ChengduBound

We’ve finally left Beijing and are settling into Chengdu! Although Beijing was interesting and I was glad that I got to see it, it’s very clear to me that Beijing is not my type of city. It was a bit too aggressive for my tastes as a city and the amount of smog clogging the air made the sun look like a dim light bulb ( on the days that the sun was visible, at least). So, I’m glad that I decided on a program in Chengdu instead. Chengdu is still a city, but unlike Beijing it’s a much calmer city. I heard that Chengdu is the laziness capital of China and that does not surprise me at all. Everyone here moves at a much more relaxed pace. The city as a whole seems much less busy than Beijing. And since I’m from suburban Maryland I really missed trees, which Chengdu, thankfully, has plenty of.

Our dorm rooms are surprisingly nice. Each of us has a spacious bedroom with a small sofa and tea table, as well as a TV and our very own bathrooms (with a western toilet!). One of the hardest things to get used to here is definitely the food. The staples of an American diet just aren’t here. I’m used to waking up every morning and getting cereal or a bagel. In China milk is nonexistent and I haven’t seen any American style bread since I’ve arrived. Eating is certainly a guessing game for all of us since we can’t really read menus very well. So you just order something and hope for the best or try to have the waiter explain a dish before you order, but since our Chinese isn’t that strong yet it’s difficult to understand what the waiters say. A couple of days ago all of us foreign students went out to a hot pot restaurant. Hot Pot is kind of the Chinese version of fondue. Except instead of a pot full of hot cheese or chocolate to dip food in, Chinese Hot Pot includes a boiling pot of spicy broth full of peppers and vegetables. You are given raw meat or vegetables and you put whatever you want to eat into the boiling broth. After a few minutes you can pick it out of the broth (not an easy task with chopsticks), and eat it. A couple of boys at my table were adventurous and decided to put some pig’s brain in the hot pot and I tried it. I wouldn’t suggest it. It tastes exactly like what you think a brain would taste like. Not good.

Hello! Thanks for stopping by my blog!  The trip to China was exhausting at best. My plane from Dulles to Korea ended up sitting on the runway for two whole hours because of bad weather. Needless to say, I ended up missing my connecting plane from Korea to China. The Korean Airline put me and all of the other passengers who missed their planes because of the delay in a nice hotel for the night, but we had very little time for sleep before we had to take an hour long bus ride from the hotel back to the airport at 5 AM the very next morning. So, I arrived in Beijing a day late and missed the first day of my orientation.  Here's a tip for anyone going to China. If you're in the lobby of the airport and someone asks you if you're looking for a cab do not agree to let them drive you. They will overcharge you. You should always go outside and hail your own cab. The cab ride from the airport to the hotel in Beijing was supposed to cost 100 Yuan (Chinese dollars), but I ended up paying 450. Some of my peers were even charged 850, so I definitely learned from that.  When I arrived at the hotel, my roommate and all of the other students in my program were gone on a tour of the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square (Unfortunately, I never got to see either one), so I had time to walk around Beijing for a good hour or so. Beijing is a boisterous city that is very much like New York. During my four days in Beijing the sky was never blue because the pollution is that heavy. Some of my peers felt that the air was harder to breathe in Beijing because of the pollution, but I couldn't really tell the difference.  I was struck by how many people literally stopped in their tracks to stare at me when I walked by. I'm half Dominican and half Indian so I definitely don't look Chinese, so I was quite the commodity whenever I walked down the street. Some people were very excited to see me. Especially children, who often tugged on their mothers' sleeves and pointed at me. I often heard their mothers say to them "meiguo ren", which means American in Chinese. At one point while touring a place called The Summer Palace, which is a place where the emperor would vacation during the summer months, I was asked to pose in pictures over ten times. At other times, however, people look confused and even a little unhappy to see me around. the climate toward foreigners in China is strange and I haven't quite been able to figure it out. Although, the general consensus seems to be, the younger they are, the more open they are to foreigners. Of course, there are outliers. I've had several elderly women ask if they could touch my hair, since my hair is curly and the way it bounces when pulled never ceases to amaze Chinese people.  On my second day in Beijing after catching up on some much needed sleep we traveled to the Great Wall. There's a saying in China that you are not a man until you have climbed the Great Wall, and I agree with that completely after trekking up the wall. It is incredibly exhausting since there is, literally, endless stairs of varying sizes with very little places to take a break. A lot of the individual steps were nearly as tall as my knee, so every single step was an intense thigh workout.  All of us American tourists were huffing and puffing up the wall with water bottles in each hand while elderly Chinese people zoomed past us and young Chinese women in elegant sundresses, high-heeled shoes and lace parasols sauntered up the stairs with no issues whatsoever. Some women even carried infants while they were hiking up the wall.We were all clearly outmatched, but it was worth it in the end to see the view: