It's difficult to remember all the details of what happened the first week, but I do remember some of my thoughts. I remember looking out of the plane window as we descended towards Shanghai, and just seeing SMOG and thinking "Oh my gosh. I'm going to die here." It was seriously so bad. Then, I remember walking outside of the airport and thinking: "What is that smell?! I hope China doesn't always smell this weird." It does. But I love it! China is such a strange place, so it's only fitting that its overflowing with such strange smells. (There's a popular dish they call "stinky tofu" which may be the most disgusting smell on the face of the planet.) Finally, I remember (parts of) the bus ride to Suzhou. It was late at night, but I wanted to look out the window to see China for the first time. the first thing I noticed was how there are so many skyscrapers. But because skyscrapers here are mainly apartments, and it was past everyone's bedtimes, all of their lights were off. For some reason it felt really eerie to have a bunch of abandoned-looking skyscraper silhouettes looming over me. That's basically the last thing I remember before passing out and sleeping like a rock until we arrived at the school.
After that is where it gets hard to remember anything but bits and pieces. So here they are, all the bits and all the pieces:
-The driver took us to the wrong school. I was so tired and had no idea what was happening, I just remember thinking "we're here!", hearing angry Chinese voices (turns out that's just how Chinese people talk), then turning the bus around and getting to sleep a while longer.
-We got our room/roommate assignments (my roommates name is Sami, I'll talk more about her and everyone else in my group later.)
- Sami and I got a room with a very dirty bathroom and a weird musty smell, but we've since cleaned it up and made it feel like home.
- We found out we would start teaching almost right away, so we immediately started working on the first of many lesson plans
-The schools principal and a few assistant principals took us out to dinner. It was a traditional chinese meal, which means it was a circular table with a large rotating disc in the middle to pass the food around. It's Basically like a family buffet, where they bring out dishes and you share with everyone. But you have to pay attention, because if whatever you want to eat spins past you, you have to wait until it comes around again and pray that its not gone my then, haha. Anyways, this meal included roasted duck (the whole duck on a plate. Head and all), a sweet and sour fish that is supposedly only found in Suzhou (Same thing. Head and all). I decided to stick to the lotus roots (my favorite) and tofu since I hadn't had meat for 8 months, and didn't want to start off by eating my favorite animal. My favorite/ least favorite dish at the dinner was the warm corn juice.
Them: "Have you ever tried warm corn juice?"
Us (struggling a bit to understand their accents) "Warm orange juice?"
Them "Yes!"
Us: "No, we have never tried warm orange juice..?"
They seemed so shocked and surprised, They brought out a pulpy orange liquid and poured us a glass, but it did not smell like orange juice. It smelt so familiar though.
We took a sip, and Elin goes "Its CORN!"
Then Elin and I laughed so hard. I don't know why we thought this was so funny. Maybe you had to be there. Anyways, those are my first impressions of china. I might make it sound like China is an awful place in this post. I just think my favorite things about china are the things that freak me out, so that's what I choose to write about. But I LOVE CHINA! Not despite all the weird gross things, but because of them. Its also insanely gorgeous, the people are extremely kind, and the culture is so interesting. That's all for this post. More to come.
Suzhou is known as the Venice of China. It's true, there are canals EVERYWHERE
A Koi pond outside of that restaurant
Went ATM to get some RNB. Got very lost, but found a guy that spoke a tiny bit of English and could point us in the right direction. Exchange rate is currently about 6.3 Yuan for every USD. it makes us feel pretty rich
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