Settling In

My first week of classes are done! From 8:30 to 11:50 in the morning I have a mixture of language, listening, and speaking classes. Then a few days a week I also have a culture class from 1 to 3 in the afternoon. At times it can be a bit much, but I'm enjoying the challenge and love making new friends! I am definitely the best English speaker in my language classes(and the only American) therefore I get the role of trying to explain  what the teacher wants us to do if the instructions aren't clear to others. It's a bit odd because all of our books are in English therefore the majority of the students are learning Chinese with a language that is not their native language. I think that'd be so difficult!

My "dorm" is much nicer than a dorm. It's basically a hotel! We think that when the international students aren't using the rooms they rent out the rooms just like a hotel, which is a smart move on the university's part. We even have "fuwuyuan" - ladies that come in every other day to sweep the floor, dust, take out trash, and once a week take our sheets to wash them.

There's a TV and a computer provided in each room. We haven't used either of them yet. We might try the TV eventually, but the computer is ancient and stuck under the middle of our desks and won't be coming out until we have to move it back to on top of the desk at the end of the semester. The red blankets on our beds are the airplane's blankets... we're glad we took them because while we are provided bedding, we are only given a comforter for our bed. The beds are hard, but all of us are surprised at how well we sleep and how comfortable we find them. Maybe we're just too tired each night to notice!

The Chinese sewage system can't handle toilet paper so no matter what (unless you want a clogged toilet) after using the bathroom you have to throw your paper in the trash. It's hard to get used to, but we're grateful that the fuwuyuan come every other day to take the trash.

This is the shower...there is no divider on the floor to keep the water in the shower area. The floor is SLIGHTLY slanted so that the water runs into the hole, but not enough to keep the whole bathroom floor from getting wet after we shower. It dries in about a hours time.

This is the view from our window. The building across from ours is where our classes are held. Down below there's the stairs that people consider the front and tend to gather at. You might be able to see the gate where we go out to get off campus. There's always at least one guard standing there controlling how wide the gate is open. During the day it's almost always all the way open, and at night the guard closes it just enough so that one or two people can fit through.

Last Sunday our group went to church! The service seemed like a traditional Reformed American church. I couldn't understand the sermon, but the songs I recognized and could at least go along with. People lined up outside to wait for the service before ours to get out.

Every Thursday our group will have an outing. The outing typically goes along with what my culture class is learning for that week. This past week we went to a Confucian temple. There was a small part for Confucius, but the larger portion of it was a museum showing how people would take government exams at that location. People studied for those exams for years and it took a total of three days to complete the exam. 

Our group also went to a tea ceremony this week! Drinking tea the proper way is quite the art and requires a fair amount of patience I don't usually have. It was fun to watch the lady perform the ceremony with such care and dedication, but I still prefer my quick tea bags.

Once the tea was prepared you received your tea like this. You then had to take the mushroom looking cups and quickly turn it upside down. Then you slowly lifted the cylinder cup so that the tea didn't splash. Once you were done you smelled the fragrance from the taller cup, and when finished smelling, you could slowly sip the tea.

Buying food here is wonderful! I can buy a meal for less than $1! I often go to a dumpling hut by school or a sandwich cart. The dumplings are regular steamed dumplings -- a classmate has described the filling as tasting like hamburger helper. The sandwich cart is a mixture of a bread that tastes like english muffins, "barbecued" pork, cabbage, and spices. The lady is always super excited to see me and knows exactly how much (or how little) spice I want...this may be my "regular" place! 

I've tried a variety of different foods as well. I now know that eel is fantastic tasting, so is sushi, and tree ears (that fungi that you see growing out of the side of trees). But I also know that fermented tofu tastes like death. I tried some on a "if I try it you have to try it" kind of dare. Never again.

This past week Julie and I got caught in a rain storm! It was absolutely down pouring as we attempted to make our way back to school. The sidewalk isn't even so puddles were unavoidable in the low areas. We were soaked and could barely see in front of us it was raining so hard. After a few minutes we both yelled at almost the same time "MY EYES BURN!" Acid rain? Too much pollution? I think so.