When in China

3 June

                First thoughts on China range from WTF to this looks like the Asian version of early 20^th century New York City. The excessive mass of humanity that everyone talks about has not closed in on me yet. I mean there are lots and lots of people everywhere, all the time – no deserted streets and the like – but I don’t feel it is a crush of humanity. One of the students at my school who has been here since February told me that it is in part because I am so recognizably foreign. Will is Korean by way of Hawaii, and he says that people will close in around him, but told me to check when I am in a crowd. Unless there is no other place for people to stand I have a “foreign [devil] bubble”. I don’t think devil is polite, but it gives the sense that no one wants to bump me, so I get a little ring of protection. Pretty nifty.

                One side note is that I have started dating my posts since China does not like my blog site. There is apparently an app for this, but I need to do a bit more research on it. For example, remember what it is called. I will also be able to get Facebook and Youtube with it apparently. Fun fact for my father, I have had to switch to using Bing over Google since Google gets frozen, arbitrarily – like my wifi connection. Or like the China central heating which gets switched off on March 15 – regardless of weather – because it is officially spring. Beware the Ides of March! I mean Ceasar wife saw it all, she needs to be resurrected and given a late night television show.

                Anyway, my host mom is fond of walk/bike abouts. I did learn from my first experience (you remember – that four hour bike ride that ended in a sunburn, a blister, and me passed out at 2pm). Well I got to go on a 2.5 – 3 hour walk about that night, but don’t worry she keeps feeding me more than I could possibly burn off so I will not become a stick. I still have very little idea what I eat on a daily basis. I have learned lychees are tasty, but that is the only new word to associate with food. Below is a picture of my desert – I think grandma thought I didn’t eat enough for lunch because I ate half of what she gave me before I took this picture.

Lychees are the ones that sort of resemble strawberries, then we have tomatoes, apricots, and something like honeydew, but you eat the whole thing (skin and seeds). While on the topic of food, I went to lunch today by school with a small group. There are two ways to order – family and single (my translation). Family is where you order 3 or 4 dishes and you eat from them all, and single is you order one and they bring it to you on a bed of rice. We ate some sort of pork, chicken and cold sprouts/mushrooms. I compelled everyone to order a beer – half liters too, hurray! Though I felt vaguely scandalized when we were brought 8 oz cups to pour or beer into so we could drink it. Apparently the science of the beer glass enhancing the beer has not made it to China.

One last section to add to this post is that my sense of direction is failing miserably here. The city is so large that there is no good map I have found yet and the roads are not on a grid, besides the main ones. Not to mention I can barely remember landmarks because nothing really stands out to me from the endless rows of buildings – and street signs, right, if I could read them. To be fair there is pinging underneath the simplified characters, but I don’t know how pronounce half the sounds. I started learning those today and will tell you more about classes later. For now, I have to study.