So much xiezì!!

(A side street off of West Nanjing Road, this giant shopping area and then these side streets are just full of stuff. they go on forever. And tons of people trying to take you to fake markets.)

Alright new update:

I had attempted to use my video camera to record a video so I didn’t have to write another post. And it did work BUT… I uploaded the video to my computer and it was a little under 1.5 gb and I could save it as a smaller file but that would take forever and I’m too sleepy to sit and wait and do that. Some other time…

So I’m writing a new post and it’s sans cool photos, womp, sorry y’all.

So to start. I cannot explain how nice my host family is. Just so nice. Super supportive. They always try and involve me in conversation they’ll both come sit in my room and talk to me and tell me I’m “very smart.” That alone earns major brownie points in my book haha.

So the food. I might have mentioned the food before an how good it is. I’ve slowly encountered a couple things I’m not so much a fan of. One, shrimp… but I don’t like shrimp anyway so that’s okay. Two, they serve a lot of meat with fat on it. And I don’t mean like, “oh the piece of meat has fat on it so I’ll cut it off.” I mean like its chunk of fat with teeny bit of meat attached. I keep eating it, but it’s a little off putting. It’s funny how I’m willing to eat it and it doesn’t make me queasy like it would in the States. I had some chicken this evening and it was just straight fat with little bits of meat attached. An acquired taste I’m sure ^_.^ (that’s my new smiling Marilyn Monroe face). And the third thing is something I’ve had for breakfast twice. It’s a sticky brown rice. No seasoning really very little flavor and in the center of this giant mound of rice is a little piece of pork. It would probably be fine but they serve so much of it to me that I just kind of feel ill after I eat it.

They also feed me soooooo much. I’m so full all the time. To the point that I end up not eating much on my own cause I just can’t. None of you can understand THEY FEED ME ALL THE TIME. Constantly refilling my bowl and saying “eat’a more.”

I was so bummed because on Friday night the school paid for this really nice meal at a really nice restaurant. And I just couldn’t eat. I had a little bite of maybe half the dishes served and that was all I could stomach. And this was JUST from breakfast. I didn’t even eat lunch that day. So much food.

But it’s also kind of sweet. She always has snacks for me when I’m studying, fruit or bread or something. And she’s always bringing me water. This goes back to the first point that they’re so freaking nice.

Change of topic...

The mosquitos here don’t bite me. At all. I’m in heaven. They’re everywhere and people who usually don’t get many mosquito bites get eaten alive and I just stroll jaunty jolly around without a care in the world. I did get four bites but I received them while I was in my room sleeping with the door shut so there were no other options for the little bug. But they didn’t itch that bad and are pretty much gone already.

Homework. I already talked about this too… I’m going to have so much and so much studying. I studied five hours today plus an hour long tutoring session with me tutor Lin—who’s awesome btw— and about six hours yesterday. And I still haven’t memorized how to write the 50 characters I was trying to learn… I recognize them on sight and know the English definition. But I also have to be able to write the character, correctly I’ll add. There is a specific order you have to write each of the lines and stuff in a character. And I have to be able to write the pinyin which is simple enough but you have to be able to write the tones in correctly which isn’t. So that’s gonna be a struggle for while yet. Hopefully my quiz tomorrow won’t be too hard pwahhh.

Another topic change.

I GOT HIT BY A MOTOR CYCLE!!!

Not really… but kind of.

We went to this acrobatic show. Pretty cool, fairly generic. There were some interesting cultural things in it. It was in a round but only really faced one way, and that was where important people sat. I know at least one fairly important dignitary was there cause they pulled up with a police escort in four black cars. But it was all facing them. There were other things that were interesting but not enough to spend 300 more words explaining… the fun bit was when I got hit by motorbike. Or a moto itza (I think that’s how you would spell it, don’t know the tones.)

The finale of the show involved 5 motorcycles driving around this big globe (maybe 50 feet high and across) just big enough they could drive around it with maybe three feet apart but small enough you were still terrified to watch them. Well, they introduced it by driving the motorcycles into the audience, slowly I’ll add. Well when going up a ramp into the audience the bike slipped as it was two rows behind me and slid down into me. No bruises or anything haha but scared the living crap out of me. So that was fun trying to explain to my host mom. I think I explained it correctly and she understood but didn’t think she understood and so just laughed at me.

So tomorrow, Monday will now be my longest day of the week for the next seven weeks. I have Chinese from 10:00 – 12:00, a lunch break, then Understanding China from 1:00 – 3:00, then Martial arts from 3:00 to five, then a dinner break, and then I’m taking erhu lessons from 7:00 to 8:00.

I’m pretty excited about erhu lessons that’ll be super fun. I wish the lessons were a little longer and I’m hoping that we’ll somehow get to be able to take an erhu back to our homes to practice or something but probs not.

Anyway there is tons more I could write about but I just broke a thousand words so I’m going to call it quits for now.

I’ll write more / take a video / post/take more photos later.

-C