Chengdu, China Study Abroad: Chengdu Week 2

Sept. 10, 2014

    I spent most of my morning doing laundry and studying. The internet was magically working again (though it is not working right now), and so I was actually able to Skype people and upload photos on Facebook. Cassidy hung out in my room using the internet and we chatted for most of the morning. Lunch was spicy noodles. History is a really interesting class, though right now we are in ancient, ancient history of China which is not really my area of interest. Our professor really likes discussion of mythology but her English isn’t always good enough to understand our answers. That’s pretty common here and she get across what she thinks is important so in the end that’s all that matters. My final project will about the Tang Dynasty and legend of Mulan (which was a poem first). Xiao Loashi also asked Cassidy and myself if we would be interested in teaching english at a school for her friend. This is what guanxi is, the connections that get you places in China. So hopefully I will have an easy job of teaching English and a decent income for the rest of my stay in China. I haven’t been feeling well today, so Cassidy has gone out to discover dinner and bring it back to me. We shall see where that leads as the evening approaches.
    We ended up inside and just chatting about our interests and what we wanted to do in the future. It’s really nice to hang out and just chat. This place is very much beginning to feel like a proper home to me. Except for right now there is very little hope that internet is going to reappear, but such is China.

Sept 11, 2014

    Finally had Chinese class for this week, and I actually feel like I did really well. I was able to answer in Chinese and I am getting things right. I am beginning to gain some confidence in speaking, which is my worst point when it comes to Chinese. After class I made plans with a bunch of people to go to proper Sichuan hotpot, which is infamously spicy. Before we went though, I played the game of where is the internet. Right now we are having a lot of problems and there is nothing we can really do about it until October, where they are going to switch to payed internet (60 RMB, a month) and we will have hopefully more reliable situation. I also took a long nap simply because there wasn’t anything to do. I need to find some books for reading when the internet is out, I didn’t bring any because they are too heavy and I don’t have enough internet to download e-books.
    We went out at six for our hotpot. It was myself, Raphi, Dee, Jack, Seth, Cherry, Nena and Maiqi for dinner. Sichuan is famous for extremely spicy hot pot, it was extremely good and really filling. It’s a bit more expensive than a normal meal but it’s worth it for every once and a while. It’s good to get to know some Chinese people, I am hoping to get together with them and start really speaking Chinese. During dinner a little girl kept coming up to us and we fed her watermelon. It was super cute!! After the dinner we went shopping for shoes, I got some shoes for 39 RMB (about 6 dollars). We went back to Cherry, Maiqi and Nena’s room joked around and sang, we really want to organize KTV. It was good fun, and then we went down and harassed Brennan, Jose and Cassidy. Currently stealing very slow internet from Brennan so I can get some reading done. Life is very good here.