Kunming

KUNMING (PART I):

Well…I got what I wanted. I wanted to be scared and completely out of my element and that is exactly what happened.

So…much…Chinese! The language I mean. You know how when you’re driving and you’re about to go on the highway and when you merge into the highway lane you have to speed up to match the speed of the cars going by? I don’t know if it makes any sense, but that’s kind of how I feel right now. I feel like I just stepped on to a really fast conveyor belt or something. My dad and I left for Kunming at about 11:45 this morning. The plane ride was very nice, and there was even a Chinese movie on…with subtitles, luckily. But as soon as we got off the plane and into the airport, things got crazy. The ride that was supposed to bring us to the university didn’t come because they apparently never got my flight information (gasp). No matter…just shake it off and move on. No blame game. Even though it was disappointing and not exactly what I needed after a 3 ½ hour long flight, I was quite confident in my ability to get us a cab.

There were a few “cab drivers” that tried to make us pay 100 RMB to get to the school (the teachers had told us it was no more than 35 RMB), and to be perfectly honest, I was so tired and eager to get away from the airport that I would have done it if it weren’t for my dad. He’s been to China a lot more than I have and (I hope you’re reading this Daddy because I’m admitting it to everyone) though I know more Chinese, HE IS WAY BETTER AT BEING STREET SMART. I’m not going to lie, I’m very trusting of people. Guess I’ll have to work on that. Anyway, so instead of going with those “cab drivers” (I put quotes because they may not have actually been licensed drivers), we waited in a long line with everyone else. The line went fairly fast, and I was able to quite easily communicate with the cab driver about taking us to the university. The total price was 28 RMB, in fact. Win.

From trying to unsuccessfully bargain with expensive “cab drivers” and then getting a REAL cab, once I reached Yunnan Normal University I had to communicate with like five or six different people about how I could register and set up my room.  All in Chinese- this is where the conveyor belt reference comes in. They were speaking so fast, and though I understood a great deal of it, enough to actually maintain the conversation, lately I’ve had a tendency to get down on myself when I don’t understand everything someone’s saying. I’m hard on myself when I have to ask someone to repeat themselves, even harder when I have to ask them again. But one thing I’ve learned in my studies of Chinese and my study of language learning is that the person that is less afraid to make mistakes is the person who is more likely to improve at a faster rate. I will work on this.

Then…because the lady that was in charge of registering and setting up the scholarship students into the school had went home (it was about 5:30 at the time), I had to get set up in a temporary dorm room. After I got set up, I called my pen-pal Shujuan, who I’ve been emailing back and forth for about a month now. Because Shujuan wasn’t very comfortable with communicating in English, I was very nervous about the pen-pal thing. But it really wasn’t that bad, and I got used to emailing her back and forth. But talking to her is a different matter. She was going to help me find a SIM card for my phone, so she called me to figure out where to meet up. She is such a sweet girl, and I can’t wait to meet her, but 1. the phone reception was a little fuzzy and 2. she speaks fluent Chinese, so she speaks fast. Both combined together, I had to ask her a few times what she was saying. As I said before, I’m working on not getting discouraged when I don’t know everything. It’s a process, and I know that by the end of my five months in Kunming, I’ll be SOOO much better. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

So…all in all…today was a tiring day. I’m a little frazzled by the speed of events, how much I overly trust people (“cab drivers”), and how I went from no Chinese at all to Chinese all the time. This first day, I have found Kunming to be quite scary and I would very much like to find an obscure corner and crawl into a little ball. HOWEVER…as I said before, I WOULD NOT HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY. I LOVE the fact that I’m not completely comfortable here because it means I’m in for a challenge and an adventure. I love the fact that there is so much I don’t know…about Chinese and about Kunming…because it means I have a million opportunities to find out! And once the jet lag and the travel weariness wears off, once I’m all set up in my proper room and have met some of the students and have started my classes, I think I’m REALLY going to love it here. (Oh and P.S. it totally looks like the picture I showed in my last post…pink flowers and all!)