To be honest, I did not experience any culture shock coming to Hangzhou. I guess it's because the lifestyle here is pretty similar to my Asian lifestyle back in Hawaii. Same goes with Michelle, Haley, and Alex (the other Asian Americans on this trip). The only thing that I can't get used to is the excessive honking (it is taboo to honk in Hawaii because it is rude and annoys the other drivers), the squat potties (I correctly used it for the first time today...after using it wrong for the past two weeks), and wearing house slippers/shower slippers (we never wear shoes in the house in Hawaii. It is rude to do so).
So even though the past week passed by pretty fast, it's been quite eventful. I'm not going to go into depth about what we did because, frankly, I can't remember...but I'll kind of cruise through some of the things I do remember.
In my last post, I forgot to mention that I bonded with my host mom last Saturday by watching EXO on Happy Camp together. (I honestly adore my host mom. We have long discussions in Chinese during our dinners because it's usually just us eating together.) Knowing that EXO was going to be on Happy Camp, I was pretty excited for this. I told everyone about it---my host family, my classmates, my friends, my teachers, etc. My host mom and dad were gracious enough to watch the 2 hour show with me. I couldn't understand a lot of things because it was all in Chinese (I usually watch this on Youtube with English subs), but I was able to catch on at random times by reading the Chinese subtitles (my reading skills are far better than my listening skills). Nevertheless, I was happy because I've been so EXO-deprived in China. I also found out that EXO is going to LA in August for KCON, so I'm slowly trying to figure out a way to go. The concert is a week after I come back from China.
Besides Happy Camp, we participated in a lot of activities during school this past week. On Monday, we had dance class and learned this national Chinese dance. The song made me want to do Chinese zumba. If you're a parent of a Hangzhou NSLI-Yer, you should have gotten a video of us dancing l o l. I have yet to see it, but I'll ask my parents to show it to me when I return to Hawaii. On Tuesday, we participated in a "community service" project at an old folks home. We sang "茉莉花“ for them, and they performed various songs and dances for us. It was actually pretty fun and interesting, and the 老人 (senior citizens) are all so 可爱 (cute). On Wednesday (yesterday), we toured Zhejiang University and got to visit Matthew's host father. His host dad is a professor in Zhejiang University's International Studies department. Today we presented our Scavenger Hunt project and my group won 2nd place. We received cupcake-flavored oreos (yummy!). Tomorrow, we're leaving for an overnight trip to Suzhou, so that should be fun (party bus woo!). I'm still jealous that the Suzhou groups gets to visit Shanghai, but I'm excited for Suzhou too.
Because I have a myriad of topics that I want to mention in my posts and I'm terrible at transitioning into different topics, I'm just going to list the rest down:
- Lately, the Hangzhou newspaper and news stations have been coming to our host institution to interview us. It's really awkward when they just come into our classroom and start filming us. Today, our teacher made Ryan offer the camera crew some snacks that she brought for us. It was pretty hilarious because of how awkward everything was. Apparently, we were on the news last night and we will be on the news tonight too. I'm too lazy to watch TV, so hopefully one of the other NSLI-Yers will film it. But here are some articles I found: http://hznews.hangzhou.com.cn/kejiao/content/2013-07/10/content_4802885.htm and http://news.cnwest.com/content/2013-07/10/content_9695428.htm (they're both in Chinese)
- I LOVE my class so much: the room, the people, the teachers. Today, 张老师 taught and brought us Hangzhou snacks because she knows how much my class loves eating during our 10 minute breaks. She brought us so much snacks, and they were all pretty delicious.
- The bus here is ridiculous. Because the program keeps us at school/touring around so late, I don't get on the bus home until 5:30 pm. This is the worst time to get on the bus because this is when it gets really crowded...and when I mean crowded, I mean CROWDED. It's jam-packed. People are squeezed up against each other that you have to force your way through to the exit. (I would take a picture for you guys, but there is no room for me to do that. That's how crowded it is). Also, the bus drivers close the exit door so fast (like in 10 seconds). This happened to me this morning. I was literally 4 feet away from the exit, but since there was so much people on the bus today, it took me more than 20 seconds to get to the door. Right when I got to the exit, he closed the door on me...so I had to aggressively shout "等一下” (wait a minute) for him to open it again.
- Before I got on the bus yesterday morning, I dropped the phone that NSLI-Y gave us and the battery fell out and everything. The old man next to me was trying to tell me something about it, but I couldn't understand ;__; So I just nodded my head, said "对“ and smiled. I think he was asking if my phone was okay or something like that because after I put my battery back in and started the phone, he smiled and said something. When we got on the bus, we didn't talk again...but the cutest thing was that when he got off at his stop (which is 2 stops before I have to get off to transfer from the 303 bus to the 197 bus), he smiled at me and told me bye. I love little babies and old people here. They're all so cute and nice, LOL.
- My mom bought durian for me at the supermarket last Sunday. Because it was so big, I brought some to school on Monday for Angelo and Will. Angelo loves durian, but for Will, this was his first time trying it. He didn't like it LOL. He ate it, spit it into the trash can, and ran to the bathroom. It's weird...I personally like durian...and I don't think it smells bad at all. I guess it's just a love-or-hate thing. You either hate it or you love it...no in-between. My host sister hates the smell of durian.
Anyways, now I'm going to go study for my dictation (yay dictations!! Can you sense my sarcasm?). I attached a newsletter of us in Hangzhou (written by our RD and assistant RD, I think) that was emailed to our parents, so hopefully it shows up. My dad forwarded it to me. I would take more pictures in Hangzhou, but Angelo is literally doing that for us. I'll just tag myself in his pictures when he uploads it to Facebook because he takes pictures of us doing everything. Some of the pictures in the newsletter were taken by him...like the one of us at KTV, buying milk tea, and etc. Hehe, it's funny that I'm in every picture on the newsletter. For the paper cutting one, my butterfly is in the bottom-right corner.
Until next time,
Christine
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