So Much to Write About...

Ok, so it's day 6 and still no diarrhia (sp?). I'm very surprised. I walked into this thing assuming I was gonna get sick on the first day as some sort of initiation. I've even been provoking it by brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth out with the water even though I was warned not to. We'll see how it goes. Brushing your teeth with spring water twice a day can get expensive. When I first spoke with the woman about this program months back, she calmed my nerves by telling me that there are many foreign students in my program from different countries all around the world, and that I was not the only one. Apparently what she meant by "countries all around the world" was Korea, Japan, Tailand, Indonesia, and any other Asian country you can think of where the people don't speak English. This morning we had an opening ceremony for the foreign students. The whole thing was in Chinese. I'm not sure, but I think the entire audience had no idea what was going on. I have ADD which means I have trouble listening to speeches in English. The kid next to me had his headphones on. Who could blame him?

I did make friends with these two Tai girls named Bo and Jessie. I didn't realize when everyone said that they had a Western name, that they meant that kind of Western. I've started to compile these random groups of kids to go out with or eat lunch/dinner with. It's always a trip. we'll hang out with the two Tai girls who speak Tai, English (yay), and no CHinese, my roommate, who speaks Korean and a little CHinese, but no English, Roy who speaks Korean, a little English and a little Chinese, the Japanese girl who lives across the hall who only speaks Japanese, and this kid named Jae who is Korean, speaks great English, perfect Korean, Japanese, and has lived in China for 6 months, but somehow doesn't speak a word of Chinese. It's a riot.

Avi, you are right about Wikipedia. Many free thinking sites are blocked here cuz that would lead to freedom of thought. Web surfing is kinda tough. Usually you get that error message that you get in America that says you typed the address wrong or something. One time, when I went to some restricted site, I got a blank white page, and all it said was, "Um...you're in China???" It was really weird.

We ate at this place the other day where there are different things on skewers and you put them in your basket and you give it to them and they mix it all together in a big soup for you. Crazy! No Megan, not Hotpot. Not yet.

I have to give a special thanks to J Chan again for teaching me about the word "ni ge." I thought mad peoplez was dropping the N-bomb on me. I don't think they know the difference. I haven't seen a single Black person since I got here. I also have to give an EXTRA special thanks to Maria. I had to talk to my parents, so I imed Maria at 6 in the morning and asked her to call my parents, WHO SHE HAS NEVER MET, because I really needed to talk to them. You are a life saver Maria.

I have to apologize for such a long post. From email, facebook messages, and responses on this site, it turns out people are actually reading this. I honestly thought I was writing all this for nothing. You really do love me! So as a token (sp?) of my appreciation, I will stop writing now and will bear this in mind on my next post. DOn't worry though I will keep you updated in the future!