Happy Fourth of July from China! In honor of this clearly important American holiday, 90% of our class dressed in red, white, and blue and made plans to go out for American food after class.
Long story short:
Wake up: 6:30
Breakfast: fried rice (yas!) and noodles. Today my host mom gave me my berries and a peach to take to school. All I have to say is that the peach was the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. It was so sweet.
Class: I discussed one child policy and gender inequality in class. I felt very informed for once in my life.
Lunch: I’m improving because today I got my food all by myself and it only took seven school days. I mean, I’m still not good with dealing with the lunch people…I wanted to mix my chicken in some white rice, but they didn’t ask me if I wanted any today so I just didn’t get any. Small improvements thought.
Cultural activity: we went to the 中山陵 in like 100% humidity and I wanted to cry. We walked a mile just to be greeted with 250+ steps straight up a mountain. I’m so grateful for Jessica and the game “what are the odds” because she did “what are the odds that Ben gives Hayley his fan for as long as she wants” and she got it. So while I was suffering, I was suffering a little bit less because of the fan. I’ve been swimming in my own sweat, but here we are. I will say, the view from the top of the stair was worth all my suffering and loss of fluids, but honestly, I was ready to keel over at any minute. ALSO!!! I had my first 外国人 experience!!! There are some pros and cons to being Chinese in China. Pro: no one is going to bother mugging me on the train or in public. Con: I won’t have any fun 外国人 stories, and no one thinks I’m beautiful. BUT WAIT! So, while suffering and walking down the stairs, one of my friends gets aggressively shoved by this little old woman who wanted a picture. I assumed that the woman wouldn’t want me in the picture so I kind of stepped to the side while my “ethnic” friends took the photo. But, to my surprise, I was also aggressively shoved into the photo. I mean, part of it was probably out of pity and the other part was probably because I had sunglasses on and you couldn’t see my eyes, but whatever. I now have a fun story to tell :D
Bus ride: We played paranoia on the thirty minute bus ride back. My name got thrown of a few times, and while I would love to reveal some of the questions, I feel like those should stay between Nanjing Summer 2017 :)
Pre-game: We played paranoia with the rest of our group before going out to eat
Food: there was a small divide between going somewhere far and expensive and going to McDonalds, but we ended up going to a place called “Choices” which was only a ten minute walk from campus. I’m not spending a lot of money this week, so I just got fries (which were good), and a coke (which was flat).
Today was definitely more exciting.