China-ness.

Wednesday we went to TGI Fridays for Haleigh’s birthday. It’s always nice to go to an American restaurant. I miss eating burgers at home. So, got a Jack Daniel’s Burger. It was delicious. And the fries were good too. It was the first time we’ve all been out to eat together in a few weeks. So, that was fun too. I kind of like when we all go out to eat together. It’s fun to go in small groups as well but I really like being in a big group. It’s fun to all try to get on a bus together and be crowded, even though I hate being crowded on the bus. It’s not that bad when it’s with the people I know. I’ve come to be very thankful for our group. I love everyone. It’s fun to be together. I’m glad we didn’t have to be separated into different living places when we came to China. I had thought we might be because there was some talk about it. But I am very glad we didn’t have to do that. I like being around everyone and being able chat together whenever we want.

I hope that when the trip is over we all still talk to each other and get together and have fun. It makes me sad to think that we might but I’m gonna do all I can to keep our group friends and in touch when we get back.

Thursday we had our last full day of all our classes. It was a super long day and I was very tired. I became a bit stressed in Joy’s class when we went over our final for next week. After our Chinese class Haleigh, Larissa, and I decided we didn’t want to go out for dinner so we ordered McDonalds for delivery. It sounds so stupid because it’s fast food delivered. But it was still fun. We found the number online and tried to call from our room but it wasn’t working so we went downstairs to the front desk and they helped us. We called and picked the English button so we could talk in English. Then we ordered our food. It came super fast and only took like ten minutes.

Once the man arrived with our food the front desk called my room and we went downstairs. We weren’t sure if we had to tip the man or not so I paid him the price and then Haleigh tried to explain to the receptionist our questions about tipping and they didn’t understand so then they had her write the word down and he looked it up in Chinese and both the receptionists looked at us and waved their hands and said no. We all laughed because it was a funny situation. But then we got our McDonalds and all was well for the night.

I have noticed that the American places here seem to be put up like they are really nice places. For instance, McDonalds, it seems to be nice places and people go there a lot. At home McDonalds is not a nice place. It’s considered dirty in my opinion and also cheap food that is bad for you. Even pizza hut here looks like a gourmet restaurant. I felt out of place in jeans and sweat shirt in the pizza hut here. Weird.

Yesterday we went to Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is enclosed with a long wall. The northern part within the wall is semicircular symbolizing the heavens and the southern part is square symbolizing the earth. The northern part is higher than the southern part. This design shows that the heaven is high and the earth is low and the design reflected an ancient Chinese thought of 'The heaven is round and the earth is square'.

Last night, a few of us tried to communicate with the receptionists downstairs. There was a smell on our floor that smelled like gas we thought. And it was horrible. So around midnight Lindsey and Chelsea knocked on our door concerned about the smell. While at that time Becca and I were trying to figure out our itchy bump issue and what it might be we are allergic to. So, while Lindsey and Chelsea were more concerned about the smell we put our allergy issue on hold and tried to go communicate. The receptionist downstairs didn’t speak much English but a little bit. We tried to tell her there was a smell on our floor. She didn’t quite get it. So, she called many people to try to find someone who spoke English. But there was nobody.

So Becca ran upstairs to Google translate what we were trying to say. Then Chelsea ran back up too to remind her to type gasoline instead of gas so we didn’t translate fart or anything. It was quite humorous. So after a few minutes Becca and Chelsea came down stairs to the lady and showed her a paper with a sentence on it. The receptionist giggled at Becca’s characters and even corrected it. We all found it funny. We still don’t know what it actually was that was wrong though. But After maybe ten more minutes we still didn’t know what each other was saying. Then finally a group of 10 to 15 people came in the hotel. They went in the elevator then the doorman ran after them and brought them back. They asked if we needed something and he translated what they were telling us the smell was. It was paint. The group that cam in was obviously drunk. The man that talked to us had bloodshot eyes and as we were all going in the elevator he was trying to say something but he was like “oh I’m so drunk…” it was funny. But what a great night it was. Then after we got back upstairs we all sat in the room and tried to figure out Becca and me’s itchy issue. We looked up bunches of stuff and tried to figure out. We compared symptoms online and didn’t find anything. So it was a fail discovery for us.