I woke up yesterday morning and realized I didn't feel well. Everyone in our group kind of has a cold and despite my best efforts I think I may have finally caught it. I gracefully fell off my bunk bed and wandered into my favorite Japanese man's room to see if he had anything to cure my troubles. He didn't offer me any medicine but he did offer me a present. He handed me a bundled up shirt and told me to bring it to my room and not freak out when I opened it. Knowing Shoji I figured it was some weird Japanese sex toy. I didn't think much when I brought it back to my room with Shoji closely following behind until I realized whatever he handed me was warm and...MOVING! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I screamed! Shoji wanted me to open it on the floor but I didn't make it that far. Out hopped a live bunny! At first I freaked out because how responsible is that to just buy a random bunny off the street and where were we going to keep it, does it have rabies, how were we supposed to feed it? Then Shoji told me it was a present for me and I looked back down at it. It looked back at me with its little bunny eyes and I fell in love. I don't know how old it is but it fits in two hands. I went into my maternal mode that I try and keep secret from everyone. I googled how to take care of bunnies and what they eat (Shoji had tried to feed it a banana) and we set out to the nasty streets of Wenjiang and bought some leafy greens for the little guy.
We decided to name it Simba because for some reason we were thinking of the Lion King in our most boring, three hour long class (mgtops 491). To christen it properly I held it above the sink Rafiki style and then told it that "all the light that touches the kingdom shall be yours". It fell asleep. We don't have a cage for Simba yet so we made it a nice little nest area in one of Shoji's cupboards. I know he gave it to me as a present but I don't want it shitting all over my stuff. The girls are all in love with it but the boys don't quite seem to see the appeal. Craig keeps threatening to drop it down the squatty potty hole. Nice. Having Simba around made me have a tiny pang of homesickness as I thought about Lemur (RIP) and Mia, who I haven't met but Taylor says is lovely so I will go with that. He is a happy little creature. Currently he is hopping around and nibbling at my boots. he is all white with brown ears and I am not quite sure what we are planning on doing with him when we have to leave...
Class is going okay so far. I am going to be receiving 18 credits for 8 weeks so I can't complain about that! The Chinese seem to enjoy trying to learn in a second language and we enjoy them giggling all the time. Our least favorite class is 3 hours long and kind of like pulling teeth. Even the Chinese are bored in class. Our prof is nice but we never really know what she is trying to talk about unless she brings up cars or Mcdonalds. We get excited when she brings up American food and German cars. I really like my accounting classes because Bernie teaches them and he usually has food examples as well. I can't get over that the Chinese want to take classes from a foreign professor. At WSU if we see a foreign name for our class list we usually try and drop that as fast as possible, and usually roll our eyes if we have a large number of Asians in our classes. Here they love it! Speaking of languages, I have the opportunity to teach English to the Chinese. It would be 4.5 hours a week and you get paid but I am not sure yet. I am sure it would be completely rewarding but I want to focus on learning Chinese! I don't know, does anyone have opinions on teaching English as a second language?
Today in class Bernie told us to try a Chinese restaurant that would be more like the Chinese food we were used to in America (General Tsao's, Mongolian Beef, Orange Chicken) and gave us a card. We still can't read so we rode our bikes into Wenjiang and tried to match the Hieroglyphs on the card with those on the restaurants. We rode past the restaurant a couple times and most Chinese kept coming out to try and get us in their restaurants. We finally found the one. There were dogs everywhere. Outside, inside, on the roof...etc. They don't seem to care about any health codes or requirements at the restaurants. That's why I usually don't look at the food while I eat it. We sat down and after lots of debates and us just repeating "gi" "gi" !! (chicken, chicken) they brought us out some dishes. Definitely not what we were used to. I have no idea what I ate and we tried to not eat too much because none of it was good. It was more traditional Chinese food than anything. Dan said that one of the dishes tasted like a urinal. I don't know about that but it is definitely something we are not trying to eat again. We paid our 80 cents or whatever it cost to eat there (honestly I think they end up paying us money to eat at places most of the time) and we headed off to get "chicken burgers" a couple of shops down. My stomach wasn't feeling the best but I ordered a burger and fries for a grand total of 50 cents. I wasn't feeling the chicken and I made the huge mistake of looking at what I was eating. Oh no, I was not gonna finish that burger after I saw it's innards. I bid adieu to everyone and hopped on my bike and rode back to campus.
I ran all the way up to the second floor of the Cafeteria (where all the rich SWUFE kids eat because it costs about 90 cents a meal) and ran over to my favorite station, The noodle station. The woman who always serves me my food (noodle beezy as I affectionately refer to her as) was there and I couldn't have been more happy to see her. As she handed me my Chow Mien or something that resembles it I looked her dead in the eye and said "noodle beezy, I will never leave you again. I love you". She just nodded and smiled. I might take her and the rabbit home with me.
I think tonight we all realized whenever things don't go our way it's not the Chinese fault. Things are different here and we get frustrated when things don't go our way and they can't understand us but we we're the ones that came into their country not knowing a word of Chinese. This seems like a simple concept to think about but you would be surprised at how often we forget that not everything is up to American standards nor is everything going to be. I mean, it would be nice if they just all spoke English. Hmm. I might just teach that English class after all..
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