So last time I left off, I was searching for a new apartment. Lo and behold, it’s been found and I’ve been moved in for about 5 days now. It’s a pretty nice two-bedroom apartment with new fridge, new bed, new washer, etc etc. It really is a great location and I’m only about 5 minutes from campus. I’m right across the street from the Safeway equivalent (I think the closest thing to a Whole Foods/Trader Joes is the street vendors). Best of all, I have internet access and it’s broadband, so I can be online without having to wait too long for stuff to download. Slowly, but surely, I’m getting to all your emails and will reply as soon as I can. Oh, and if you want to talk, I’d suggest looking for a program called “Skype” and download it. It’s free and works great.
Classes are going pretty well and our class size has gone up to 5
students. We now have an additional Korean student, which is rather interesting since they don’t speak english, I can only speak to them through Chinese. Same thing with my landlord, as well. I can only speak to him in Chinese, which is all fine and good if we talk about names and what I had for lunch, but otherwise, it gets a bit difficult. In the adjoining classrooms are the students from the other levels and they all seem to be around my age.
The biggest highlight of the week was Blue Sky, this Australian pub that Marc knows of. It’s where a lot of older westerners go to and I have to say, it’s fabulous. The cool thing about it is that it kindof reminds you of home. It’s got the pub-like atmosphere, and it’s very western as well. All the waitresses have to be able to speak english and they serve western meals. What’s interesting is that in my mind ‘Western’ means ‘American’, but a lot of the people here are from England, Germany, France, New Zealand and Australia as well. The place itself is owned by an Aussie and he imports the meat from Australia twice a week, so it’s always fresh and really good. So one of my classmates and I went there
on Thursday night and I had what could’ve been one of the best
hamburgers ever! In Nanjing—and China in general—meat isn’t eaten in large portions. It’s an expensive commodity and the way it tends to be eaten is with a lot of rice or noodles. So the people
basically fill up on Rice/Noodles and vegetables and then have a bit of meat on top of that. So the past two weeks here, I’ve been eating a ton of vegetables and noodles and rice, but very little in the way of meat. So this place was like going into a whole different world, the menus are in english and the people speak english and they serve food that one is used to.
Typically what I do for food is that I go to a “fanguan”, a small
non-fancy type restaurant and I basically point to an item and hope for the best. And I’m pretty lucky with my choices…until
yesterday, that is. I went to this place and saw a familiar character and I decided to choose that one along with another random guess. Much to my dismay it turns out that upon thinking about it afterwards, the characters I recognized were ‘cold’ and ‘horse’.
So yes, I think I ate horse for lunch on Saturday. It was cold and
honestly, not very tasty. Luckily, the other dish was this really good mushroom type broth that I ate with steamed rice.
Today, I broke down and went to McDonalds, which was actually a pretty interesting experience. First off, I don’t think that the concept of a ‘line’ or ‘queue’ has really taken off in Nanjing. Trying to get to the cashier was absolute chaos. No lines, just people pushing and trying to get in front of one another. It was crazy. In addition, I’m now all for globalization. I love a world in which I can be in Nanjing and the ‘Number 1’ still means a BigMac.
What else? It snowed here on Friday night and I basically stayed
indoors, I love the heating in the apartment, and I imagine that my electricity bill will be more than my rent. ;) I ran outside for a bit to get some food and to pick up a comforter for my bed and my goodness was traffic terrible. The snow really wasn’t that bad, but what is originally terrible traffic became absolutely atrocious.
By and large, everyday here really is a new set of adventures and it has surprised me by how daunting this experience in general can be. As mentioned in the previous email, this all really has to be taken a day at a time, otherwise it’s just too much to handle. But hopefully in the next couple of weeks, everything will start settling down and I’ll be able to understand and speak that much more.
Oh, and one last thing. I’ve been taking some pictures and am uploading them here for the time being:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12minds