I had a moment of realization today that I had somewhat assimilated pretty well into the Chinese culture. I was in a back alley street of Wenjiang (our suburb where our school resides) hanging out on my second hand bike, eating some local street food that cost about 40 cents, wearing my fake nikes that cost about 8 bucks, and I pulled out my flip phone with some panda bling hanging off of it to check the time. I don't even get phased by the squatty anymore and I can almost use chopsticks like a complete champ. Oh yeah, almost 100% Chinese.
I really do dig China and Asia in general. Something about this place. Like I have mentioned numerous times it can get dirty and smelly, especially my suburb but it still holds some sort of charm over me. At night it is absolutely beautiful in its own way. The street vendors are out selling all sorts of specialties, there are people everywhere yelling and screaming out there and the bright lights tie it all together and make it beautiful. I have always been one for big crowds, excitement, and loudness. I love people watching and don't really care about my personal bubble being non-existent. I guess China just suits me. I have been getting stressed out lately though, because I am not sure if everyone realizes this but China is a HUGE Country! From Tibet, to the Northwest which holds Mongolians, and an interesting middle eastern nomadic mix, to the north with all the important cities and somewhat influenced by Russia and north korea, from the scenic middle and the tropical south. There are so many places to see and just not enough time that I have here! This weekend we are taking a trip to Xi'an so that will be exciting. I just wish that we didn't have any classes so we could spend all day in Chengdu and other places!
Speaking of class, our Finance professor from WSU finally got in so for the next three weeks I will have class for over 8 hours a day! Barely enough time to grab some street food but I really can't complain that I am getting a semesters worth of Finance in three weeks. It's nice being with a bunch of WSU students, and since almost everyone is an accounting major we have lots to talk about and a lot of similar plans for the future. Most people on the trip with me plan on getting their master's degree in Accounting, studying for the CPA exam, hopefully passing, and working their asses off for the Big Four. After experiencing the cube life this summer and part of this winter I am not sure if I want to go down that same path right away. I want to explore and see more parts of Asia and the rest of the world. I am completely addicted to any sort of traveling, I feel like a junkie who is chasing the dragon. I need to see and explore more and more to feel satisfied! The only problem would be trying to find some adventurous souls who would like to come with me…
Kara and I have been doing a lot more exploring on our own. There isn't too much around Wenjiang but we work with what we have got. We vowed that we would try to only eat the food in the cafeteria once a day and eat street food for everything else. We gave it a try on Thursday and were pretty successful! Between classes we wandered into a random shop and I saw something that looked like a smoothie. Since all I know how to say is strawberry I just repeated that and got some sort of strawberry snow cone. I am surprised they didn't bring us out the whole menu! They were falling all over themselves with excitement that we were there! They didn't speak much English but insisted that we sit down and enjoy ourselves. We noticed that once we sat down the restaurant got progressively more busy…and that the employees and customers were taking pictures of us! Eventually we started posing and one of the employees hopped in a picture. I'm going to miss feeling like a celebrity everywhere I go! After leaving the shop and saying our thousandth goodbye we ventured further down the crowded streets of Wenjiang and checked out the food and people. Well, mainly the people checked us out. The old people are the best here, they always seem to have a complete look of shock and interest when we ride or walk past them. They will often keep walking with their heads turned and often will trip or run into something. Quite entertaining and I shouldn't be that surprised since China just started to be open to the public in the 80's! We stopped at a random stand that a couple of ladies were making some fried dough thing. We paid our 20 cents and rode back off with both the pastries and a smile. As much as I complain about missing meat I am going to miss the local dirty cheap Chinese food. It won't compare to anything in the states.
Friday night was…a complete blast. Seriously I don't think that I have ever had a more fun night in my life! We decided to go out and try Karaoke with the help of our favorite Caribbean friend Eamon, and our other favorite Chinese friend Lisa! Lisa is so sweet. She is an English major so she is completely fluent and very helpful. We all felt very comfortable with her right away as she is one of those people who is very naturally calm and maternal. You kind of need to feel comfortable with Chinese people right away in general though, because they are very grabby. Lisa would often hold my hand or grab onto my arm at random, and I had just met her! American girls can be somewhat touchy with each other (more when we are under the influence and need each other for physical support) but most of the time we aren't just mobbing down the streets holding hands. I guess Chinese people are all helpful in general anyway. I know I keep saying it but sometimes it's ridiculous. Today we got a group of Chinese people that followed us to class just to say hi and shake our hands! They are always inviting us over for dinner and trying to take us shopping. I don't think anyone at WSU would ever take such an interest in foreign students.
Anyway, Karaoke! Ah it was so fun! We had to wait around for a while, Eamon and Lisa bargained the price down for us so we got a huge room with three fifths of skyy for pretty cheap! While we were waiting some drunk Chinese men came out and were slurring their words pretty bad. One guy straight up sounded like Long Duck Dong and said to me "ahhhhh isss okay! I werrry sorry we had much funn!!! Okay!!" I didn't know what else to do so I just snapped a picture of him. We clambered into the elevator and got into our room and got real excited. It was huge and fancy, and they had a pretty decent selection of American tunes. The night started off pretty chill but then the shots started flowing and before I knew it I was up on the stage belting Dancing Queen with Scott. I am pretty sure we thought we were Abba at that point. Soon everyone was up dancing and screaming into the microphone. As the night (and shots) progressed I guess we got somewhat loud even for Karaoke and some employees came in to make sure everything was ok. I took this as that they wanted to dance with us. I grabbed one and started screaming "beautiful girl!" "handsome boy!" and started to dance. I think he was a little shocked at first but he quickly got over it when we all started to dance with him. We sang one last song (I'm so paid) and stumbled home still singing. I guess for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to skype my parents in my state so I hopped on Kara's computer, grabbed my rabbit Simba and babbled some nonsense at my stepmom. I'm sure she was pleased to hear from me. Then I called my mom, which I now regret because she had some bad news about my Diamond-Dog (RIP). According to Craig I was pretty upset about because I spent the next two hours crying (with a brief intermission in which I called my dad and left him a message singing three little birds).
Before I knew it I was being woken up at Kara at 9 AM because we had to make it to the bus by 10 so we could get out to Chengdu. It's a miracle I made it because I was definitely first class on the struggle bus. We were all in the same boat but luckily we were still pretty drunk and not hungover. The rough part was when we had to take a taxi ride and though we told the drivers all the same McDonald's we ended up at different McDonald's all over the city. It was unfortunate but I wasn't too concerned at the time because I knew French fries and a cheeseburger were in my future. My hangover hit hard after the food. It lasted until about 6 PM that day so struggling around Chengdu for the morning was not fun. We went to a huge mall full of the same Chinese stuff they sell everywhere so I don't think I missed out on too much. Eventually half of the group split up and my part headed to Pizza Hut. I ended up taking a two hour nap there since I couldn't eat the food anyway, but everyone was raving about it. Pizza Hut is comparable with a three star restaurant here and not the normal one. They have more gourmet Pizzas and Salads. And Western Toilets!
After Pizza Hut we trudged on to The People's Garden of Chengdu and saw a couple interesting things among the way. Not as interesting as the Garden turned out to be. When we entered there was a huge exercise class going on outside! Mainly old people but man were they workin it! Even though I still wasn't feeling that great I joined in and started kicking with the rest of them. It reminded me of something that my mom would absolutely love to do! We continued on from there and saw some cool booths to buy cheap Chinese trinkets but those did not interest me. No, no, what interested me was the bubbles these booths were selling! I bought two tubes and started to twirl around and blow bubbles. It was a pretty nice day and the smog was under control. I almost forgot about my hangover and was drifting off into Taylor zone. All of the sudden my bubble burst (ha…ha) and I heard an excited child scream. I looked up and the cutest Chinese baby in the world ran over and tried to pop my bubbles. So I played with him and before I knew it more screams and more Chinese children came to play! I was so distracted by them I was shocked to look up a couple of minutes later to see that almost a complete circle of Chinese people had formed around me. There were almost 60 people watching me blow bubbles for the kids and most of them were taking pictures, and a couple of them were taping it. Eventually some old people joined in on the fun! I was pretty happy in that moment, and I will probably always remember that Saturday in the Park! Eventually I had to move on with the rest of my group and I was sad to see the group go. I kept blowing bubbles and since we were still some of the only white people there Mal pointed out that we had a discreet following of ten people throughout the whole way. There were a couple more interesting things, like watching a bunch of old men play Chinese checkers in the park and some people doing water calligraphy.
After the Park we headed down to check out what I personally think is the coolest area of Chengdu. It's called Wide and Narrow road and it is awesome! It's got ancient Chinese Architecture and a bunch of nice restaurants and shops. I bought a couple of souvenirs and I hope to go back when I am feeling a little better and can enjoy it more! The best part (as usual) was the Starbucks! It was crazy architecture and probably the coolest Starbucks I have ever been to. They of course had western toilets. It's pretty funny though, when I went to go into the bathroom I noticed the toilet seat was a dirty brown. Gross! I though, Did the Chinese people just completely miss? But then I realized they were foot marks! The Chinese still climb on these toilets like Squatty Potties. Judging by the smell they didn't understand you could flush the toilet paper down the toilet as well! Can't teach an old dogs new tricks I guess. I also met a woman from Seattle who was in Chengdu training the baristas how to make coffee. I was so jealous, she has the best job I could think of! Starbucks and she gets to travel all over the world!
Sunday was a pretty relaxing day for us and we kind of lazed around and finished some HW. We were all excited for dinner though because a Chinese girl in one of our classes invited us over for dinner! Her name is Winnie and we ate with her roommates Spring (or was it Summer?) and Zoe. I seriously love the American names they give themselves. I no joke heard a girl introduce herself as Doris. Seriously? Anyway, we bought Winnie a cake to thank her for inviting us over so we carried it to her apartment. Her apartment is amazing and nothing like our communist style dorms. They even had a western toilet and modern amenities! She made us amazing Chinese food with lots of meat (one dish had chicken feet and it remained untouched by me…I'm not quite there yet!) and we all enjoyed ourselves in general. It was funny as we showed them the cake. There was lots of fruit on top of it and they were kind of confused. They thought you ate the fruit and maybe the cake later. Zoe told us she didn’t want any cake because she thought she was fat! If this girl was fat, I would be grossly, morbidly obese.
I found my stomach growling late at night so Shoji and I headed to East Gate to grab some more street food. I got the most delicious noodles I have ever tasted in my life. The streets of Wenjiang would be drunk person's dream after the bars. Well, enough of my rambling for now. Unfortunately I have two exams this week. One of them is in Finance and we haven’t even had our first class yet! Dell still hasn't contacted me but hopefully they do soon cause I need a computer! Mom, since I know you will be the first person reading my blog I need you to keep harassing Dell! Thanks!
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