Blind Masseuses, Dwarf Kingdoms, Mystery Meals, and Ten Days of Traffic

On Monday I went with Maria, from Spain, and Erin, from Canada, to get massages at the parlor across the street from the school.  Paying someone I don't know to give me a massage isn't something I've done all that often (ever??) in the states, partially because of the cost but also because I'm fortunate enough to know people who are willing to give massages gratis, or at least for trade.

Parlors here are different though, so I thought I'd give it a try.  First of all, in China it is very common for the masseuses to be either blind or have severe eye problems.  As odd as it may sound to say "I got a blind massage," that's essentially what it was.  It seems that the society here is much less forgiving of people with differences than that of America.

In many cases, one of the best jobs a blind person could hope to have is to be a masseuse...As unfortunate as that is, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense on some level--with the loss of sight comes a keener perception of touch.  It's just too bad that being disabled here doesn't leave people with many options, other than becoming a beggar on the street.

Despite my discomfort at treating a massage given by a blind person as some kind of specialty, I really did appreciate it.  The second reason I decided to try it was purely economic: 40 yuan for 1 hour. 40 yuan?! That's less than $6! Oy!  I can't pass that up.  It'd almost feel like I was wasting money. Heh

First they had us sit down and soak our feet in a scalding bucket of water while they massaged our backs and necks.  Then they massaged our feet and legs for a while, which was really hard to sit through at times.  The idea of light touch seems foreign to them.  It was SOO HARD! I thought my back was going to break.  The other girls I was with told me to stick it out though because after it was over it'd be so worth it.  They were completely right.  :-)

Kingdom of the Dwarfs, Kunming, China

While we were getting our massages, we got to talking about other ways people with disabilities are treated here.  Erin told us about a place in Kunming called Kingdom of the Dwarfs, which is exactly what it's name suggests.

The rule there is that you have to be under 4'3'' to live in the village, which is built to scale.  The place is made up of 120 dwarfs who live and work there, singing and dancing for tourists for their income.  Despite the enormous amount of humanitarian outrage at kingdoms like these all over China, many of the dwarfs report that they love living there because it's the only job opportunity they will get, provides a community, and opens up the possibility of marriage and friendship with others who are going through the same struggles.

Honestly no matter what people who live there might say, the idea of this village sickens me.  I am so used the outlook back home, where many people go to great lengths to help disabled people live as normal a life as possible, never to isolate them and leave them to become some kind of kitschy icon.  This village is basically the opposite!--dwarfs putting on singing and dancing shows for tourists, and making a living simply due to the fact that they are very small, and people find that amusing.  This is clearly one of the many astronomical cultural differences that foreigners (or is it just me?) have a hard time understanding.  I heard they have similar villages for overweight people, those with gigantism, and the same for many other disabilities.

That night I went out to a bar called Aoma Bar with John (from Holland), Mark (UK), and Pete (UK).  They're all fun to hang out with and super funny.  John is so tall, he bangs his head on even the highest door frames.  I think he said he was 6'5!

By far our most discussed topic is of the many differences between life here versus in our respective countries.  This time we compared death witness stories (apparently in the UK everything is under-wraps.).  I told mine about the shooting at this year's pink parade before gay pride.

After hanging out at the bar for about two hours, we were all hungry so we headed over to this noodle restaurant right next door that specializes in Across-the-Bridge noodles, a Kunming noodle-soup specialty.

Allegedly the dish got it's name after a scholar moved to a distant town to prepare for his imperial exam.  His loving wife would travel to see him across a nearby bridge with a bowl of this dish to give to her husband each day.  When the scholar did well on the exam, he attributed his success to his wife's noodles.  Awww, sweet story.

My very own bowl of Across-the-Bridge Noodles

In contrast to this story, our experience there proved less than delectable.  As is usually the problem when I've gone to restaurants here, ordering was the hardest part. This one in particular was extremely inaccessible to foreigners as not only was the entire menu in Chinese with no pictures anywhere, but you also had to order at a counter away from the eating area, so you couldn't easily point to someone else's dish and say "Wo yao ji ge" (I want this one).

The man at the counter immediately picked up on our dilemma and tried to help us by simply offering meals in various price ranges, since that's the one thing many beginning Chinese speakers can actually understand.  He offered us a range of whether we wanted to buy the meal that was 10 kuai, 20, 40, 60, or 100 kuai per person.  Thinking it didn't make much difference which we chose (since we wouldn't know what was coming anyways), I decided on the 40 kuai/person meal (about $6).  That price is on the expensive end for China, but was in the middle of the prices he offered so I figured it couldn't be too bad.

We sat down and awaited our mystery meal.  It was a really odd experience, knowing that we had just ordered something but had absolutely NO idea what was in store for us.  When the waitress came, she toted bowls of noodle soup (so far so good!), followed by no less than 12 smaller dishes of various items that could be eaten in the soup.  Last was a big white bowl of........something.  We had no idea what.  It looked brown like meat, but upon touch it jiggled.  Hmmm.

Mystery Meal

Mystery Meat

We gave everything a fair try.  The majority of the mystery meal tasted great, except for this ....thing.....we couldn't figure out what it was, and it left a terrible after taste.  Guesses were that it might be kidney, or some kind of pancreas.

We left the place feeling embarrassed that we hadn't managed to finish even half of what we had ordered and silly that we had just spent so much more money than we had needed to.

The next day I asked my dad about the mystery meat.  He is generally pretty knowledgeable when it comes to food, especially Chinese food.
"It was brown and jiggly and soaked in reddish brownish sauce," I described. "Kind of like the consistency of jello, but savory and gross."

He suggested that the dish might have been congealed and cubed pig's blood, a highly sought-after Chinese specialty. I entered "pigs blood" into my google search bar, to find pictures of the exact same dish I had just eaten. Aaaah!  Blech! Live and learn, I guess.  Good thing I don't keep kosher.

Yesterday I was really hungry after class so I went over to this little bar/restaurant by the school and ordered a strawberry smoothie and a fruit salad.  The waitress said that they had run out of strawberry.  I quickly scanned the menu for the list of other flavors, an action to which my waitress responded by informing me that they were also out of banana, mango, and apple. That's four out of the five flavors!...So that just left me with papaya.  I decided to skip the smoothie altogether, since I don't much care for papaya.

Funny thing is I had already ordered the fruit salad without any complaints from the waitress.  At this point I was really curious as to what on earth could possibly be in it if they really were out of all the items she had said.  When it came, it turned out to be made up of apple-pear, papaya, and ...BANANA!  huhhhh???  The waitress just said they were out of that! I was so amused I took a picture of it (see below).  Also had sweet mayonnaise on it, something I could have done without.  :-P

I see you, banana.

After I got home I told Pete about my experience.  He said that he went to the same place and ordered a cup of black coffee with Baileys in it the other day.  They told him they were out of both of those items, and that all they had left in terms of coffee were lattes and cappuccinos.  Haha!  How the heck are they making lattes with no coffee?!

Pete said he argued with them, convincing them that they must have black coffee until they broke down and "found some."  His theory is that they are trying to get confused foreigners to buy more expensive drinks, which makes complete sense to me in his case.  I still can't find a reasonable explanation for my smoothie experience, except that maybe papaya is cheaper to buy here than all the other fruits they "offer?"  Puzzling.

In all I'm definitely developing a healthy social life here, even on weekdays, despite having to wake up for class at 7:30am.  Last night I went to the Hump Bar again with Pete, John, and Mark.  As usual we compared lots of stories from our home countries, but our main topic tonight was drinking games.  It turns out they don't play Beer Pong or Flip Cup in the UK, nor do they in Holland!  I explained the games to them, then taught them turrets and Battleship, two of my all-time favorites.

I have to say...some of the differences in the ways Americans speak English versus the way Brits do are very confusing:  So the word "Buoy," like...the floating thing out in the sea...the British pronounce that word as "boy."  When I heard this I gave the argument that the American pronunciation "boo-ee" is way more practical and could save lives--what if there's a boy drowning out in the sea but people get confused when someone runs over and tells them "Hey, there's a boy really far out in the water!" People would look at him like he's an idiot.  "Duh there's a buoy, there are lot's of them. Haven't you ever been to the ocean before?"  Yeah sure, sure, context clues blablabla.  But I'm just sayin'...

Last piece of news:
At lunch today I heard there was a 10-day, 60-mile traffic jam from Beijing to inner Mongolia!  The media is reporting that it was the biggest/longest traffic jam ever.  It started on the Beijing-Tibet expressway on August 14th, and was aggravated by road maintenance along the way.  Not surprisingly, local merchants made a fortune capitalizing off of stranded drivers by selling food and drinks to them on the road at inflated prices.  Drivers were only able to move a third of a mile in a day. ...and we thought Los Angeles was bad.  Oy gevalt!

Sign outside the bathroom at The Hump Bar.
Good thing it's there too,
or I wouldn't have known that I shouldn't discard my boxers in the toilet,
torture someone in the restroom,
 or pee outside of the (nonexistent) toilet bowl.

Squeezable Chicken, Sex Toy Vending Machines and Tea Shots

Korean sex toy vending machine

Yesterday we went to the Golden Temple, a famous Taoist temple made entirely of bronze.  It took about forty minutes to get there by bus, but we entertained ourselves by talking about funny Asian-isms we've seen so far.  By far the craziest was the one this guy Chris told us about:  He saw a vending machine in Korea that sold candy, chips, sex toys, cookies, and gum.  Hah!  I mean, sex toys don't seem like the kind of thing one usually buys at the spur-of-the-moment...Well maybe...could you imagine??:

Person 1: "Oh whoops, I forgot my sex toy. Oh well, no biggie. I'll just run down and grab one at the vending machine real quick."
Person 2: "Aw thanks honey.  Would you mind grabbing me some gum while you're at it?  I just ran out."

Once we arrived at the Golden Temple, we had to climb stairs up an enormous mountain to get to the entrance.  It was quite beautiful though, and at the top of the stairs they were offering people roller-coaster rides to get down again.  We had only just arrived and the steps were pretty steep, so going back down seemed a step in the wrong direction at that point.  We entered the temple grounds to find beautiful lush gardens surrounding all the buildings.  I immediately became that annoying tourist everyone hates, taking photos of things that probably seem insignificant to the people who live and work there, but to us are foreign and exciting.  Here's a small sample:

Entrance to the Golden Temple grounds

Golden Temple incense offering

People gather around the bowl that holds the hungry fish (See below)

Hungry Fish.  People throw coins into the mouth.
If it goes in, they are supposedly luckier than the rest of us.

Incense offering

The woman in the middle is the wife of an army general.  She lived on the temple grounds many years ago.

Leopards eating a pig

After we got back from the Golden Temple, I met up with everyone to go out to the Hot Pot (in Chinese called Huo Guo) dinner.

When I first heard 'Hot' pot I assumed it meant temperature.  I was half right.  Turns out it's temperature hot but it's also the spiciest thing you will ever taste.  Seriously.  Think of the spiciest dish you've ever eaten and multiply that times 100.  Ouch!

When we first walked into the restaurant I immediately felt the hot steam and oil on my skin.  It was almost hard to breath because of the strong spices permeating through the dining room.  Fortunately they took our  group to a private room.

We all sat at one huge table with a metal bowl inserted as the center piece to the table.  The waiters put the spices into the bowl, then added water.  Next they turned on a flame from under the table to get the water boiling.  By the time it was ready, the waiters had brought us various dishes of vegetables, noodles, raw meats, and other spices.  We dumped them all into the boiling water so that they could cook properly.

By far the strangest ingredient was the pureed chicken, which came in a cone-shaped plastic bag and looked suspiciously like some form of cheese wiz.  Everyone was highly amused by the concept of squeezable chicken, but when it came down to it, it tasted great!  It was super smooth so it provided a really nice texture alongside the various spongy fungi and other types of mushrooms.

There are two tiers of the pot, a small one on top and a larger one on the bottom.  The bottom one is where most people eat out of because it has all the special spices, as opposed to the top which is more plain.  I had a lot of trouble eating from the lower layer.  As soon as I tried a piece I immediately felt like my mouth was about to explode into flames!  I swear, there was a moment where I thought I was going to die...or at the least lose my sense of taste.

It was hard for everyone else too but somehow they managed to eat it.  By the end of the meal everyone was hot, tired, sweating everywhere, and their eyes were all full of tears.  This meal is definitely not for the faint of heart.  It didn't help that the fan was blowing spicy steam directly into our faces either.   My eyes hurt just thinking about it.

Sign outside the Hump Bar.
There are just way too many of these crazy Chinglish signs.
Can't get over it.

After dinner we headed over to the Hump Bar, which lived up to Steven's description.  We sat out on the patio roof outside and everyone ordered fun drinks.  Erin, one of the other students, ordered me, Pete, and this new guy Chris, drinks from the menu without telling us what they were so we would be surprised when they came.  My mystery drink turned out to be a "Ladies First," which I had previously never heard of.  It was peachy though so I didn't ask questions.

At around midnight my jet lag started to kick in again so Pete and I left to get a taxi home.  It was slightly scary because neither of us speak much Chinese, and definitely not enough to give directions.  There's a fancy hotel by our school called Kunming Hotel (Kunming Fan Dian) so we just asked the driver to take us there.  Thank god we have that hotel or we may still be looking for home.

Me, Pete, and Chris at the Hump Bar

Today I walked over to the Main Square I had heard so much about.  Though it is supposedly a completely pedestrian area, that didn't seem to stop cars from driving on the sidewalk!  I was honked at several times to get out of the way for various vehicles to come through.  So much for that.

The area is bustling with people.  It is a mix of nice high-end stores and smaller farmers-market type areas.  In the center was a fountain with fish in it.  It was surrounded by people fishing!  This city is clearly very cosmopolitan.  At times I felt like I was walking through a Chinese version of New York City.

The Main Square.  Kunming, China

For dinner Pete and I went out to a place near the school that advertised "No MSG."  We had a really difficult time with pretty much every step of the ordering process.  It's nice though, in a way, to have someone to hang out with who is just as confused as I am in that respect.

I asked the waiter to recommend something that wasn't too spicy and he pointed at the raw chicken dish.  I decided that wasn't quite my bag.  Then they brought us tea but gave us shot glasses to drink it with.  We each had at least 50 "shots."  SO XCORE!  hah.  Hanging out with him has caused me to pick up some British vernacular.  I caught myself using the word "rubbish" to describe my high school a few hours ago! Oh Bollocks!

"As You Like (it?)," Slippery Shoes, & more Toilet Adventures, aka Peeing into a Hole

Last night after class I went with some fellow students to dinner in downtown Kunming.  I can't believe how much of this incredible city I have yet to see, but the walk over to the restaurant surely whet my appetite in more ways than one.  It will be Harvey's (guy from Boston who helped me with plug conversion on my first day) last day here on Wednesday so he invited everyone out.

The walk over proved especially challenging for me, as earlier that day a torrential thunder-and-lightening storm had hit the streets of Kunming out of thin air.  By the time we were outside though the rain had ceased and the temperature was hot, so I stayed in my summery dress and rubber flip flops....Bad call.  It turns out that the streets of Kunming are silky smoooooth!  The walking paths are made up of marble-like stones, and either they come perfectly shiny and chiseled or they sand them down like crazy.  Whatever the case, I kept slipping on them all over the place from the wet left over from the rain.  It was kind of comedic actually...once you ignore the possible danger of my slipping and breaking my tail bone in the middle of the street in a foreign country.  Funny, balancing on level surfaces was never something I've had to worry about.  I'm learning so much here!

In the seldom moments where I wasn't as focused on precisely distributing my weight evenly so as not to break my neck, I chatted with another really awesome guy who just got here yesterday and is staying for six weeks.  His name is Pete and he's from England.  He just graduated college and is about to start a masters at Oxford University in history.  Even so, he only just turned 21 because in England they only have three years of college, not four.  We talked a lot about accents, and he told me feels like he can tell what kind of person an American is based on their accent--lazy, mean, nice, dumb, etc.  He said he finds most American accents attractive in the same way us US-born fawn over British ones.  Wow, that's a first!

Restaurant where we ate in Kunming

When we finally arrived at the restaurant, the teacher from the school who was accompanying us on our trip helped us order all kinds of dishes foreign to my taste buds.  Chinese food here isn't at all the same as in America.  The dishes are all spiced differently and I have yet to see or taste soy sauce in any dish.  After taking our order, the waitress promptly doled out wine glasses filled to the brim with beer, which she kept refilling almost obsessively throughout the meal--Try as I did, I don't think my glass ever got the chance to be empty.

After dinner the party walked over to a really tiny bar called "As you Like," named for the famous Shakespeare play, of course! (...waaait whaaaat?  That can't be right.  Call me crazy but I'm using my Drama Major card to call them out on this one.  For anyone still confused, Shakespeare's play is called As you Like it.)  Hmm It seems that lots of businesses here steal names and things from other cultures, but they're always a little off.  Maybe something gets lost in translation, but it baffles me that someone would name their business without even checking to see if the name actually connotates what they think it does.  We walked to get there for about 15 minutes until we reached a high-walled alleyway, with two angry dogs yapping away at us.

The sign outside the "bar"

First things first, I heard Harvey (a regular at "As you Like") tell us all to go around the corner and give the man at the window 3 yuan (that's like 45 cents).  I walked with the other guys, not quite knowing why.  I assumed that we were going to go pay a cover charge or something like that to get into the bar.  Nope!  Turns out he had directed us to the bathroom.  Didn't especially have to go before but figured I might as well check off the public-restroom-experience sooner than later.  After paying to use it, I walked in to find that the "toilet" was more akin to a hole in the ground that you squat over.  And toilet paper?? Non-existent in these parts....Oh well, will be better prepared next time around.

Chinese Toilet

After my fun-filled toilet adventure I finally stepped into the bar.  Or shall I say "bar?"  The thing basically looked like a converted, albeit very nice, living room.  The nine of us filled up the entire room.  The place is run by two sisters, and it shuts down at 11pm.  My guess for this is that the girls sleep in the loft above the place at night.  After my initial surprise, I settled in on a small round stool around a coffee table (no joke,  Someone's living room!) and we all took drinks from a big refrigerator sitting in the corner.  Some people bought homemade ice cream that the chef (wait, chef?  In a bar?  Yes, and he also made homemade bread) had just finished whipping up before we arrived.

We stayed there for a while just hanging out and getting to know each other.  I connected with Pete the most, so I'm really glad he'll be here during the entire time I am.  I was basically the only girl there in the middle of all these guys, but there was no aspect of bro-i-ness so it's pretty easy hanging out with them. Later I asked Harvey if this was a typical bar in Kunming, and he said no, definitely not.  Most of them are more like the ones we are used to in the states, complete with dancing, poorly lit rooms, and open past a middle schooler's bed-time.

Outside As You Like

We took a cab home around 11:30, which I was especially down for considering the whole slippery-ground ordeal, combined with my  uncoordinated state.

I still can't get over how cheap everything is here.  Damage from my night: 55 yuan for dinner/drinks ($8), 6 yuan to pee (twice) (90 cents), 20 yuan for my bar tab ($2.98), and 15 yuan split 5 ways for the taxi ride home (45 cents).  All in all that's only $12.33 for a great evening!

Crooked Tongues and Stories from the Hump Bar

I walked around the town of Kunming this morning.  It's a decently developed area.  Almost every third store is a barbershop though...Odd.  I still feel pretty intimidated to try and buy anything or talk to any of the shopkeepers at this point, but it was nice to get the lay of the land.  Learned pretty quickly that in China there is no such thing as pedestrian right-of-way.  You just have to insert yourself into the crosswalk at a timely moment and hope nobody runs over you. Scary!  

After walking aimlessly around the streets for a while I went back to the little supermarket where I bought toilet paper yesterday to buy some soap.  It was less than forty cents to buy one of the highest priced soaps in the shop!  Oh man! My inner Jew is so satisfied. :-)  I walked around the store for a while just to get an idea for how much things are supposed to cost here, and to practice dividing every price by 7 to see what it's American equivalent would be.  The exchange rate is about 6.7RMB to the dollar (Hey, math is hard for some people.  I really did pass third grade, I swear!)

Right before I left I passed some gargantuan vats of candy sitting at the front.  The White Rabbit candies in particular caught my eye as a treat I've always enjoyed in America.  It looked like they had about seven different kinds though, unlike the plain white ones I'm used to seeing.  I decided to buy 2 of each, just to see if there were any differences between them.  Turns out they are all similar in texture (reallllly chewy. like "is this gum or candy?" chewy) and similarly sweet, but the flavors are ridiculous and like nothing I've ever tasted in the ones from Oakland Chinatown.  They had plum flavored ones and another that tasted like corn!  Can't say I was a fan of that one.  The best was the Taro one.  Then there were others that tasted so foreign I couldn't even place a distinct flavor.

Various types of White Rabbit Candies,
also called "Golden Monkeys"

Today was also a big day; I had my first day of Chinese class.  I almost missed it because I accidentally fell asleep right before lunch was served at 12:30 (3am US time) and didn't wake up until 1:20 (4:20am in the US), ten minutes before class was supposed to start. No idea how my body knew I was supposed to wake up then, but so glad I did. I booked it down to the dining area to see if there was any food left.  They had already cleaned everything up but I begged the chef to let me take some leftovers from the kitchen and she was more than willing.  Unfortunately she kept shoveling more and more food onto my plate, insisting that "this dish is best!  You need to try!"  Not really what I was going for at that point, considering I had all of seven minutes to wolf down my lunch before class.  Not sure if I'm even physically able to do that.  (...for anyone who hasn't sat down to a meal with me, it can be an epically long experience, no joke.).

I ended up being a little late to class, but my teacher either didn't notice or was pretending she didn't.  Her name is Xiong Yao, which in English means Bear Jade.  It turns out she's 22 years old.  She started me out with the basics:  What's your name, are you Chinese or American, I am a student, What do you like to do, etc... Smart move considering I haven't taken Chinese in almost four years.  We practiced a lot of speaking and reviewed some pinyin.  She said I have a decent accent, which I kind of don't believe but she probably said so because she's comparing me with people who have never studied Chinese at all.  She mentioned that Italians in particular tend to have issues with the pronunciation because they have "crooked tongues."

First Day of Class Notes

After class I hung out with the other students and we all ate dinner together.  I met some new people in the dining room.  A guy named Josh from Alabama, John from England, and Steven from LA.  Steven is by far the coolest. He has been at Keats school for about 2 weeks and is planning on staying for almost 3 more.  After that he will be studying at Kunming University for a whole year!

Steven told me all about his work at Victoria's Secret.  He was pivotal in how they've designed the layout of the store, and how the employees interact with the customers, etc.  He told me that at the V.S. headquarters they have models in underwear walking around all the time, racks of matching underwear sets lining the hallways, and HUGE pictures of Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks (of course) all around.  Said he thought the working environment was paradise at first but has since become disillusioned.  Haha, guess that's what happens when you mix work and play!  :-P

He also told me about some of the fun things to do in the area, and gave me the dirt on the thriving nightlife here.  Apparently Asians know how to throw it down.  (Wait, whaaattt??)  His favorite is this bar called The Hump Bar, which is a bar attached to a Youth Hostel.  My immediate thoughts were "Oh, duh.  They weren't kidding around with the name."

Check out those chairs!  Lap dance indeed.

He said that at bars here everyone plays drinking games, and it's normal for bartenders to have stocks of playing cards and dice for loan.  I can't say if that's the case in the US considering my unfortunate under-aged status, but I don't get the impression that it is quite as big a part of our bar scene.  

The thriving nightlife waiting to be explored
...also happens to be the view from my room

We swapped stories and he taught me a whole lot of the games he learned at the Hump Bar, including one called James Bond.  Sounds like one could get pretty sick here if they aren't careful, given the cheapness of liqueur combined with the Chinese peoples' penchant for guzzling copious amounts of beer.  He also told me about another bar that's country-western themed.  He said the last time he went there they had Chinese entertainers dressed all western-y, and they were singing American melodies but with Chinese lyrics.  Sounds insane!  I will definitely be checking both of these out in the near future.

Then he told me about a really sad thing that happens in Kunming:  Little girls are often kidnapped and then forced to sing in the streets for money which they then must hand over to their kidnappers.  Turns out that I saw one of these girls yesterday squatting and singing for money on the bridge by the school.  I thought it was so cute before.  Now I just feel bad.  Steven said that in the Main Square (big marketplace area always bustling with people) you can't barely go 50 feet without seeing one of these young girls.

Tomorrow I'm going out with some of the students here to get a Hotpot dinner.  I've never had it before I don't think, but from what people have been describing to me it sounds a lot like Vietnamese Foh (soup with noodles and you choose ingredients individually to put in.  It cooks at the table.)  Afterwards a few of us are going out to explore the night life! 

Saturday the school is taking people on a field trip to the Golden Temple, a local temple where everything is made entirely of copper.  Def partaking in that adventure!

Golden Temple, Kunming, China

These Items will Choke the Toilet

The first glimpse of Hong Kong

The sign for my flight leaving SFO.

I'm officially in Kunming!

My teacher picked me up from the airport yesterday.  She looks like she's about 14 years old, but she told me she's in grad school for teaching, so she must be quite a bit older in reality.  First thing we did was go to the bank together and change money.  She pointed out various spots we passed by in the town and taught me the Chinese words for them.


Then we went to the school and they showed me around.  There are a whole lot of classrooms, a dining area, a lounge, laundry services...etc.  We have to take our shoes off before we walk into the classroom area.  Good thing I'm so used to a shoe-less house.

I was feeling really negative about everything yesterday when I first arrived, probably mostly because I was SOOO tired and was trying to stay up as late as possible to adjust to the time change.  I also just felt very alone because I realized how hard it's going to be to get myself around anywhere considering the language barrier.  I still have no idea how I'm going to negotiate with taxi drivers, or do so many other day-to-day activities that I take for granted in the states.  I also hadn't met any of the other students yet.

At 6pm I decided to stop feeling bad for myself and go eat dinner with the other students even though I hadn't slept in over 24 hours. I am so glad I did!  I met some really nice people, many of whom are beginning Chinese speakers just like me.  They are from all over the world, but most speak english it seems, which is a welcome bonus at this point considering my immediate feeling of isolation before meeting them yesterday.  


I met a girl around my age from Germany and one from Spain, who spoke very highly of the Keats program, and also told me about all the fun classes they offer at the gym nearby.  They were all headed to Bikram Yoga (hott!) after dinner, and then to the massage parlor near the school.  Hmm sounds prime.  They invited me but I declined because I could barely keep my eyes open at that point as it was.  I also met a guy from Boston named Harvey, who helped me figure out my plug-conversion woes.  He was really nice and said he was leaving next week and could give me his US plug converter.  Sweet.

I kept myself awake until 9pm Kunming Time, but woke up at around 2:45am today even so.

All the rumors I heard about the food here are right!  It's awesome!  So excited for that.  The school only serves on weekdays, but my teacher showed me a few restaurants nearby.  She said you can typically get a reasonably sized lunch for 10RMB (That's equivalent a little less than $1.50!)


After getting on the internet, I promptly found out that all my favorite sites are inaccessible in China due to the infamous "Great Firewall of China."  That includes facebook, youtube, and this site (blogspot).  Heh, so much for my writing a blog...


After trying and failing to get around it by using the Stanford proxy, I spent a few hours researching how I could bypass the restrictions here.  I finally ended up buying a VPN from a site that advertised a 30-day refund guarantee.  Perfect!  :-) 



Classes start today. I'll be taking them one-on-one with my teacher.  I chose the later time slot (1:30pm-5:30), which isn't ideal for hanging around the town but I figured I'd cut myself a break for the first few days until I adjust to the time change, and then maybe switch to the 8:30am-12:30 time so I have the rest of the day to chill.

Oh, almost forgot: the fun-with-chinese-to-English-signs started as soon as I got on the plane.  The cover on the toilet read:  "please do not dispose of these items as it will choke the toilet."  :-)   I took a picture, of course, but it's on my cell phone so I'll have to update this post once I get back to America.

No complaints on my room.  It's cute, furnished, and is probably twice the size of the room I'll be living in at Stanford next year.

This is on one wall of my room.  They have the pinyin of each character on the card and the English translation as well...is this the passive way to learn Chinese?  Of course, they couldn't have found a better person to give the room with over 100 post-its on the wall :-)

Everyone gets their own private bathroom.  It's nice but super small.  See that spot in between the toilet and the wall?  Yeah, it's not big enough to fit your legs while seated.  Must learn how to pee sideways.