August 6th, 2018
This morning Mei Mei and I took the bus to school and I had to carry the skateboard she borrowed from Stan to school. I’ve found that during these 6 weeks that Americans must have a much higher pain tolerance and competitive drive than the Chinese because every time that there is a situation where something is “too hot” to touch or “too heavy” to carry, any one of the liuxuesheng are able to handle it. At Leshan, Wang Yue Hao and Nigel pointed to the railing and said we can’t touch it because it’s too hot and will burn us… it was lukewarm at best. Similarly, Mei Mei said that she and Candy had to hold opposite ends of the skateboard to carry it to school… it was about 4 lbs. Now, I could definitely be overanalyzing things here but it seems to be a common enough occurrence and interesting difference that I’m willing to write about it. How cool is her matching shirt and skateboard combination though?
Apologies for the mindless strength tangent, as I was saying, I carried the skateboard, loaded the bus, and brought it to school. Halden was running again this morning; that girl is dedicated. Also, I’m not sure if I’ve given Halden’s little schpeel so here it goes: she is a student from North Carolina who will actually be going to the same school as Daniel next year and she runs about 5-7 miles on average everyday because she’s a superhuman/robot. Major kudos.
I had some of the worst Chinese snacks today from my grab bag of candy – those things were not candy. After lunch Frank and friends invited some of us to play basketball. I’m on the very last pieces of my clean clothes so unfortunately I was wearing a dress and couldn’t play. Shawn got in there though and joined Chandler and Julia’s team. The rest of us walked back to the cultural activity room to play ping pong with Mr. White who had just flown in from Beijing to deal with a wenti (problem). Our cultural activity today was titled: Traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony, which I guess we all kind of thought would include us actually getting the opportunity to sample some tea, however, we just watched as a man taught us what stick to put on top of your cup when you leave the table to go to the bathroom and the proper way to stir your tea.
Sarah was having a sangzi teng (sore throat) day, which we mentioned to the instructor and he actually made her a cup of tea (so at least someone got to have a try right?). The only issue was that he just poured loose leaf tea in a glass cup and told her to wait until it had steeped, but then didn’t provide any tools or instructions on how to remove the loose leaf tea, thus Sarah was stuck sipping on bitter, over-steeped tea that had shards of loose leaves in the cup… delicious. Hey, at least I do know how to perform a traditional tea ceremony for someone even though we didn’t get to drink anything.
After our cultural activity we had rehearsal for our final performance on Thursday every day until 5:00 this week. We did run throughs of Mo Li Hua (which I still don’t know how to sing nor do I have a desire to do so) and Auld Lang Syne in both Chinese and English. As I told Mei Mei on Sunday, today we were going to Auchan after school so I could pick up some groceries and gifts for my family, however those plans quickly fell through. There was a whole group of us waiting at Tea & Brown after school to take the bus to Auchan and as always I had ordered my feng mi ning men cha. Mei Mei finally made it to the shop when she said, “Oh no, we aren’t going to Auchan now. Po-po is going to teach you how to make doubanyu tonight.” This of course was contrary to the whole schedule that we had communicated and agreed upon yesterday, but when has that ever actually gone as planned? I said goodbye to the rest of the group going to Auchan, expecting me to give them candy and snack suggestions, before Citlali, Mei Mei, and I took the bus home.
When I opened the door and looked at the table I saw a hot platter of doubanyu resting on the table. I’m not sure if Po-po knew she was supposed to teach me how to make it not just make it for dinner. It was still delicious, but it kind of defeated the purpose of coming home so soon instead of going to Auchan. She said she would teach (actually teach) me how to make it on Wednesday, so after dinner Mei Mei and I walked to Auchan to grab our groceries. I walked right to the candy aisle to pick up my favorites in bulk to share with everyone in the States and then bought some dehydrated hot pot blocks to share with my family. We took a lap around the market trying to find Frank and everyone else who had went after school, much to my protestation because what 14 year old spends three hours in a supermarket for fun? Mei Mei found a woman who she said was her aunt and asked to borrow her phone to give Faker, one of the boys with Frank, a call. He didn’t answer so I suggested that we just keep shopping and maybe we would serendipitously run into them later. I stopped to add two t-shirts to my cart because if you haven’t noticed by now, I love Chinese English t-shirts. Once we had finished shopping I was ready to walk back home, however, Mei Mei was determined to find the boys since she said we told them that we would be there.
By this time I didn’t have much hope in finding them but sure enough they were on the third floor enjoying a grill buffet. We saw Candy’s ba ba waiting outside before going inside to find Citlali, Shawn and all the boys from Friday absolutely demolishing the trays of meats at this buffet. They invited us to stay and I sipped on a tea juice box while Frank gave me recommendations for the best restaurant in town. I really wanted to have at least one dinner out with my family before I left China and was more than willing to treat my family to a meal. When I asked Mei Mei what her favorite restaurant was she couldn’t give me an answer. I told her to make sure that both of her parents could go out tomorrow and that it would be my treat (I later found out that I should have just said I wanted to go out and slipped the waiter some money because her parents refused to let me pay). After the boys finished eating we all left the buffet and went to go find a good yogurt place that Shawn told us about, however, everything was closing down for the night and we were not about to make the school coordinators any more stressed about missing curfews, so we walked home shortly after that. Ma Ma and Ba Ba had finally returned from their business trip and went right back to work in the second house. I didn’t even see them that night because they told us to spend another day at the first house because it was “too dangerous” for Mei Mei and I to come to the second house tonight. I forgot my face wash at the other house and because I was told we would only be here for two days I only brought enough clothes for those two. What I’m trying to say is that I was not prepared to stay at the first house for the time I was told yet alone a another full day.
Note to self: if your family says you’re going anywhere, bring an extra change of clothes because they’ll spend the night and never tell you.
The boys in class A also went on a little shopping spree to buy some matching han fu for our final performance. Look at how spiffy they are. Meredith’s family also bought her a qi pao!
August 5th, 2018
Mason and Daniel came across a Prada workbag/handbag and bargained the price down from ¥180 to ¥80. I found plenty of funny shirts for anyone in my life with a small frame however my family’s average height is 6’ 2” and nothing seemed like it would work. I went into full on search mode for some funny shirts for my brothers but nothing seemed like they would like it or if I did find something cool it only came in an extra small. I spotted a really cool polo with a bunch of hand drawn faces on it for my brother Josh but the store owner would not even listening to my bargaining for a second. I moved on to another store that seemed to be the only place stocking any sizes bigger than a large. There were some cool shirts but she wanted to charge me ¥220 for three shirts and that was not about to happen. I walked away for a bit and then came back determined to buy the shirts for ¥100. I took one mandarin collar out of the mix because all I can hear now when I see one is Shawn’s voice talking about how much he loves them. This left two shirts that I refused to pay more than ¥100 for. The shipowner refused to lower her price and after about five minutes going back an forth she still would budge. By this time the whole group I was traveling with had piled into this stall and Chandler began working her magic. The spell didn’t work and the shop girl still wouldn’t budge on the price. By this time it was a matter of principle. A cat and mouse chase. ¥20 is a difference of about $3 which affects me in absolutely no way but now I was just determined. Everyone else was behind me on this so we had a little sit-in in her shop and waited until she would say something about the price. Julia played solitaire, Mason read his book, and Chandler and Daniel left to “run to the bank” so they could come back and argue some more. I took pictures of the shirts and started walking to other stores to see if they had them and what their prices were instead. I found one woman who had one of them but not the pair that I was looking for. Still, I tried to use it as leverage and came back to the original store armed with an argument. After two visits from this shop girl’s boss, her leaving the store, and about forty minutes of bargaining she finally gave in. I think she just wanted to get rid of us because no-one had come into her shop since we began sitting in it. Regardless of how or why I triumphantly walked away with the two shirts I wanted and everyone else was clad with their fake designer handbags.
Annette and I loved looking around while Daniel went and bought a black currant tea from the store across the way. We then stopped by Starbucks for a free water before Annette and I caved and bought some drinks at the tea place Daniel went to. They didn’t have the tea I wanted (seriously, what’s up with China always being out of stock of everything?) so I got a coffee with a
We were both surprised to see the other people there but after a quick Hong Qi Chain (a convenience store) stop we decided to split up because Mason needed to go to the yinhang (bank) and Daniel needed to stop by the yiyuan (hospital – technically he went to a private practice clinic but I’m not about to learn that oddly specific word). We took a taxi to the clinic and they changed his bandages while the little boy next to us got his ears checked out and watched Chinese Paw Patrol. We then met up with Mason, Frank, and friends before splitting up again to ride to the ditie zhan (subway station) at the airport. On the way Daniel and I saw a motorcycle gang of Harley Davidson’s which are apparently super expensive here in China so these guys were a big deal. They weren’t too tough though because some of them waved at me for the vlog. We made it to the subway station and Mason’s car spotted us in line for security but Frank had them enter through a different way, so now we had split up three different times. Daniel just wanted a coffee from a McDonald’s that didn’t appear to exist on any of the floors we tried so we gave up and rode the elevator down to the subway station. Mei Mei and Daniel wanted to wait for the others at the entrance but I said they probably already went down to the platform so I split off from them to go find everyone else. Sure enough, I was right and Frank was standing at the bottom of the escalator waiting for us. I told Mei Mei and Daniel and for the first time we all got into one mode of transportation together.
She mentioned this around the first weekend that I came to Chengdu and we had been pushing it off every time we came into the city. I told her that we would be sure to go today and so we took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor and saw Nanalucky in all of its glory. I write this very sarcastically because it was an overpriced cafe / clothing store that had a bunch of neon signs and a ball pit to take photos in. Did I mention that in order to enter the store you have to purchase a drink, so I was the one required to fork over ¥48 for a subpar lemonade that I can get much better for ¥8 at Tea & Brown. The boys sat outside and played Pub G while Mei Mei and I went in to get my money’s worth of photos.
To make everything worse when I asked Mei Mei why she didn’t want to take any pictures she responded by saying, “I can come here when you are at school and take photos if I want.” Yes, that meant that this place wasn’t actually that special to her, but communication is very indirect here so she made no mention of that beforehand. The good news was that Daniel found his way onto the rooftop because nothing can keep that boy from his roofs, so I guess the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Frank and his friends found small niche tucked into the wall where we could eat. He even let me try his brain noodles. (Yes, mom these are noodles in a spicy broth served with brain and it was delicious. No, I will not be taking you to eat there anytime soon because I value everything you’ve done for me in life so far, however, I would encourage you to try it because it really was quite nice.)
August 3rd, 2018
Chandler was also sporting a Thrasher Peppa Pig t-shirt that I have no words to explain my love for. Class C came down to our room today to see what happens on the third floor and I attempted to teach Mason how to play someone like you on the piano (arguably one of the easiest songs that still seems impressive). I’ll just say, he should stick to the cello. Daniel on the other hand is a fantastic pianist and why he didn’t say anything on the first night when I was forced to be NSLI-Y’s entertainment, I don’t know and it really makes me mad because he’s actually a trained pianist. We found a marimba in the closet of the auditorium that we will be performing in and rolled it out to play some duets, me on marimba and Daniel on the piano.
At last kids from the other classes started piling into the auditorium. Daniel pushed on the door at the entrance (that didn’t have any signage as to whether it was a push or a pull door which makes a very big difference) and it shattered into a million pieces. Yes, the three inch thick glass door exploded into millions of fragments and fell all over him. I was on stage and looked to my right as soon as I heard the shattering of glass, though I thought a light fixture had fallen and broken not a giant glass door. He was standing there in shock and people just started laughing in disbelief. Daniel was whisked away to a private practice hospital to get fixed up while the rest of us continued rehearsal because apparently nothing is more important than this show.
how to ask what people’s interests were so naturally when we had to divide into partner pairs to discuss I ran over to Ben to inquire about his airplane obsession. He wasted no time telling me everything there is to know about planes and every airport he has been to even if it’s just to watch the planes while landing and taking off. He also told me that his host family brought him to the Chengdu airport to walk through a construction zone and hold him up on a ledge to get the best view of the runway. I’m not joking when I say this boy loves planes. Elijah had to stand in front of the class and answer the questions that we asked about his hobby: reading. I asked what his favorite book was and he said Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier which resulted in my audible gasp because I read that novel almost four years ago and no one has ever understood any reference I’ve made to it. This is why I love the people on this trip so much; they just get my references and track with all the documentaries or random facts that I bring up. Our cultural activity today was operatic singing, which is way less exciting than it sounds.
Some people started heading home but Meredith, Annette, Shawn, Chandler, and I went out for bingfen afterwards. I continued my mango theme from the day and ate a subpar bowl of mango bingfen. It did not compare to the watermelon one I had earlier. I started talking to Chandler about The Flagship Program I would be completing for college and how she could do the same thing in Arabic. I definitely convinced her to look into it and I really hope she does. We were so engrossed in that conversation that I almost didn’t notice that I really needed to head home now if I wanted to make it back in time for curfew. I went to take the bus only to remember that the 807 doesn’t run until very late at night. My next thought was to walk home so that’s exactly what I did. It was only a couple miles from school and I stepped into the neighborhood at exactly 9:00. Solid on the timing. I even saw Po-po doing her tai chi in the front entrance park with all the other grandmothers. Somehow she noticed me even in the dark and said hello! I walked through door triumphantly on time and many steps later.
My newly tried candies…
August 1st, 2018
They turned out pretty decently, well like many of the crafts we do some of the student’s did, and others looked pretty bad. We were told that we would be wearing these to our final performance but I’m not really sure what they’re planning to do with them.
There was no way that was the proper translation for it and I just had to find out what it was before we left. Sure enough it tasted really similar to the whipped cream cheese topping that I had on my drink in Chengdu. When Mei Mei and I got home today I immediately began to work on updating the blog since our first house has a semi-decent wifi connection. We had xihongshi chao ji dan (scrambled eggs with tomatoes), green beans, la jiao xi lu hua (spicy broccoli), and pork with garlic stems for dinner. Po-po also tried on the mask that Mei Mei painted which was amusing but also slightly terrifying.
The school day flew past in a blur with yet another dictation quiz and plenty of note taking. Mason showed off his new Taurus shirt as seen below with these wonderful “style photos” as Mei Mei likes to call them. We also had very interesting lunch conversation about the types of swim suits that boys wear. Speedos are a very polarizing subject.
Once it was time to combine the two dances everything went crazy. They told the girls to do the splits as a pose at the end if we were able to, (a surprising number of them can) but then Jordyn went down into hers and said that she pulled something in her leg. Nurie and Livvy could do it with no problems and the rest of us just knelt in the back. We were going over our 4:00 xia ke time (end of the school day/class) and Meredith and I just wanted to buy some tea. We ended up walking through the construction zone, because nothing can stop us, and over to Tea & Brown. I ordered the feng mi ning men cha per usual and then walked back to the school’s side gate to find Mei Mei. Today we would go straight home to finish homework and tidy up the house. I ended up finding her at the bingfen stop by school where she was finishing a bowl with her friend. We discussed how to best spend our evening since I had a lot of homework and some college emails to take care of, but Mei Mei wanted to play basketball. I told her I would love to, but I have priorities and school comes first.
He pointed us towards the south and after walking for a moment we discovered where he was directing us to: China’s Agricultural Bank. We needed an ATM though the Bank of China instead and decided that maybe it was best to follow Shawn’s Baidu Maps app to get us there. It said that the ATM’s were located inside the basement of the shopping mall that we had our Thai food at last time we were in Chengdu. We took the steps down only to find a Bank of China ATM that was out of order. I approached a greeter to ask him where another one would be and luckily for me we just learned how to say down one floor in class because that’s exactly what he said. After a quick withdrawal, Daniel and Meredith’s KFC run, and my goofing around on an escalator we were ready to meet back up with Mason and Annette who were looking around at the Nike store upstairs. Mason was teaching Annette the names of all the shoes and testing her with shoe trivia.
Some of the host families will give their student a loaf of bread every morning, which I definitely think would make me never want to eat bread again, however, since I haven’t eaten bread in about a month this seemed like a good buy. We walked and listened to Sarah talk about spreading during debate before Shawn spotted a giant office building and suggested we try and make it to the roof (don’t worry that is perfectly normal here in China). We crossed a pedestrian bridge and had a stranger take this adorable group photo and then crossed the street to wait for Shawn to pop into a Tissot store to admire their watches then not buy anything. We made it to the entrance of the SAC building (as we found out it was called) and attempted to work our American charm to gain access to the roof. 
The desk attendants were not buying it and turned us away despite our best efforts. We were about to walk away defeatedly before Shawn reached out to two young professionals who had passes to get to the elevators. They said they could only go to the fourth floor and that it was just office spaces. He reasoned for them for quite a while trying to get them to break but they just apologized saying they only had access to the fourth floor so we gave up. It looked as if despite our best efforts we would have to find another building to access but we still got to see the inside foyer of this building which was incredibly aesthetically pleasing. Just look at it… it’s absolutely magnificent.
Mr. Chen asked why the four of us were in Chengdu and how long we would be staying. Even though he said all of this in almost perfect English, Shawn insisted on responding in Chinese. Still Mr. Chen continued in his impressive English and we talked about America in comparison to China and our expectations versus the reality that we were experiencing here. It was great conversation and soon enough our drinks were ready. I’m not really sure what everyone got but mine had rosemary and passionfruit, Daniel’s was watermelon flavored, Shawn’s had an orange rind in his, and Mason’s was la jiao (hot pepper) flavored complete with a full sprig of the peppercorns in it. They were really pretty and the lighting was beautiful, thus explaining these photos below:
Him and Daniel also tried to balance on the tiny little poles they have in front of the station which I would say they almost successfully accomplished their goal. We made it back to Shuangliu and got dropped off at the gate of the school before calling another taxi for the boys and getting one for ourselves. It wasn’t until we got home that I realized it was 11:00 and knew the foredooming talk would not be good. I learned how to say “I’m sorry we’re so late, but Mei Mei did a very good job of making sure all the American students got home safely,” and practiced it to say to Ma Ma. She didn’t seem too happy at first but eventually said everything was okay and she just wanted us to be more cognizant of the time in the future. In our defense we would have gotten home perfectly fine if a taxi could drive us to Shuangliu instead of the Chinese Uber. I spent the rest of that evening laying in front of the air conditioner and tried to fall asleep until I remembered that I needed to check my emails from college today. The coordinator of the Chinese Flagship Program at Indiana University sent out a job openings page recruiting students for positions that upcoming school year. I knew that I wanted to work as the graphic designer, however, I couldn’t open the winmail.dat file she sent with the video. After countless times of trying to refresh my gmail page and figuring out how to open the impossible file I finally found a website to convert the attachment. It explained the positions and said that I needed to send in my cover letter and resume to her no later than July 30th. Yes, today was technically July 30th since I read the email at 12:15, however, Indiana is 12 hours behind China so I still had time to submit it. I finished my cover letter, updated my resume, and at 2:32 am I sent in my completed resume. Let’s just say I fell asleep very quickly.
The boys posed for a photo in their half shirt outfit and we finished our walk to the temple where we had started. It finally made sense because we had just made one great big circle.
Meals Miles & Marria 