Corn on a Chopstick

Today I had to get myself to and from school on my own for the first time.  I remembered my bus schedule fine (and did not miss any) but almost got lost after getting off at my last stop when my school was directly across the street.


Some of my friends and I went looking for a nail salon after school today, but we got tired of walking before locating one.  It was kind of exciting, however, to use new Chinese vocabulary to ask directions along the way.  Navigating traffic as a pedestrian in and of itself gave us all an adrenaline rush.  They say that in Chengdu the most dangerous part of your day is crossing the street.

I still have not see the sun in Chengdu nor even blue sky.  At least the lack of sun means a tad bit less heat on some days.  (The humidity has taught me why Chinese women wear their hair in buns so often.)  Sometimes, when exercising, it is hard to get a good, clean deep breath, as if Chengdu were at at high altitude.  Otherwise, the pollution is not much worse than the usual smells and fumes of an American city, and I have not seen nearly as many people smoking as I remembered from my previous visit to China five years ago.

Still no sign of any other foreigners besides the NSLI group (and all of the models in advertisements)!  The homogeneity is astounding, at least for one from the world's mixing pot.

Weirdest thing I ate today: corn on a chopstick.

Does not quite compare to Indiana's fresh sweet corn.

KTV

My Chinese name is 羅立珊 (Luo Li Shan) which literally means "coral" "stand" "establish/recruit" but was chosen mostly on phonetics.  Lou, the family name, comes first as is representative of the importance of the family over the individual in Chinese culture.  My teachers call me Lou LiShan, but my Chinese friends would call me Li Shan or Shan Shan; however, most of our Chinese peers tend to introduce themselves by their English names to us Westerners.


Getting to school is a one-hour two-bus commute.  As you can see, the buses are completely packed, but imagine a little dot of a Caucasian in the middle of the sea of staring Asians.

Today was a madhouse outside of the main gate to enter the school because of a character-writing competition.  And we thought SAT day was bad...











School starts at 9 am every morning (including Saturday and Sunday for just this week) and ends at 5.  The first half is studying language, and the afternoon is culture.  We learned kung fu yesterday and tai chi today.  Both were pretty difficult especially as we watched 10-year-olds besting us.  Every evening I see huge groups of old ladies doing tai chi to music in the park.  (American grandmas knit and gossip, Chinese grandmas tai chi and gossip.)  Someday when I have the time I think it would be really fun to join them.

Today we ate in the school's cafeteria (bad cafeteria food exists in China, too, except that their mystery meat is way too recognizable).  Eventually we attracted the attention of the elementary school students who all wanted to take pictures with us, especially the two gingers.  It is a strange feeling when strangers want to take pictures with you just because you are taller than their father and need sunscreen on a cloudy day.

Making noodles in the street market

We walked to a superb market during our lunch break that was a couple streets wide to find more food and look around.  I had really cheap mango-flavored bubble tea and sesame seed pastries.  I had tried bubble tea for the first time the night before with my host sister at a nice tea house.  It is basically milk tea with squishy tapioca pearls at the bottom.

Bubble Tea

After school a large group of us students and our siblings experienced KTV.  You enter through a maze of long mirrored hallways to get to a dark private room with colorful flashing lights, large TV screens, and plush sofas, a bit like a Vegas casino.  Instead of gambling, you get to choose songs and sing karaoke with your friends.

The Chinese students knew most of the English songs although not vice versa.  Compare Chinese song titles (translated) to English song titles, and the culture gap is obvious:  Miss You Sadly, Wash Scrub Scrub, Beijing Welcomes You, True Love Is Forever / Rock ThatBody, Sexy and I Know It, Smack That, Party Rock Anthem.  It was a delightful, comfortable environment, and I had a blast.

Singing "Call Me Maybe"

Chengdu City

When all of us Americans got off the plane in Chengdu, we were greeted by a gaggle of excited Chinese families.  They all had signs with our names, flashing cameras, and flowers (you should try it sometime).  My host mom and 16-year-old host sister, Lily, met me at the airport to drive me to my new home for six weeks.  The mom speaks a little English, and Lily's English is passable, thus really helpful for me.  Her aunt and her grandparents also live in the house (a common custom), but none of them speak any English.  When you enter the house, you switch your street shoes for house shoes (that means too small Crocs for me).  My host sister just switches from one pair of Crocs to another; Crocs are extremely popular as are platform flip-flops.  It seemed really ridiculous at first (at least all the three-inch platform shoes), but I understood after my feet turned black from walking around the city in normal flats.

I have my own bedroom with air conditioning (yay!).

Instead of a mattress I have a bamboo mat complete with a bamboo pillow.  It is rather hard, but my sleeping skills are unrivaled.

For dinner, there was a multitude of different dishes of vegetables and meat set out on a Lazy Susan.  Weirdest thing I ate: chicken eyebrows (or some other hairy part of a chicken).  Also, boneless meat is essentially undiscovered here.  Needless to say, I prefer the vegetables, although some are unbearably spicy.

During dinner, the grandmother told me that I had a very pretty white face.  Chinese people often powder their face and use soaps with whitening product to make their skin look paler, opposite to the West and its obsession with being tan.  Many dye their hair brown, a color that ends up looking the exact same on all Chinese hair, but I have yet to see blond.

My host family has a really cute three-month-old cat named MaoMi (cats are much more common than dogs), but it got sick the first night I was here, so the entire evening we went on a hunt for a vet, resulting in a nice tour of the HUGE city for me.  Once we returned home, I was asleep within minutes.

The Great Wall Toboggan - July 4

For the first time since being in Beijing, we finally got to experience the city a little bit.  I had a chance to speak Chinese with some natives, and it was absolutely exhilarating.  I am so ready to go all in once I reach Chengdu and stop speaking English!  We ate our first authentic Chinese meal today too  It was served family style on a lazy Susan and was only moderately spicy.



We struggled up thousands of brutal steps to reach the Great Wall, which I had seen before but was impressive none the less.  Instead of facing the torture-device steps on the way down, some other students and I opted to ride the toboggan.  With absolutely no safety features (or speed restrictions), it would have never been allowed in the United States and therefore was super fun.




The weirdest thing I ate today: cucumber-flavored Lay's.  (Chinese people seem to love cucumbers; I ate three servings today in three different forms.)  The weirdest thing I did today (apart from high-speed sledding down the Great Wall): explaining YOLO to the really awesome AFS China volunteers, who in turn taught me Chinese slang.

Beijing (Or Just Its Buses and Hotels)

Flying on an international flight is kind of like being stuck in a science fiction.  Passengers are entranced by their own personal screens in front of them, while prepackaged meals are brought in trays.  There is no way to sense time in this hermetic levitating metal tube; But, I do enjoy my sci-fi novels, and it was a relatively enjoyable flight.

After passing through customs (and passing is an accurate word because customs was nonexistent), we exited right next to a famous Korean actor and his bodyguards. (NB: His name translated to The Frog Prince, so I don't know how successful he could actually have been, but the people screaming over him were convinced.)  All the fawning Chinese girls were not for us after all...
In China, whenever websites are blocked they do not actually say that outright, as it would if you were trying to access Facebook from a school computer, say.  Instead, you receive a message saying the server is having problems --interesting tactic.  I learned this because blogspot (this website) is blocked after all, so I will be updating via email.

Off To Beijing

Tomorrow we finally leave the US! After a 13 hour flight, we spend the night in Beijing for more orienting before another flight to the final destination Chengdu (in the spiciest province in China). I cannot wait to meet my host parents and my 16-year-old host sister! All that I have learned from the alumni on this program has convinced me that this really will be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Night in New York

Right now I am enduring what I expect to be my least favorite portion of this trip; we have a two and a half day orientation which means a fair amount of down time with people I just met (potential for homesickness to creep in, but I am fine so far) and no actual Chinese. However, we attended a session with extremely helpful alumni. I now know that Chinese women do not shave and that if I get into a black taxi pilikia will ensue. (Word of the day, anyone?)