport, a horde of taxi drivers descended upon us. Our group had gotten split up at the baggage claim, so I was trying to find the rest of my friends before any of us got into a taxi. The drivers, however, would have none of it. They were yelling, standing in our way, even grabbing our luggage to “assist” us, trying to make us choose them as our chauffeurs. We found the rest of our group at the exit, but still wanted to get outside and see the cabs before we agreed to anybody’s offer. We had already heard about unregistered taxis in Beijing who try to rip foreigners off. Fortunately, those can be clearly spotted because they don’t have any “Taxi” sign on the top, nor do they have the registration stickers on their windshield and dashboard. They basically look like normal cars. As we were walking towards the cabs, the first group of drivers still wouldn’t leave us alone. A couple actually began pushing us towards their cab, and I literally had to grab my suitcase from them to keep them from taking it for me. We found two cabs that looked legit (at least they looked like the legit ones in Beijing), but I was still nervous at how excited and eager they were to take us for a ride. We had the name of the hotel written in characters on a sheet of paper, so we had to show it to both drivers before either of us could go. The second driver went ahead and put my luggage in the trunk before we had even shown him where we were going. Fortunately, I was relieved to see stickers on his windshield and dash, so I was feeling alright. It was amazing already to see the culture change after leaving Beijing. Dr. Sun had told us to watch out in traveling to Harbin, that the people in the north are “not as nice” as in Beijing. Maybe this is what he was talking about.

Anyways, we’re riding along for about 5 minutes when we get a call from the girls in the other cab. They were making sure our meter was running because their driver hadn’t turned on his and just said “you’re both going the same place, so you’ll pay the same as the others.” Ours was running, so everything seemed okay, but still…that’s a little strange. We realized it was even more strange in a few minutes when our meter had already hit 60 kuai after driving for no more than 10 minutes. An hour-long drive in Beijing only gets up to about 75 kuai. This wasn’t right. We had assumed since he had a meter on that it was legit, but no. He apparently had a faster setting to put it on for the “American” taxi ride. Now it makes sense why each driver was so eager to grab us as their customers. The worst part was we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Even if we had known enough Chinese to argue with him (which we didn’t), we couldn’t really say anything when he had a meter telling us the “correct” price. And if we refused to pay that much, what would he do? We were in the middle of cold Siberia, after midnight, in a town we don’t know whatsoever. Even Beijing seemed safe and sound compared to this place. We realized just how far away from home we were. Fortunately, the driver indeed took us to our hotel, and the price wasn’t TOO bad, at least not nearly as high as we were fearing it would be. 170 kuai for each cab (a little over $20). We could get over that.

Checking into our hotel took a little while, as nobody at the desk spoke any English. Fortunately, Hillary has taken up to 400 level Chinese, so she was able to do most of the talking for us. We were still, however, pretty paranoid that every step we took, somebody was going to rip us off. It was amazing, while waiting in the lobby two different cabs could see us through the glass and stopped outside. I had never felt like such a target. We ended up getting everything straightened out with the room and spent the rest of the night laughing about how everything was going to be a trick. We imagined getting into the shower, only to have a cage fall down around us, requiring money to exit. Our sleep was comfortable if short.

2/1/2008

-Today is Friday, a very IMPORTANT day. It is because we are leaving for Harbin tonight! *gasp* I’m still a little nervous as to how this whole thing will work out. We’re flying off on a plane to some mysterious land in the north where we supposedly have a hotel room booked. What will actually happen…I’ll have to wait and see.

1/30/08

-Laundry day! I figured after nearly three weeks it was about time, despite my total procrastination. I was hoping to put it off long enough that the problem would just go away, but apparently that doesn’t happen. Fortunately the washing machine is on our floor and the maids were right there to help me (read: do everything for me). I was at least able to hold the entire conversation in Chinese! There may not be too many linguistic intricacies in “I don’t know how to use this,” but I was happy with myself. Now I have time to kill while I play the waiting game.

-Wednesdays are my free day, meaning I only have my language class from 9-12 and then I’m free! It’s even nicer because, unlike home, there are very few ways I can waste my time. The only things I have to choose are sitting around twiddling my thumbs or accomplishing something.

-Today my accomplishment was to check out the “single’s bar” on the way to Wudaokao. No, I’m not trying to explore the dating scene of Beijing. Instead, I’m taking advantage of their need for English teachers! The guy who owns it, Pang, has set up a bunch of classes there for people to learn English or Chinese, and they are looking for native speakers of either to teach classes in the afternoons/evenings. A number of students from our program have already signed up, including my roommate, and they love it. They basically just hand you a book and put you in front of a class. And the staff is so appreciative! Apparently you get a free meal and all the drinks you want, in addition to the 100 kuai/hour. Because of the Spring Festival, I won’t get to start for about two weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

-You might ask, how could I possibly wait two weeks to start such a fun endeavor? Because Spring Festival will be AMAZING of course! Everyday I hear more sweet things about Harbin. Not only is it supposedly the “Paris of the East” but also home to the most beautiful people in the world, according to our language instructor.

A pretty vanilla week, honestly

1/26

-Well it’s been almost a week since I’ve added anything, and once again it’s a weekend morning, so I guess that means I’m about due for another entry. A couple times this week I had time to blog it up, but I really wouldn’t have had anything to say. This week has been rather uneventful, but mostly because at this point we’ve gotten into the swing of things and not so much is new. This place is old, I’m tired of it. Just kidding.

-We had our first test in language class yesterday. Some people were stressing over it ahead of time, but I wasn’t too worried. It’s all pass fail! So everything here is just fun and games. The test was kind of crazy actually. The reading comprehension was full of words we’d never seen before. That’s a pretty common theme in our class, actually. When we were reviewing grammar right before the test, none of us could completely read any of the sample sentences. I guess that’s just the Chinese way...

-Speaking of language, a really cool thing happened Thursday night. I made a pengyou! (that is, friend) Like I’ve been saying, I haven’t really interacted with the locals too much so far, which is too bad because that was one of my main goals in going to a country that speaks another language. But! This Thursday I got home from my internship way later than everybody as usual, so I went to the jiaozi house (dumplings, yum!) by myself to get some food. As I was sitting at my table, a Chinese girl sat down next to me. This is pretty common since the cafeterias are usually pretty crowded, but I thought it was a bit strange since there were plenty of open tables. The funny thing is that, if that happened back home, the two people would usually acknowledge each other to some degree at least with a simple “hello.” But here it’s all business, and you only say hello to someone if you have something you want to talk to them about. Like I said before, everyone keeps to themselves in public. But I really have been wanting to meet the locals, so I started talking to her! Haha I think I sorta scared her at first; she jumped back when I first said something. But she was really nice and seemed very excited to talk! I’m still very limited in what I can say. She knew English pretty well, however, so whenever I didn’t know how to say a word I could speak it in English and she would tell me what the Chinese word was. She told that despite studying English for eight years, she still couldn’t speak very well because they hardly ever have an opportunity here to speak it. That makes sense. Anyways, we talked for a good while and at the end we exchanged emails. I thought to myself “That worked out about as well as it could have.” Now I have someone to practice my speaking with! And hopefully I can move outside of my American bubble here.

-At work I still have yet to do ANYTHING (this is starting to get old) but I have been keeping up msn conversations with my coworkers. I mostly spend my internship days doing Chinese homework, and I ask one of the girls when I have questions. It’s nice because our communication is strictly in Chinese. That way I keep up the habit of it. I can already tell that speaking is becoming more natural to me.

-We are getting a week off for Chinese New Year, and a group of six of us are going on a wild, wacky adventure! …to Siberia. Yay! Apparently there is a city, Harbin, which used to be part of Russia. Fortunately it has been returned to the glorious People’s Republic so we can easily visit. Every year they have an ice festival! An entire Disney World-like city is made of ice. We’re trying to get the logistics figured out, and right now it looks like we’ll take a plane up there, as the train station is apparently going to be INSANE. The picture at the top is from the station. Since it’s Chinese New Year, everybody travels home to see their families and it’s going to be the most packed time of the year. We heard that last week an American even died at the train station. He was getting knocked over by the crowd, and as he tried to get up he got pushed in front of a train. The sad thing is, I wonder how many people around even noticed.

-I’m starting to get really tired of this “keep to yourself, don’t have any manners whatsoever to strangers” thing. On the subway the other day during rush hour (meaning there wasn’t an inch between you and the next person), an English woman holding her baby was trying to get off at one of the stops. Granted, she wasn’t very smart in that she waited until the subway stopped to start moving towards the exit. But she managed to make it to about a foot away from the door pretty easily. Once she got there, however, NOBODY would make ANY effort to move to let her through. She was trying to get through, yelling “Excuse me, please!” (granted, in English, but anyone could tell what she was trying to do) There were only one or two people between her and the door, and they just stared at her, making NO attempt at allowing her to get out. She had a baby, for crying out loud! Eventually she got out, by having to bull her way through the people (with the baby in her arms!) right before the door closed. Jeez.

-Wednesday afternoon is now a time that I have off, so I went for a walk to explore campus. I didn’t realize how beautiful it is! The southern side has a big lake (all frozen over now) that tons of people were skating and having general fun on. I added some pictures I took there to facebook.

-There isn’t too much else to say. I’m sorry, I feel like this has been a pretty uninteresting post. Boooooring. I’ll try to do something wild and crazy by next time!

Starting to get the hang of things

1/21/08

-Dah! So I got cut off in the middle of last entry because I had to rush off to catch the bus to the Beijing City Museum for our Saturday adventure. The museum was ENORMOUS and had lots of beautiful artifacts. I took plenty of pictures and posted them on facebook, so check em out! I unfortunately can’t tell you a single thing about any of it because nearly all of the descriptions were written in Chinese characters. So I had to make up my own explanations for the things I was seeing. Still a sweet place, though!

-So to continue with the second day of my internship! Jesse and I both downloaded msn messenger to talk to each other at work since they stuck us each at our own lonely desk on opposite sides of the office. Suddenly! Some of the employees added us on msn and started talking to us! (sweet sweet human contact!) They too didn’t speak English very well at all, but that was perfect for me to practice my Chinese. They even invited us out to lunch on Tuesday, and said “I’m sure we will become good friends!” This is great because I’ve been reeeeally meaning to get in touch with more local people. Of course to practice the language but also to experience Chinese culture for what it really is! I will keep you posted.

-Haha although I am going in a little bit cautiously after hearing what one of my friends here went through in “interacting” with a local. On the first day of his internship, he finished early so he went to Tiananmen Square to walk around. A young, very pretty Chinese girl came up to him, saying “Oh, you are American? Can I talk with you for a bit to practice my English?” Of course, to him this seemed like the perfect situation. They walked and talked for a bit, and then he wanted to sit down so he suggested they go to a tea house to talk. Conveniently there was one right in front of them, and so they went in. The girl immediately opts for the private, back room. She asks him if he wants to see the famous “tea ceremony,” which he agrees to. A woman comes out and does a bit of a dance as she serves them the tea. They drink and continue to talk before it is time for the girl to go. My friend gets the bill, a whopping ONE THOUSAND KUAI. When we spend about 5 kuai for a meal here, that is unfathomable. Apparently this kind of thing happens quite often around here, so I’ll have to keep my guard up. I know it would be hard to say no to a cute local wanting to talk. =)

-Saturday eve a group of us went to a restaurant downtown where I got to experience the famous Beijing “hot pot,” sort of like the Chinese fondue. You all sit around a table with a burner in the middle. They bring out a huge vat of a soup/broth substance (we ordered one that was divided into three parts with spicy chili, “bone” and mushroom soups) which you put on to boil. You then order meats, vegetables, noodles and the like to drop into the soup once it boils, and pick out the deeeliciously flavored end product to eat. It’s a pretty fun experience because everyone is throwing things in and grabbing pieces out in a frenzy. The meat is cut thin enough that it cooks almost immediately, so there’s not even any waiting around time. Mmm I’m getting hungry just thinking about it now.

-So I’m very happy with how much I’m progressing in my language class. Honestly, the first day I was the one guy who couldn’t even read the dialogue as we took turns reading parts aloud, and now I can chime in on conversation just as well as everybody. I really noticed how much things are clicking already when, right after leaving class, I saw a friend and my small talk came out in Chinese. I realized I had to stop because she was only in a beginner level, but I couldn’t help but smile to myself that my brain is starting to work in Chinese mode. After all, our classes are three hours long, so by the end of the period you’ve been thinking in Chinese so long that it makes sense.

-On that note, I think I am starting to prefer the schedule of classes they have for us here. Language is three hours a day, three days a week, which is more helpful for obvious reasons. Surprisingly, however, I like the 2.5-hour, once a week schedule of my other two courses. Since we have a whole week between each class, you don’t get tired of the material and really appreciate the time you are there. I was glued to every word my professor was saying today in the second session of my Chinese Lit and Society class today, though that could just be due to the quality of the teacher. He is obviously a brilliant guy who is incredibly knowledgeable. So far we have gone through a bit of history of China, briefly going through the various dynasties (with special attention paid to the 5 most important, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing), and focusing on the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It is great how he keeps going back to the differences between China and the West and how it is reflected throughout history, especially the contrast of the “Western mind” and “Chinese mind.” Interesting points: you don’t find tragedies hardly at all in Chinese literature, which seems to be the most common theme in the West. Our professor attributed that to the way Chinese culture emphasizes “going with nature,” as opposed to the Western “man versus nature” point of view. Western tragedies are focused on a hero who fails to achieve his goal, whereas Chinese literature does not view a single person’s goal as the most important. “Man is much smaller than nature,” as he says, according to Chinese culture. Thus, there is no “fighting” and no “failure.”

-Again, here are some random things I’ve noticed.

1. The staff. I guess it’s because we’re in a communist country, but every store/restaurant you go seems to be incredibly overstaffed. I swear, they’re crawling with employees here! As soon as you take one gander at a product being sold, you’re offered help by someone. Unfortunately, those offers are always in Chinese, so they can’t really help me too much until I learn to understand it better.

I also thought it was interesting how Wumei (the local grocery) does things. They sell various things, from food to school supplies to shoes to electronics. Each area has its own staff and its own register, and you HAVE to pay for your items at that section’s register. It’s at least noteworthy to me.

2. At restaurants, you are expected to give your order almost as soon as you sit down. No more than 1 minute after we’re taken to our table, the waiter arrives eager to write down what we want. When we’re not ready, they wait patiently by the table, no matter how long it takes, until you’re ready. I think we’ve been pegged as “slow Americans” at the Medicine House (deeelicious food on campus), however, since today when we went they took a good 10 minutes to come up and take our order. We saw several groups of locals come in and quickly have their orders taken. We’re already developing a reputation!

3. People do their own thing and don’t really care what you’re doing, as long as you’re not bothering them. The most striking bit of evidence wasn’t something I saw myself but a story I heard from the summer. One guy said in the subway a woman was holding her baby out in front of her as the child pooped onto a newspaper on the ground. And everyone passed by without seeing anything wrong with it!

4. Speaking of subway, I haven’t found it to be so bad here. Everyone told me horror stories about how ridiculously crowded they were. But we’ve been on them during rush hour, and they don’t seem to be too different than what I would expect a New York subway to be like. I’m not complaining!

5. Traffic laws are optional here. Things like lane dividers, street lights, and right of way…that’s all just a suggestion. I can’t tell you how many times a three-lane road has become a four-lane road. Cars will pull out whenever they feel like it, even though a car is speeding towards the intersection. It’s the other guy’s job to slow down, I guess. They just use their horns and bright lights a lot to tell people to get out of their way. It’s also pretty fun trying to cross the street. I try to follow right behind one of the locals whenever they cross because they don’t exactly have crosswalks in a lot of places. Even when they do, cars just speed through them, only moving around pedestrians if they really have to. Usually they just keep on going and hardly ever stop. People don’t always cross the entire street at once, either. The other day I followed a construction worker across. We had to stop in the middle of an insanely busy road because the left-turn lane suddenly got a green light. Giant buses zoomed by within a foot of us on either side, and he didn’t even flinch. And yea, buses don’t stop for anybody. Or even slow down at all. I’ve seen a couple people very nearly get flattened.

The weeks are busy!

1/19/08

-I’ve gone a few days without writing anything. Sorry, blog, you and I have some serious catching up to do. I can’t really accomplish this right now as we’re about to go on our second weekend trip. We’re going out to some “museum” of “cultural things” I believe? I really have no idea what this place is; the description they gave us only talked about how great and fantastic it is, but not about what’s in it. We shall see soon enough!

-Last night we went out to celebrate the belated birthday of a girl in the group who was here last semester too, Jessie! Unfortunately I can’t say I got to see her much at all, as our ENTIRE GROUP seemed to come out. We literally took over every club/bar we went to, so we had to split up. I had good fun. The area we went to was a strip full of bars and clubs, which we switched between pretty frequently. We finally settled on the “hot” or “poppin” spot where most of our group was. It was at that point that we realized how early we had gone out. Nobody was on the dance floor yet! However that just allowed us to grab the sweet nook right next to the floor so when it finally did start up we were the real ballers. I think the club was called “Blu Bar” or something. The floor was lit-up in Carolina blue (my kind of place). Lots of dancing to American music (we can’t escape it can we?) but honestly the club area didn’t seem to be anything better than Wudaokao, the place we went the weekend before which isn’t all the way across town. Plus there wasn’t any karaoke there =)

-So I don’t mean to make it seem that all I’m doing here is going out to clubs (ie: the same thing I could do back home). It’s just that the only times I have been writing in this thing seem to be on the weekend mornings. During the week I’m purdy busy. So the most vivid thing in my mind is the crazy night before.

-So yea, my weeks are pretty busy. This week especially because I decided to move up two levels into the 301 language class, rather than just moving up to 203. The first day of class was basically me embarrassing myself because I forgot EVERYTHING. But by the end of the day even I felt better just from refreshing everything. I definitely gave a lot of blank stares at my instructor when being asked a question, however. The instructor, btw, is really good! They are graduate students who majored in teaching English as a foreign language in college, so I suppose they know what they’re doing. She is very enthusiastic and prepared, and she makes the class very fun and enjoyable. She’s also very prone to getting off topic by engaging us in conversation on Chinese culture, but it works because it gets us to practice speaking anyways.

-And it SNOWED Thursday! The total accumulation was less than an inch, but it was still enough to cover everything in a beautiful white blanket. We woke up to snow on the ground, and it continued to fall throughout the day. What I love about absolutely freezing weather is that when snow arrives, it sticks around! The city has been white ever since.

-Thursday, day two of my internship, was fantastic. Well, not fantastic…what’s the word….barely-not-as-horribly-boring-as-the-first-day. That’s it! I had a meeting with my boss as soon as I showed up, so it looked like I might be doing something. However, it didn’t get very far because he speaks English roughly as well as I speak Chinese. He just wanted to hear what I study in school, what I am looking for by working for the company, and the like. It’s at least good because I can then practice my Chinese by speaking with him, and it gives me much more of an incentive to become conversational. Then maybe I will have something to do! He did set up an email for me and had me write him a more detailed account of what I told him in the interview. That was an effort, as I found it hard to go into much detail using the Chinese language. Oy.

-For lunch we again did not partake in local Chinese eatery. Unfortunately Jesse seems to be down for getting American food whenever he can, and so I just go along with it. We tried to check out Pizza Hut, but man. I don’t think we were dressed well enough for it. Here in China, Pizza Hut is a very fancy, sit-down restaurant. A pizza ran up to nearly 200 kuai, close to $30! That’s barely too expensive in the states but here that is a rich-man only price. So we went next door to the KFC, where made myself look like a complete moron. Trying to order in Chinese, I go up to the register saying I want “san ge” and point to combo #3. The only problem is I forgot to add in the keyword “di” beforehand to make it mean “number three.” Instead I told them I wanted “three of” that combo. It took me awhile of confused arguing to even realize what I had said…and yea. I looked dumb.

Zhanzuo!

1/15

-Today is my first day interning at Zhanzuo, the Chinese version of facebook! Coming into this I was beginning to get nervous; I had no idea what to expect working at a company in China. But I think I may have lucked out on this one. I’ll be working with the IT department, doing various projects they give me. It sounds like I will actually be contributing to the group! I had just figured I would be getting coffee and making copies for everyone. The employees are mostly young, in their mid- to late-twenties, dress is casual, and the place sounds pretty laid back in general. During our initial meeting with our contact, James, in the conference room, he told us “we don’t really have a regular schedule here, people mostly show up around noon or so” and “it’s alright if you listen to music, use instant message, or check facebook., just make sure you look busy.” Sounds like my kind of place. A good number of the people here speak some English (a first for me so far), but he told us to try to speak Chinese as much as possible, so as to “blend in” with the group. I hadn’t thought about that, but it should be a very fun and helpful way to better pick up the language!

My only instructions so far have been to find my resume online and print it out, which I already did. The guy working next to me had to help me get the printer to work, as most of the software is in Chinese, but it still didn’t take long. Now I’m sitting here wondering how exactly I’m going to use the next 8(?) or so hours…

The trip here went more smoothly than expected. I’m first of all really fortunate to have another guy, Jesse, from the program working at the same place with me. His roommate, Ben, also is working on the same block so we were all able to split a taxi over here. We’re on the complete other side of the city, so the ride took almost an hour. The cost? Only 75 kuai, which split between three people is about $3. We were told to take a taxi here the first day just to make things easier, but James said the subway would be a cheaper (and feasible) option. When we’re making the trip here and back twice a week, it adds up, no matter how many of us are splitting the cost. I had heard most of the subway lines were under construction, but I’m glad to hear we’ll be able to use them. A Chinese subway should be an experience in itself to say the least.

Overall, the internship was the one last thing I was a bit nervous about. Glad to see it won’t be so bad. Around here the best plan looks to be to lower your expectations to the LOWEST possible degree, so nothing surprises you!

James also said we are apparently in the “party district” of town, and that we’ll certainly know the night life here by the end. Good to know, now maybe I’ll be able to spend some time on the town with my coworkers and experience China the way the locals do. As fun as it is going out with a group of Americans, I really want to spend more time with the locals. Looks like this might present a good opportunity for that!

Driving here was still an experience. I don’t understand how you can have sooo many cars with sooo few crashes. The stereotype of Asians as bad drivers? It’s unfounded, or maybe they just ship all the bad drivers to America. This whole time I have seen more cars fit into a small area than I thought possible. And I didn’t see my first car wreck until today! There was a point when five lanes squeezed into about two. Our driver just pushed his way through it all, seeming to put us in an inevitable sandiwich between two giant busses a couple times. But no! We made it alright.

This part of the city is obviously more businessy than our side. Lots of expensive shops and tall buildings. I’m glad I’m getting out to see the city twice a week. By the end of it all I should be pretty accustomed to life in Beijing.

So this is probably going to be my longest entry so far. I really have nothing better to do with myself, and typing on a word document really makes me look like I’m doing actual work! I guess I’m preparing for the business world eh? So far I’ve been given a notepad (with a pen!) and a cup. Surprisingly I do have my own desk, though! And my own diannao (computer) even.

-Anyways, what else has been going on these days? Mike and I rearranged our room to make a very snazzy lounge area. It makes getting stuck in the double room not seem so bad. Everyone who comes in now is amazed and envious of our fancy living. The past two nights we’ve had a nice tea party in our room to end the day. I have no idea what room anyone is in, and I haven’t gotten my phone set up yet, so I’ve mostly been hanging out with whomever I happened to run into that day.

-I’ve finally gotten to the point where I need to get more money. So far I haven’t used a single traveler’s cheque. At the airport I got 800 yuan out of an ATM (a little over $100) and it’s done me pretty well. I would still be going strong for a while, too, if I hadn’t had to put down a 300 yuan deposit on the phone or pay for various things like internet that will last the whole semester. It looks like I really may not spend much money here at all.

-So where did I leave off last time? I believe I was talking about the first weekend. After our guided tour we all broke down and went out to a local pizza place for dinner. It was pretty hilarious how our tiny group grew. It started out with just the three of us who had been sitting next to each other on the busride back from Tiananmen, but as we walked down the halls, people jumped out of their rooms at the sound of pizza. The place was walking distance, so our crew of about 15 or so made the trek to “The Crow’s Nest.” The atmosphere was good and the pizza even better. A couple Americans were there but it was really still mostly locals, which was surprising because I had heard of this place as being the most Westernized place to eat around town.

-That night we went to a karaoke bar! Apparently such places are the classy of the classy around here. I felt like a VIP as we were led to our private room to enjoy our bad singing. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm for karaoke by my companions. There were only a few very diehard singers, and everyone else was just hanging out. It was still a great time, though, but not as much fun as the night before. I would’ve rather been around more locals, as it isn’t too new and exciting to be in a room alone with a bunch of Americans.

-So I guess that catches us all up. I had written a whole other paragraph but Jesse came along and, trying to transform my Windows into English, restarted my computer and lost it. Zaogao. It wasn’t too important anyways.

In the meantime, my director finally got here (they really do wait until noon to show up here) so I was introduced, but it turns out he speaks almost no English. He seemed happy and surprised to see that I know a little bit of Mandarin, though. This should force me to learn pretty well, since I can only speak to the person I report to in his own language. He pretty much confirmed, though, that I won’t be doing anything today. He gave me his email and…that’s about it.

-So yea, here are a few things I have learned about China so far:

1. Toilets! They don’t have them, at least in most places you go. I was pretty surprised to see when I first ventured into a bathroom outside of our dorm that in the stall sits a very nice, white, porcelain…hole in the ground. I really don’t understand how if they put that much effort into building something like that they couldn’t just make a toilet. Maybe I’m missing something. I also noticed that a lot of places don’t even put toilet paper in each stall. At the academic building yesterday, there was one big roll that you were apparently supposed to grab from before you went into the stall. It can really help you work on your problem solving skills when you don’t realize this until AFTER you get into the stall. Fun times. Fortunately our dorms and the Zhanzuo building both have real toilets! Also, people don’t seem to think bathrooms need to be heated here. So each one feels about as cold as the outside (20-something degrees). I guess it makes sure you hurry up.

2. Tips! They don’t give them. Apparently it’s disrespectful and an insult to try to tip someone. And there’s not sales tax, either. So everything you buy ACTUALLY costs what it says it does. We can learn something from these people. Also, I was told that it is very shameful in Chinese culture to owe money to anyone. Thus, credit cards have had a very hard time catching on around here.

3. Also, mealtime does not equal drinktime. In all the dining halls, you don’t see anyone drinking anything while they eat. I can’t understand it! I get so dried out during the day that I have to make sure I chug water whenever I get the free time.

-It is now 3:37, and nobody has come to say anything to me yet. Oh well. Jesse and I went out to lunch, and amazingly we found a Mexican restaurant around the corner. We’d both thought for sure we wouldn’t see such a thing the entire semester, so we had to check it out. Food was pretty good, and we received much more American service. The staff seemed to speak English, and we were given a knife and fork rather than chopsticks at our table! The waitiress came to take our order before we were really ready, so we both got whatever random item I pointed at on the menu. Turned out to be the most expensive thing on the menu at 88 kuai! Aiya!