Chengdu Week 4 - Saturday Adventures! (Most pictures at the end)

Study book for English

Pizza Hut Menu

Sept. 27, 2014

    My day began earlier than I wanted it to, but it is technically my first day of work. I went to the Starbucks on Jingli road at 9:30. Quickly after I arrived, my new tutee appeared ready to learn. I quickly found out that Cindy actually speaks very good English and could easily describe and play games in English. This makes my life so much easier. Now all she really needs to do is practice speaking, I am essentially her english language partner. It was quite fun for both of us though I think at the end she started getting a little bit bored. Two hours is a long time for a four year old to try to learn. It was funny the looks that the other Chinese people would give because we were both speaking English. After the tutoring session Mabel, Cindy’s mom, took me out to lunch. We went to Pizza Hut, which is so very different than Pizza Hut in the USA. This restaurant is more like a Chili’s in terms of variety and food quality. It was actually quite tasty, though this is the first time I have even had corn on a pizza.
    After lunch Mabel wanted to go shopping for some things and I think she wanted Cindy to continue practicing her English. So we first went to Ito Yokado, which is a high end import store, waaaaaay to expensive for my taste. After that though I got to go to Metro. What is Metro you may be asking, I will tell you: Chinese CostCo. This one is geared towards businesses so here were lots of things that I have seen in shops, like the large red welcome rugs. We wandered around for a long time. Cindy likes to sing so we did about 100 rounds of “Head, Shoulder, knees and Toes” it was quite fun. The only issue I have in big shopping areas is there are always way too many people. So I was actually happy to leave. Cindy has really warmed up to me so I think tutoring her will be an easy task. I arrived back in the dorms around 4pm and headed into my room to relax a bit.
    I started chatting with Meiling on WeChat and I was extremely thrilled I was able to not only hold a conversation but respond with appropriate interjections. It was super exciting for me!! Now I just need to get simplified characters onto my iPad keyboard, I am not sure exactly how to do that but I shall figure it out. I really feel like my vocabulary is improving, now to just get better at speaking… After the chat I then got to use my Chinese to help a student who was looking for her Japanese friend, which was somewhat interesting. She didn’t know where her friend lived except in our building, she started with the top floor and was working her way down. It was a good day to learn and speak Chinese!
    I chilled in Dee’s room for a while and eventually people started trickling back to the dorms. There were even some interns running around our dorms visiting all of us (Specifically Jiajing, Lin and Chiyi). Brennan is thinking about buying a projector for movies, which would actually pretty awesome for movie nights(he purchased nice speakers today so we had some Karaoke in Cassidy’s room for giggles). Pretty much I have realized that in the dorms even though we have our own rooms everyone jus kinda mills about moving between rooms as they feel is necessary. I really like this style of living and even the Chinese people were commenting on how our dorms had a really good feel. We are also planning a few trips just because we want to go exploring. Tomorrow will be a slow day, I think I am going to try to upload some videos I have taken while I am here. Hopefully the internet will allow such a thing.

PIZZA!

Everyone, meet Cindy

So cute :3

We are very serious in the dorms!