It just occurred to me that we’ve not seen one single eggroll since we’ve been here. Maybe I should change the title of this blog. Maybe the title should change weekly. Maybe this week’s title should be With Four You Get Very Large Mosquito Bites All Over Your Body.
Update:
Too bad Melvil Dewey left out the first category (A) listed below.
I’ve known for a long time that the Chinese are not a cheese-loving people. We had a friend in grad school from Beijing whose first English sentence was, “I dunnah rike-ah cheese.” I now understand why he prioritized mastering those words – it’s very important when living in a foreign country to be able to have food you can stomach. If I could say one Mandarin sentence, it would be, “I don’t like organ meat, donkey, connective tissue, testicles, heads, feet, or anything other body part that reminds me that what I’m eating once walked (or galloped) the earth.”
Chris and I take one day a week to do some local sightseeing sans kids. Yesterday, we visited the Lama Temple, the Temple of Confucius, and Beihai Park. Here are some shots from our day.
I asked P the other day what she most missed about our “regular home,” and she replied, “I miss our couch. Our regular couch is a lot better than our Chinese couch. It’s a lot more comufurble.” She’s right about that. I then asked her what she likes the most about China, and she replied, “There a lot to see in China.” She’s right about that, too. Thanks to all those things to see, we don’t end up spending much time on our subpar Chinese couch.
Want to see where we live? We’re in faculty housing on the Tsinghua campus. The location is perfect. We’re a five minute bike ride from P’s school, which is also on campus, our office, the building where we teach, and the supermarket. We’re a ten minute bike ride from Wudaokou, which we refer to as our own Times Square. I’m dying for a haircut and I hear there are several places in Wudaokou where the stylists speak English. Unfortunately, the word on the street is that most Westerners brave enough to get a haircut in Beijing end up looking like mullet-bearing Korean pop stars. Maybe I’ll wait… Here’s the Wudaokou at night. Clearly, I didn’t take this one – I’m never up late enough to see lights like this.
We left for China one month ago tomorrow. What a month! The first two weeks were surpassed in level of difficulty only by the first two weeks of P’s life. The combination of massive sleep deprivation, culture shock, and lack of language skills was very nearly enough to send me to a Chinese mental health facility. Luckily, though, the heavens opened up, and the sun shone brightly two weeks ago when we met these people: (more…)
I’m in P’s bedroom on the computer. I just heard Ayi in another room tear a piece of paper out from my notebook. She’s scribbling something. I know what this means. I’m going to be doing some decoding in a minute or two.
We finally have an internet connection in our apartment. Our previous wireless thievery required us to check our email in places in the apartment where computers should never be used. Case in point:
We have so much to report, but we’re off to buy bikes now. Expect more soon. Don’t worry. All posts from this point on will be typed at an actual desk. Good thing germs aren’t transmitted electronically…
