Day 40 -- July 3

So first thing I did today was go down and get a short term card that will let me in and out of the dorms. The women’s dorms are always locked and are only open to female visitors. There is a sense of extreme gender separation that I feel is incredibly antiquated. It’s frustrating for me personally as most of my friends are male, I always have to go out to be with them and outside is humid. Well anyway I got my card, I will return it when I receive a new ID card. I then went back to my dorm and promptly slept for another two hours. Some days it is hard to get up, especially when class isn’t until 2:20 in the afternoon. I did eventually drag myself out into the real world.

74 is my bus!

    I took the bus to Shida hoping to grab some jiaozi (dumplings) for lunch. I was sadly disappointed when my usually place was closed already. She stays open until she doesn’t have anymore goods and today I missed out. So I grabbed an egg bread carry out food with some coffee and headed over to MTC to study before class. Class itself was good. We had to finish our test and do the speaking part then Laoshi spent most of it going over the new vocabulary. Reid told us that by his flash card count we are almost up to 300 hundred new words, this includes extra words that Laoshi has taught us so we can make sentences. It was a nice relaxed day. We were assigned a significant amount of homework, which is unusual for the second day. I think this chapter might by really important just in terms of usefulness. We have learned the to think and to feel verbs which I always helpful in conversations.

    After class I headed back to the dorm. Today Meiling and Shilan were going to go with me to have dinner. Originally we were going to go wander stalls and find food. But when we got to the night market we realized that Wednesdays were the official rest day of the Gong Guan night market. The permanent shops were still open so we wandered into one of those for a sit down meal. I ended up with noodles and beef, a nice standard for this area. As usual is was very good. We then went to a little tea shop for a drink. I really tried to order in Mandarin but every time I picked something they were either out or it wasn’t in season. We just laughed at my luck. We walked back and came up to the room, it was homework time.

Meiling

Shilan

Drink stand!

    My homework was surprisingly difficult. We had a new type of homework that involves filling in the blanks. There is still one I don;t understand, I asked Meling if she knew but she wasn’t sure. I am going to ask Laoshi tomorrow. Tomorrow as you all know is Fourth of July my fellow Meiguo ren (Americans) are getting together after class for a BBQ. Something small to celebrate our holiday. It should be fun. I am going to bed early and hopefully tomorrow I will be able to drag myself out of bed. I am supposed to go to conversation class which is at 10. Should be a fun time! See you tomorrow!