My Chinese Family

 I moved into my homestay on Sunday and they welcomed me with open arms into their family. The family lives in a 4-bedroom apartment and I bike to school every morning. My campus is about a 25-minute bike ride away and it is quite an interesting experience riding a bike during rush hour but I'm adjusting quickly. The driving here is out of control, but riding a bike is not as hard as it looks since you can just kind of follow the crowd. Lots of people stare at me, but I am also getting accustomed to that as well. I really like bike riding; it's good exercise and clears my mind. The first day I got lost and it took me an hour to get to school, but my shushu (literally "uncle") drew me a map yesterday so it is ok now. This morning a guy from Africa rode up beside me on his bike and said Hello! He could tell that I also was a foreigner. Yesterday a little boy about 3 years old was yelling out "Foreigner! Foreigner! Foreigner!" to his grandma and I just laughed to myself. You have to brush that kind of stuff off here.

 

The picture is of my didi (little brother). He's fourteen years old and a very sweet boy. He helps me with my Chinese homework and I help him with his English. The family also includes a mother, father and grandma. The other picture is of my bed; I'm being well taken care of and extremely well fed. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day because they serve dumplings, buns with meat stuffing or bean soup. It's so delicious. Also my ayi (literally "aunt") is a vegetarian so I am also getting my vegetables for anyone who is concerned! I am having an extremely hard time communicating because I am realizing more and more everyday how bad my Chinese is. But I am slowly improving and I really can't wait until I can fully articulate my feelings. Yesterday my host family was so worried because apparently Washington State University had an outbreak in H1N1 and they thought that it was at my school. I could tell them that there is a Washington state in the West of the country and a Washington "city" in the East, but I couldn't fully articulate my feelings about swine flu. But we can hold simple conversations about how tanked the American economy is, which is good enough. They also speak some English and help me with my Chinese all the time.

 

My friends and I finally planned our trip for Fall Break.  We're going to DunHuang, in the Gobi Desert, and we're going to ride camels and go sledding in the sand. Then we're going to LanZhou and Xi'an (read: Terracotta army). Somewhere in there we can go to the Great Wall too. We're going to take a 33+ hour train ride to DunHuang, then on the way back we'll take shorter train rides to LanZhou and Xi'an. There are 7 of my friends coming with me and we're so excited. We went to the travel agent today to buy the tickets but he told us the tickets don't go on sale until September 21^st. The holiday is for National Day, and this year is the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the PRChina and our break also coincides with the Moon Festival (which is kind of like Thanksgiving). We get 10 days total for our trip.

 

p.s. Ms. McNulty emailed me to tell me that Pepto Bismol can turn your tongue black. That was definitely it since I had taken some the evening before. I also feel like maybe they should mention that under "side effects" but they definitely don't. I will call and complain. Not really though.