Monday, February 28, 2011

hello! nihao!

Of the six trips I had planned between Dali and Kunming I have now completed 5.  When I next go back to Kunming for my second MSG, I won't be coming back to Dali.  This week and next are my last weeks here at the Blackburn's house.  It's hard to believe my time here is already half over.  I've really been enjoying my Chinese senior trip, and I'll miss the food, the culture, and the people I've met here.  Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my day-to-day schedule here in Dali.  I go running every morning, sometimes with my cousin, sometimes alone.  The weather here is beautiful for running, for being outside.  It's already much warmer than when I got here.  The Blackburn's house helper, Grace, makes us Chinese lunch everyday, and after lunch I have been studying Chinese with my uncle and his colleague Molly, whose village I visited a month ago.  I've learned a lot, in light of the fact that I've only had 5 lessons.  I believe I'm up to like 40 or 50 words and comprehension of quite a few more.  I try to do homework too, but it's pretty hard to focus on schoolwork.  I'm keeping mostly caught up though, which I'd say is an accomplishment.  My adversaries are strong- senioritis and the excitement of being in a foreign country.

Interspersed with the daily schedule I've been able to do some pretty fun things.  Last weekend I went with Aden and Maggie to Permeate, a youth retreat for the Kunming youth group.  I spent a lot of time with the kids I'd met at the MSG, and got to know them a lot better.  It was a really fun trip.  The weather was beautiful- hot and sunny- and we stayed in an Asian hotel by a man-made lake with a sandy beach and luscious green grass.  I had my first experience with buffet-style noodles for breakfast.  The first time I tried to get a bowl of noodles, I wound up putting far too much soy sauce, but it still tasted pretty good.  I did much better after that.  Noodles are apparently a typical Chinese breakfast fare, but several of the foreign kids at Permeate weren't too fond of the custom.  I thought it was delicious!  We weren't the only group staying at the hotel, and the beach was one of the only ones nearby, so the hotel (Fascinating Nature Garden, it was called) was pretty crowded.  A lot of local Chinese would make day-trips to the lake, setting up tents, going swimming, and using umbrellas to keep the sun off.  In China, it is the height of fashion to be pale; no one would dream of tanning or laying out in the sun.  In fact, most lotions, shampoos, etc. come with "skin whitening agents" to try to lighten Asian skin.  There were also a huge number of brides having their wedding photos taken by the lake.  It would have been a very picturesque location, were it not so windy.  The poor brides were trying to keep their dresses smooth and their hair pretty while the photographers ran around snapping pictures and the wind blew everything around.  The wind was also annoying for those of us trying to play poker in our free time.  We had to find locations sheltered from the wind before the cards would stay where we put them.

Another thing I did last week was go out to dinner with a large group of foreigners in Dali.  We had those Chinese dumplings whose name escapes me.  They're a lot like potstickers, except filled with all sorts of different meats and vegetables.  Everyone makes up their own dipping sauce out of soy sauce, dark vinegar, ginger, spicy dried pepper, oil, and whatnot.  I really like those things!  I also have found that I really like eggplant.  I don't know that I'd ever had eggplant before coming here.  It's not really something we eat too often in America, besides in eggplant parmesan from Italian restaurants.  But man is it delicious!  I would love, before I leave, to learn at least one way to cook it, so that when I come home I can have it there.  It has a slimy texture, but a fantastic taste.  Really though, all vegetables taste good here.  Something about the way they're cooked, vegetables are delectable in China.  I saw Grace, the Blackburn's house helper, in the kitchen yesterday, preparing a chicken.  It was strange to see a dead chicken, with it's head and feet and all, being prepared in a normal kitchen.  I mean, it was weird in the village but I just sorta accepted it because it was a village and that's different than a normal house, right?  So it was just strange watching her washing this plucked dead chicken in my aunt and uncle's kitchen sink.  Of course, it was also weird seeing plucked dead chickens lying in the meat area of Wal-Mart too.  My aunt took me to Wal-Mart last week, and in some ways it was familiar, but in others it was totally different.  Like the dead chicken, and the huge pig thighs, complete with hooves.  And the abundance of vegetables that I've never seen or heard of before.  And all the t-shirts with English phrases that make no sense at all (apparently, this phenomenon of poor English translation is called "Chinglish").  Another difference about shopping here is that you only can buy what you can carry at one time.  Because people don't own cars but take taxis or buses, you can't just bring a cart out to your trunk and fill it with groceries and drive it home.  You have to carry it all back home.  Plus, most people live several floors up, and there are almost never elevators here.  So if you're on the seventh floor (like our dorm at the MSG) and you have groceries, you have to carry it all the way up.  If you had two trips, you'd have to carry it all up seven flights, walk back down seven flights, then come all the way back up.  So people pretty much only buy a few things at a time.

This weekend Maggie, Aden and I are going to visit some friends of theirs in Leijiong, a city north of here.   The area is supposed to be very beautiful, and, as it is something of a tourist area, will have a lot of opportunity for shopping and gawking and the like.  Although, last night I heard there is currently an uncontrolled forest fire in the area.  I wonder how that will affect our trip...  So far, it's still on.  Today, I believe Aunt Laura is taking us out shopping.  I'm hoping to buy some DVDs and boots.  Everyone here wears such cute boots, I want a pair of my own!  Next week my grandparents are coming in from California.  They'll be traveling with us to Xi'an and Beijing after MSG at the end of March.  That will be the end of my time here in China, and as excited as I am to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, it will be sad to have to say goodbye.  Or, in proper Putonghua (Mandarine), to say "zaijian."

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