Hey there, all! Today was such a good day for us. We (me, Roar, Cecilia) went into town without any other Chinese folks from our school, just to sort of roam around and get lost. It was raining a lot, but it was still awesome. I love getting lost--just having no idea where we're at or what is going on, but knowing that we'll be fine--as long as we have our school address written down in Chinese on a piece of paper in my wallet we'll be cool. But Cecilia speaks a significant amount of Chinese, so she's really been helping us out. Today we went in search of the elusive transformer/power converter for Rory's computer. We found a converter yesterday that is good for small gadgets like my ipod, but we're not taking any chances with the computer. Generally speaking, computers work best when they haven't been fried. So we didn't find the translator, but I did find some knockoff converse shoes that I can destroy in the rain until I get my luggage from the airport (with my other shoes in it). The shoes were $8. Rory saw some guitars for $25, as well as some traditional Chinese stringed instruments that will probably become his obsession while we're here. If anyone could figure them out (other than a Chinese person, I guess), it would be Rory.
We also decided today that we weren't going to have dinner in the dining hall. Each meal has been so regulated thus far--breakfast at 7:30, lunch at 11:30, dinner at 5:30, etc. It's funny--and there will be pictures of this later, after we get the aforementioned transformer thingy--there are all of these lockers in the dining hall, and when people come to eat a meal, they open up their lockers to get out their pots and pans. Then they go wash them out in this giant room full of kitchens; after that they go stand in line to have the cooks fill up their pots. It's a pretty interesting and foreign routine. Adults with their tiny dishes in lockers. It all feels like summer camp or something.
So tonight we skipped that and went down the road to the main stretch where the supermarket is. We went into this hole in the wall restaurant where the waiter spoke a little bit of English. Cecilia pulled out this little booklet that had a list of dishes with English ingredients, Pinyin Chinese and traditional Chinese characters. Oh my god was the food good! Wow--it wasn't the dining hall. Free food is good, don't get me wrong (and we will take advantage of that every day, believe me), but this food was fresh and authentic and didn't involve little sticky buns and strange fishygoo like the dining hall. We even got to order some beers with our dinner, which was nice.
What a great day! Tomorrow we have a meeting about our classes we'll be teaching--I think I'll get to teach the little littles, so that makes me very happy!
Like I said, we'll have pictures soon, but for now I just want to keep ya'll posted on our happenings. This place is amazing and beautiful, and we can't wait to learn more Chinese. Thanks for all the comments--it's good to know that you all are interested in our lives!
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2 comments:
did you eat the spice yet that makes your mouth go numb? i think the shandong peeps had that when they cooked for us.
Talking about music, there's a Chi dude at the Farragut North metro station (where I get off for work)who plays the "erhu" every Friday morning. It's kind of like a violin but has a longer neck and only two strings. I know it's sorta dumb to say but it totally sounds like one of those traditional Chinese violin-y things, you know what you hear in movies and all. Anyways, it's really cool to arrive to the street level to the sounds of Chinese music. It really cheers me up every time I hear it!
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