First session is over!

I can hardly believe that I've already been in China for 5 weeks and am done with my first set of courses. I have the next week off and will be travelling. Tomorrow I am taking a 13 hour train from Chengdu to Xian, where the terracotta soldiers are. Tuesday morning I fly from Xian to Shanghai to stay with a friend for the rest of the week. I don't know if I'll be able to post while I'm gone, so holding your breath might not be such a good idea. To tide you over, here are some stories from this past week.

On Monday, my teaching assistant Meng Meng and her friend Mu Chun treated me to an afternoon of fun. They picked me up after class and went to lunch where we feasted on boiled eal and roasted rabbit heads. Ever the anatomist, I dissected my rabbit head as I ate it. The cheeks and tongue were really tasty, but I didn't eat the brain. I don't do brains -- one word, "prions."
After lunch we went to a Chinese theme park called Floraland. It was very reminiscent of Old Indiana, for those of you who have been there. Instead of paying for admission, you pay per ride, so we rode two rides, walked around a while, then left. After Floraland we drove to some random little town where you can ride a horse for half and hour for 50yuan.

That's when I validated an entire town's romantic conception of Americans.

Imagine a town that has had little or no westerners ever visit it, just western movies. Now imagine some random blond woman galloping a horse down you town's main thoroughfare, her hair down. Yep, that was me. I'll admit, it was probably the most dangerous thing I've done in this country (I know my dad is cringing as he reads this) but if I had at anytime felt unsafe, I would have gotten off the horse.

After horse riding, we drove back to Chengdu and Mu Chun cooked us an amazing dinner, and all was right with the world.


Next day -- pain. Yes, I have been supremely sore since Monday thanks to that half an hour horse ride. The saddle was nothing like I've ever used. The stirrups were attached with chains instead of leather straps, so my calves are tender and my thighs are not too happy. All that made my Tai Chi final more difficult than it had to be. My Tai Chi teacher's enthusiasm more than made up for that. He's really excited that four of us are going to continue studying with him next session (Tai Chi Sword, it's going to be so cool!)



New story. Tonight after teaching the little children how to speak English I went to Carrefour (a French Walmart-type store) to buy a small suitcase. All my suitcases are huge and not handy for taking on a week-long trip. As I was leaving Carrefour, suitcase in hand, and old man and an old lady rushed up to me smiling and talking in Sichuanhua really fast. At first I had no idea what they were doing, but they started pointing at their rickshaws and grabbing my suitcase trying to pull me toward them. Here's the problem, they had different rickshaws. My suitcase (with me attached) had turned into an old person's tug-0-war. This went on for about two minutes before I finally pried their hands off my bag and left. Some other Chinese people who had been watching the whole exchange started laughing, and I with them. It was hilarious. Another, younger rickshaw driver waited until I was away from the old ones, then asked if I wanted to use his. I agreed, with both of us laughing as we left the two old drivers to their fighting.


I learned something very comforting this week. The reason some people don't understand my Chinese isn't because I'm speaking intelligibly, it's because they don't speak the standard dialect! The Chinese standard dialect is Putonghua (hua means speech). School children are taught to speak Putonghua, so I can communicate with most young people. The older people here all speak Sichuanhua (i.e. Sichuan speech). It sounds enough like Putonghua that if I don't know they're speaking Sichuanhua, I just assume that my Chinese is too poor to understand them.

Okay, that's enough, time to pack!