不太胖！

I finally realized that I have only spent about $300 since I arrived in China, and so on Wednesday I decided to go shopping. What a fantastic experience this was. Granted, I didn't go to a fancy mall or anything, but I did manage to find several strange, interesting items for only about $45 total. Overall, the experience was mistake-free, but one saleslady made the night even more enjoyable. There was a very cool blue jacket I had my eye on that I eventually decided to try on. When I pointed to it and asked, "我可以式一式吗?" ("Could I try this on?") she seemed very confused and asked, "准的吗?" ("Really (are you serious?)"). When I said yes, she seemed very disapproving but let me try it on anyway. Admittedly, my broad shoulders and long arms caused the jacket to fit on the small side, but she pointed to me with it on and exclaimed, "啊！不太胖!" ("Oh! Not too fat!"). I gave this look and replied, "对，我知道!" ("Correct, I know this!") and preceded to try on other things. She then tried to sell me a skirt once we found a little sweater that looked great, and I pointed to it, laughed, and said, "不！这件太小!" ("No! THAT is too small!"). She liked this (and it's true- most Chinese women are not only obsessed with being thin, but are so). So, more shopping is on my weekend agenda, including a trip to the nearby natural history museum. Yesterday was the big Dragonboat race, and it turned out to be a really, really big event. I mean, this was an international tournament! An Italian group had traveled from a Venice university to be there; and, honestly, they were really, really good. However, they were also really, really big. Even the women; frankly, I was confused at first when I noticed some members had female adornments. It was the funniest sight. I'm telling you- these Italians were all pretty unattractive. Their bulky muscles just didn't balance well with their overall figures and physiques. It was my luck that one of the blonde boys with a really big honker started winking and waving at me. I, of course, could only laugh in response (and from afar), because here I was, needing a shower and wearing track pants and a t-shirt. Maybe they like their women that way. Overall, we raced kind of poorly, but considering we practiced only 2-3 times, I'll give us all a big pat on the back. The first race, we came in 4th (out of five); the second race, we came in 3rd (out of three); and the third race, we came in 5th (out of six). Think what you will- it was still an awesome experience. Other good and exciting news: Professor Zhao was on national television last night (CCTV 9) and made "Carleton University" very proud. He spoke about the rise of China this year, especially, and basically what it needed to do as a nation to improve its international relationships in this modern world. Brendan has apparently made a little Chinese girlfriend already, which is interesting considering he speaks little Chinese, and she speaks no English. I imagine there must be a lot of hand gestures (bǐhua: 比划) used when they communicate. There is a man around everyday at the market who sells bootlegged DVD's, PC games, etc., and he is just one of the nicest and enthusiastic people I've come across. He complimented me the other day on my glasses and it so excited to have "American friends". So, for about 36 kuai (or, about $5) I bought: Porco Rosso, Apocalypto, Hook, Fight Club, Wall-E, and Trainspotting. He even lets you preview discs before you even consider buying them. In other words, he's the nicest pirate out there! There's a TGIF's across the road (which is an obstacle to get to, considering the dangerous nature of crossing streets here), and my friends and I finally went there last night. I got the Fried Mac & Cheese appetizer, and I have to say, haven not eaten any cheese in about a month, I was disappointed. I remember it tasting a lot better than that.

Bananas, Boats, and Bunniculas

This morning, I asked Duncan, "How do you feel about China today?" He responded with, "I miss pancakes." I find this to be the perfect answer to that question I often find myself (and others) asking. Since I last wrote, a lot and little has happened. I completed my first week of authentic Chinese class, which has been one of the toughest adjustments so far. We have about 3.5 hours of class Monday through Friday per day, followed by the fun classes, which include Tai Chi, calligraphy and painting, Wushu, Beijing jingju, and Chinese civilization. The language class is a bit more tougher than I expected- apparently, some students from the previous Tianjin seminar brought this issue up, and so the current group is getting actual challenging language courses. It is a bit of a struggle, going from 8:30am-12:15pm doing nothing but learning tons of grammar and coming across many, many characters I'm expected to know but have never come across. Thankfully, we have three 10-15 minute breaks to recoup. The teachers take a completely different approach than any other language teachers I've had in the past- they think that by simply repeating a grammatical structure over and over, you understand it. We don't get English explanations for anything, and many times the examples provided to us on handouts use phrases or many characters that I never learned. Also, one of my teachers doesn't like for me or anyone else to take notes in class. (Also, the teachers speak little to no English.) Granted, while most of this is good for me- I don't want my hand held through it, and I want to be challenged- I do wish they would just let me know what characters they expect me to not only know but to write, since many come up on quizzes! Yikes. One week down- four more to go. Thursday evening was a blast. I went to Nankai's gym to get a month membership, and I discovered many strange things about the place. First of all, I went to pee before my workout, and I walked into the bathroom to discover two naked Chinese women showering. Sure, I thought, whatever. Then after ten minutes on the treadmill- without a TV to watch- the room's hot temperature started to make me sweat even more than I do running outside on a hot, southern day. Once sick of this, I lifted weights, but found it hard to adjust the settings because nothing made sense. The translations, though, on the machines were of course funny. The trip's legendary hero and hottie is Shi Lifu (John), who is this massive (in comparison to the Chinese people) Carleton football player, but also the most fluent of us all. As a result, he makes the most foreign friends and all love him to death. Anyway, he was in the gym, lifting weights and running shirtless, and all the despising Chinese men in there were staring and glaring at him. It was truly a hilarious sight, and I could hardly contain myself. It was also a little strange to be the only female in the weight section. They don't, though, have light enough free weights for weaklings like myself. It has been really interesting to see how much people- women especially- are obsessed with being skinny and losing weight. I have had many run-ins where someone has commented on the fact that I am so 漂亮 (pretty) and slim. It is surprising for them, in general, to meet Americans that are this way, and most of us on the program are. Also, on sunny days, women and some men cover themselves with umbrellas or visors and long clothing to keep from getting sun. They all want to be as fair skinned as possible. Friday, after class, we had about an hour's worth of Wushu class, followed by (for most of us) about three hours of Dragonboat practice. I am so unbelievably sore; it truly is terrible. In fact, I think the pain is a cause of my being sick this weekend. Yes- I have finally fallen a bit ill. I am thinking it is a combination of excessive exercise (without the normal diet I am used to when doing such activities); cold weather (which has been very surprising) combined with frequent rain; lack of sleep (from bugs and rooming with someone); and possibly having eaten something that has upset my stomach. Who knows. But I've lost a weekend to sleeping, re-watching a 5 dollar collection of Mad Men (Season 1), studying, and watching hilarious Chinese movies about vampires that hop around like bunnies and can only see you when they smell your breath! So, I woke up yesterday morning sick around 6am, and then had to get up around 8am for what I thought was a tour of a fascinating architectural part of Tianjin. Though we were told to NOT BE LATE, we didn't leave until 8:40am, and then we were handed Chinese and Nankai University flags upon loading the bus. We were driven to the Opening Ceremony of some celebration of this aforementioned area, and while I enjoyed getting to see the Ceremony and the performances (though the ones from Germany, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and a local sports college were laughably terrible in comparison to the Chinese ancient drumming one), I didn't like being photographed over and over for being a white American girl. They also kept telling us to wave the flags. As it turns out, our group was blocked by police officers so other local Chinese people couldn't stand with us. In a sense, I feel like we were being used as propaganda. What I find most disappointing is that the program coordinator lied to us- and no one bothered to tell us for what we were really waking up at 8am on a Saturday. After the Ceremony, we just went back to campus; that's it! No architecture! I at least got a cool little rainbow-flower-pinweel of some sort out of it. I was too sick to care at the time, but I'm thinking about letting Zhao know what happened, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I went to bed relatively early last night and have had a relaxed day, and the main breakfast item will become a cromlet. They are so, so, so delicious, and completely worth waking up an extra 30-45 minutes earlier for. This coming weekend, I hope to go shopping and visit the local natural history museum. The post office line is always ridiculously long, so if you're still waiting on the postcards- be patient! I'm still getting bitten left and right; I can't drink anymore bubble tea because of the milk crisis; I can't get used to the spitting; and I'm a little homesick, but all-in-all, it's still neat to be here. I can already tell that my hearing, writing, and listening abilities will have drastically improved by the end of the trip. I still have to work on my speaking, but that'll come with practice. Plus, I found out that I can safely eat bananas and oranges- or any fruit with peels you don't eat. The Dragonboat race is on Wednesday!

I'm everyone's xiǎojiě

So, in Chinese 101, you learn that "xiǎojiě" means "Ms.", or "Miss". Turns out, it also means "whore". This has become a joke amongst the group, of course, and so I've become a xiǎojiě in class according to my teachers (they, of course, mean "Miss" 凯琳 when addressing me). Of course, I've learned some other words to use in my defense: qíba and wǒngba. Since our exam, I've done a few activities, including signing up for a Dragonboat race with some other Carleton kids. We've practiced a couple of times, and I just found out today that we get free, awesome track suit-like uniforms. I hope we win, though I know we won't, since our main competition is a group of ripped, attractive, and serious Chinese men. I went to a club on Saturday night, which reminded me of the Japanese club from Collateral, if you replace all the blue lights with red ones. It was extremely Asian and just a lot of fun. Many of the people we met there were so excited to welcome us to China- well, to welcome us to a fun, awesome Chinese club. I also saw about an hour's worth of a Beijing opera, here in Tianjin, and I hope that on a weekend, I'll get to go see one all the way through. The costumes were very beautiful and extravagant, and although I couldn't really follow the story, the songs were interesting and funny in parts. On the down side of things, I discovered yesterday that my Wachovia debit card doesn't work in this area at the ATM's, so I'm currently living on 50 kuai and without a way to withdraw money at least until the weekend. Hopefully, I got rid of my bed bugs today when I got the hotel to change my sheets. I am pretty fed up with having new bites every morning! Well, Trey and Fred are bugging me to hurry up and get dinner and study for our quiz tomorrow, so I'll write about the Chinese teaching style sometime this week.

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.