First off, this city is cold. But here’s what I don’t get…it’s not too different from DC weather. But maybe it’s that the heating here just sucks…but I feel a constant chill in my bones. It’s weird. All around the city…it just feels cold. By the way, the average temp in Nanjing during the summer is apparently over 100degrees. Ugh. It’s also soo much bigger than I thought. Apparently it’s got nearly 7million (the TOTAL population of Honduras, by the way). I was expecting a small college town like Oxford. Boy was I wrong.
So today was a lot better than yesterday. Woke up at 6ish, went for a walk around the campus only to be surprised by how many people were up. Everyone was outside and doing exercises in the morning as well. Older people, young people, everyone. Tai Chi and all that jazz. It was nice to see. Went to class and it turns out that my class is only 4 people including myself. Marc is from Montreal and is in his 40’s or 50’s. Has lived in China for 4 years and decided that he might as well get around to learning the language. NuNu is from Macao and is 31. He’s half chinese, half portugese. He’s super nice and has helped me A LOT. The other person is Korean and she doesn’t speak english so I don’t know anything about her. We have a total of 24 hours of classes a week. It’s intense, but I think it’ll be good.
Bought the books after classes and they only cost me 107 Quai (as the locals refer to the money here). After classes ended at lunch time, I went out with NuNu and he introduced me to Patrick, this guy from Cameroon who speaks Chinese almost like a regular. He’s in A level (A1 is the highest, A2, then B1, B2…I’m in D1, by the way. ;))
Also met Jonathan and his wife. They’re from DC and are in their late 20’s or early 30’s. She’s really advanced (been studying for 10+years) and he’s in C level. They’re going to take me apartment shopping this week to do some comparisons.
Lunch was actually pretty good and cost a total of 12Quai. I had spicy eggplant, some sort of egg, beef and some chicken. (It was Jonathan, his wife, NuNu and myself). We didn’t eat the dishes seperately, but we all shared. Instead of plates, though, we just used a bowl of rice. So we would take a bit of eggplant, for example, and place it over the rice and eat them in combination. It was good conversation and it was nice to eat with people for the first time in what felt like a week.
Then, I went walking with NuNu. He showed me the typical Chinese market area and it looks so cool! They sold Eels, and all this sort of raw meat…it looked really cool. I want to go back and take some pictures to show you. He also showed me where they sell the pirated DVDs and CDs. A pirated DVD costs 20 Quai…isn’t that awesome? And I’m pretty sure that I can find better deals elsewhere.
Tonight, I have a lot of studying to do and I was also going to try to figure out if my room has ethernet once and for all. I’m going to be getting a cell phone in the next week or so and once I get it, I’ll let you know. Other than that, I am going apartment shopping in the next couple of days and can apparently get some pretty reasonable prices for a two bedroom, furnished, western style (aka, nice bathroom) apartment for myself that’s close to campus and that will have internet in the apartment. As soon as that is settled and once I have a permanent (how weird to say that) address, then I’ll let you guys know.
What else? Mainly, today was hopeful. I learned a bit more Chinese, and am realizing the sheer volume of things I have to learn, people Ibut it was a good day nonetheless. The met today seem really nice and I like the fact that they are from all over the world. Met a group of people briefly that seem close to my age, so that will be nice. What’s really cool is that they all seem really serious about studying and learning the language. It’ll be a nice evironment to be around.
That being said, time to go back to the room and study a bit. though truth be told, I’m really really tired today and want to take a nap. I was able to avoid the majority of jet lag, but i get tired early (4-7pm) and i wake up early, too. I like the waking up early part, but not the wanting to nap at 4pm part. I’m so scared about screwing up my sleep schedule.
oh, also. I’ve actually seen some dogs walking around the street. So that whole stereotype of ‘no cats or dogs in china because they’re all used for food’ thing isn’t TOTALLy true. Though I did speak with people today who say
that dog apparently tastes like lamb. (or is it the other way around? think about that next time you have lamb chops!)