Okay, so it seems that my audience has increased by quite a substantial amount. This post is going to be particularly directed towards my new audience: the teammates and classmates of my two little sisters (who are 10 and 8 years old). Hey guys! I think it’s totally awesome that you guys are reading my blog now! I really hope you like it.
So…I don’t believe I’ve done this in my previous posts, but what I would like to do right now is give a better idea of what my life’s like here in Kunming. In order to do this, I’m going to describe one of my typical days in Kunming.
I wake up around 8 or 9 each day and get ready for class. Sometimes in the morning, they play traditional Chinese music at the nearby basketball fields…it’s really loud so I can hear it from my room and I love waking up to it. When I head to class, in the grass nearby there usually are students sitting around, families playing with their little kids, young couples sitting on benches, and people feeding the fish that are in the pond. For now, the weather is cooler in the mornings and evenings, but it gets really hot in the middle of the day. I pass the basketball fields every day to get to class, and there are always people playing basketball. Sometimes they play volleyball, and sometimes they play a little soccer (when the basketball courts have less people). And a few times I saw some guys practicing Chinese kung-fu WITH SWORDS! It was pretty awesome.
Here are the basketball fields:
I used to get a lot more stares on campus before, but now I think people are getting used to me, haha. It’s more when I walk outside the campus now that I get stares…and mostly from younger children. It’s hilarious when I hear people talking about me in Chinese, and they think I can’t understand them. One time I was walking with friends, and a group of Chinese teenagers took their camera out and tried to sneakily take a picture of us. That was…interesting. But I’m a lot more used to it now. More than anything, I just feel like a movie star walking down the streets.
At lunchtime and dinnertime, I either go to the school’s cafeteria or to a nearby restaurant. If I go to the cafeteria, I fight my way through the crowds of students trying to get food...no lines. I’ve learned in China that you have to learn to push your way through people to get what you want. It’s not that it’s impolite or anything, it’s just how things are done. In America, in a situation it may be more polite to wait your turn, where in China the same situation requires you to push your way to the front or else people will just walk around you. (For example, when ordering food at a popular smaller restaurant or trying to catch a public bus, you HAVE to push your way through or else you’ll never be able to order or you’ll never catch a bus.) That’s something I need to work on. Anyway, if I go to a nearby restaurant, it’s an opportunity to practice my Chinese even more. Sometimes the way they place orders gets complicated and it took me a while to figure out some of the methods, but now I’ve gotten pretty confident. In addition, a lot of the menus are completely in 汉字 (Chinese characters), so the entire menu is covered with characters. It looks like this: 中国饭馆的菜单都有汉字，没有英文字…except there’s a lot more. Unfortunately, unlike English, you can’t just read the characters and know how to pronounce them. You’d have to look them up in an electronic dictionary. (I carry mine everywhere, it helps a LOT.) But now I know more Chinese food names, so I don’t need my dictionary as often. It’s so much fun to order when you actually know how to say the names of the foods. Haha.
Here’s a picture of one of the restaurants serving food. They’re making noodles; this is a picture of the ingredients. (Kunming natives LOVE noodles, I hardly see them eating anything else.)
In the middle of the next picture is a bowl of noodles…a typical noodle dish is a lot of noodles, with some vegetables or meat thrown in, and all mixed into a kind of soup. It’s not bad.
When walking down the street in Kunming, there are a lot of interesting things to see. But don’t get too distracted because there are 小偷 (xiao tou= thieves) everywhere. I’ll write about them in another post. On the street there are two different lanes: one for the cars and buses, and another for bicycles and motorbikes. Bikes and motorbikes are a very common form of transportation in China…they’re fairly affordable, and they take you where you need to go much faster than walking. Sometimes the motorbikes even ride along the sidewalk (where people are walking)…that scared me a few times and I spent much of the time walking with my head looking backwards for fear one would hit me. But I got a hang of what people do here fairly quickly…if you’re in their way, they’ll honk at you and you just walk to the side, no need to be constantly looking backward.
On the side of the street there are a gajillion vendors. People are constantly selling things. There are people selling food they make (grilled meat, grilled vegetables and fruit, and a LOT of fresh pineapple slices on a stick), clothes, cell phone SIM cards, DVDs (but not so much anymore), books, OH AND ANIMALS. The other day, I saw about five or six baskets filled with the cutest little puppies I’ve ever seen. Oh, if only dogs were allowed in the dormitory…I very well may have bought one. (No, I wouldn’t have.) But they really were adorable and they were doing the cute little yipping thing and they had THE SWEETEST LITTLE PUPPY EYES EVER! There was this one fluffy brown one trying to get out of the basket, and I almost died- it was SO CUTE! There are not too many cats around (there are some, just not a lot)…people tell me that the Chinese don’t like cats that much, but they really like dogs. Well, dogs are man’s best friend, so I guess it makes sense.
Lining the roads, there are little stores that sell clothes, shoes, meals, soda, ice cream, smoothies, fruit, breads and cookies, sushi, and sometimes pizza (but that’s really rare…I’ve only found one good pizza store nearby the school so far).
After class, I’ll do the tons of homework that I get (it’s not really that bad), and I’ll grab dinner sometime in the middle of all that. By the time my homework’s done, it’s usually around 8 or 9, and then I get a break. Sometimes I’ll hang out with friends, but most of the time I find a Chinese movie to watch that has no English subtitles (only Chinese subtitles) and then I’ll study some of the words I don’t know. And there are honestly a lot. When I think I know it all, there’s always SO MANY MORE WORDS that I don’t know. If you’re learning a new language, the best thing to do is to not get discouraged. Don’t think about how much you DON’T know…think about how much you DO know. That’s what keeps me from giving up.
Actually, I’ve signed up to do this program where I’m helping high school students learn English. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to talk to Chinese people more (they’re everywhere, but it’s tough to make friends or talk to them because they are busy and have their own schedules…I don’t even get to talk to Shujuan as much as before). I really want to be someone that Chinese people don’t just see walking down the side of the street, but rather at least SOME of them know. I’m very interested in pursuing a career that is heavily based in Chinese relations (what that career is, I’m still deciding), and I think that right now is a great opportunity to get a head start in my personal Chinese relations. What can I say? It can’t hurt, it can only help with my career…and who knows? I may end up meeting someone who I can network with in the future. That would be cool.
But anyway, that’s all for now, another post will be coming up soon. Very soon.
