Goodbye USA.... Ni Hao CHINA

Feb. 22-24

"Adjusting"

If your familiar with the term "Culture Shock" that is exactly what started happening to me. I was into my new home and getting adjusted in our room, but I still wasn't adjusting with the people. I feel like no one speaks English. Through these couple of days, Brooke and I went to the store to buy groceries and necessary things. EVERYTHING, is in Chinese. Labels, directions, everything. Also, half of the people in the store are people that work there. They follow shoppers around at a very close slash violating distance. However, this is just part of their culture. Anyone not use to standing inches away from someone should not come to China. Brooke and I went to Sal li tun Village (big big big mall and also right in the middle of ALL of the college nightlife). We saw cold stone creamery and almost passed out from the heavenly smell. In China it is not uncommon for you to get a whiff of mmm lets call them "fragrant aromas" and want to vomit because the smell is soo gross. When you get a good smell, it's like warm apple pie on Thanksgiving... AMAZING. Eating out was another thing. We went out to dinner at a place near by. I can pretty much order myself a drink, but reading all the different types of food is challenging. Luckily, most places have pictures. The place that we went to is a dinner and show. Brooke, Ike, and I got some pictures as we always do haha and left to call it an early night.

The next day all of us had to go to UIBE- our university to register. It was insane! People were everywhere, all moving around trying to get form one person to the next. I definitely missed on line registering that's for sure. Also, the students pay for their tuition in cold hard cash. The students in front of us were just pulling stacks and stacks of 100 bills out of their back pack like it was no big deal. Cheryl helped us through this entire process. If she wasn't there to translate some of the words and sentences, I would have been there for more hours than it already had taken us. When we were finally done, we went to the Bank of China and set up accounts. The bank is really close to our house, so we went to our place after we were done. That night Roy wanted to go to K-tv, which apparently is really popular in China. K-TV (karaoke) is a little bit different in China. The more common type is more private, like your own party. For example, we went to PARTYWORLD where you get our own room and food and just sing any songs you want. SO, it was us four roommates in a room singing anything and everything you could imagine. haha Roy was the best of all of us. He got so into it, he was dancing and yelling and hahaha it was really fun!

The next day I was pretty lazy. I had Internet for the first time in over a week, so I got on and did some things that way. I think after the week that we all had had though, we deserved a day off....

THANKS FOR READING : )

-nikita