The Food Is Starting To Taste Better

Today was our placement exam, and thankfully I placed in the first intermediate class, i.e. I'm exactly where I should be. We had SURPRISE class today, which was simple review and introductions. I feel like the next 5 weeks in class will be just fine. Monday, I start classes, which include Hanyu Kouyu (Chinese language), Chinese civiilzation, calligraphy, and Tai Chi. Already I'm starting to feel much more comfortable speaking with people in the street and in restaurants. Yesterday, I met my language partner, who was very sweet and had much in common with me. I forgot to mention earlier that while in Chengde, we visited another Summer Palace that had a family of deer living there. I fed them, of course, and the male would bow for food when you told it, "Xie Xie!". It was the cutest thing. We also climbed Sledge Hammer Peak and Frog Crag, and on the top of the former, I was incising my Chinese name into the rock (I assumed it was okay, since there were tons there) when a man pushed his ID into my face and kind of threatened me. Many people were trying to get us thrown off. Amongst the cool things I have seen have been really ugly dogs and kids wearing badass jersey suits as school uniforms. I kind of want both of these things. Tianjin's market place near Nankai University has some pretty good food and cheap shops. Last night was wonderful, because as I was reviewing for my exam, everyone from the group came into my room with a piaoliang de danggao (pretty cake) and sang "Zhu ni shengri kuaile!" ("Happy Birthday!") to me. It was such a surprise. Richard then had the audacity to shove cake icing into my face. Whatever. Tonight we are planning to celebrate in style, though I'm not really sure what that entails. I'm glad that the group, overall, contains people I actually like a lot. Today is raining, so hopefully the air will be cleaned out a little bit. I've been told twice already by two different Chinese ladies that I look like two different characters from Gossip Girl. Trey says it's because I am a pretty white girl. I think it's the blue eyes- there aren't a lot of those around here. Weekend news coming on Monday. Zaijian! Maybe I'll figure out how to type in characters on these computers soon. LOVE

Transitions

WOW a lot has happened in the past week. I spent my last night in Chengde hiking up the mountain outside our hotel to see the huge Buddhist stone carvings. The temples we visited were absolutely beautiful, with remarkable architectural features and atmospheres. We saw one of the biggest Buddha statues- it was charmingly overwhelming. More and more, I see myself gravitating towards the religion. I couldn't take a picture of it, obviously, but it's not the kind of sight you can easily forget. Before reaching Inner Mongolia, we stayed at a really bad hotel, that was very cold at night and smelled awful. It smelled like something had died in our bathroom, the toilet was leaking, and things about the room were broken. However, the hotel runners were doing their best, and I just couldn't complain. It was certainly an experience. Plus, it was only for one night, so who cares? We also got to meet an amazing artist whose silk embroideries are marvelous. I might buy one, which sell for about 500 kuai for a large. Still, that's less than 100 meiyuan (US dollars)! However, I CAN complain about the weishengjian (bathroom) I used before we passed the border into Inner Mongolia. It was so disgusting. No doors, just concrete slabs with holes cut in them, trash and waste surrounding me. The woods would be more sanitary! At this stop, though, I did buy an interesting necklace. Inner Mongolia was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, we were only there for two days. The first day, I went horseback riding for only 110 kuai, and got to see the beautiful, extended landscape. I had a little confrontation with the horse's owner, however. It was really shocking. I paid 120 kuai, but was not given the 10 kuai back in change, so I inquired around about it. Given, 10 kuai is nothing to me (a little over one meiyuan), so I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but I thought the principle of taking advantage of a foreigner was not right. I eventually said, "Mei guanxi", to just let it go, but the owner appeared near our yurts and really raised hell. She yelled at me for minutes about some hidden service fee, that no one else apparently had to pay. Thankfully, with some help, she just gave me the change and left, pissed off. I felt awful because it was over so little money, which is a lot to them. Also, I just don't know enough Chinese to communicate with someone about such issues. She was aggravated with me, and the whole thing almost made me cry. However, I honestly think it was a good experience to have. We hiked a lot in Inner Mongolia and chatted for hours with the local shop manager, who was so sweet. I gave him two American books for his children, one about cool Camaro cars and another about dinosaurs. What Chinese kid wouldn't love those? He was different from other people we met, because he really cared about welcoming us to China and demonstrating how good the people here can be. The local people did allow us to throw a bonfire, karaoke, dance, baijiu, and roast party, though! The yurts were much nicer than I expected (still a "po-ho", as we have termed most toilets here) and very cool to live in, but it was so cold at night! I'm glad snuggling exists. So, yesterday we endured an 8-9 hour bis ride to finally end up here, in Tianjin. We said goodbye to our fantastic tour guide and bus driver, and today we toured Nankai University. It is a great place, with a 1 kuai per hour computer lab and huge gym. It is going to be nice to settle in a little bit after all the traveling we did this past week. Unfortunately, we have a placement exam tomorrow morning, which had I known about, I would have prepared for earlier than yesterday and this afternoon. Oh well. Tianjin has some smog which will take some getting used to, but I really like it here and will certainly dive into the culture. There are a lot of great little shops around. It will make posting a lot more convenient and also frequent. The biggest culture shock other than the aforementioned ones is that Chinese men walk (or sit) around with their shirts rolled up; these are not all attractive men, either. In fact, it's the more unattractive ones that do this. Thankfully, I have a real, Western toilet in my dorm room, so I am done for now with dealing with anymore po-hos. So, my 21st birthday is today, and I celebrated today with getting a big Tsingtao beer around noon, when it was official in the US (12am). I had looked forward to spending it in Inner Mongolia, but here is pretty neat, too. Zhao laoshi grew up here, and it is interesting to see where he is from. I think the next five weeks or so will be really exciting and fun. We meet our language partners in three hours, and I still need to review and maybe go for a quick jog. So far, I really miss cereal, milk, blueberries, bananas, crunchy peanut butter, wireless internet, free toilet paper, real orange juice, and Coke Zero. Unfortunately, to get my soft drink fix, I'll have to settle with Pepsi products (YUCK), Smart Apple (too much green apple flavour), or regular Coke. Disgusting. It's a stinky situation, but there could definitely be worst things. I'll just have to stick with lots of tea. I'll post some pictures once I can either get my computer hooked up to the internet, or I can get the pictures onto a computer that has access. It's all just a transition.