It was rainy again so I decided to stay in for most of the day and just relax. I honestly don’t really remember what I did for most of the day. But that night, Chris cooked for us (Axel, Kia, Cindy and I)… and let me tell you, that guy can cook! Wow- our meal was absolutely delicious!! We didn’t actually end up eating until extremely late (maybe 11 pm), but it was worth the wait because the food was just that good!
The weather had cleared up a little bit so my friend, Ryan, brought me to see this old (abandoned) village that is in Beibei (but close to the river and the mountains). First we went down by the river because I hadn’t been there yet. We skipped stones for a little while, and although I got a few good skips, Ryan really showed me up. We sat by the river for a while talking before we went back up to see the village. I was told that this village was more than 500 years old. I thought it was a pretty cool place to see, but I think we ended up spending more time by the river than in the old village. We then went to eat at a cool little restaurant, and Ryan helped me practice my Chinese. One phrase I learned/practiced: wǒ yǒu yī shuāng lánsè de yǎnjīng (I have a pair of blue eyes). When I got back, I went to work on homework with Cindy at our favorite milk tea place. Cindy has become pretty good friends with the guy who works there (Liu Hao). We think he runs this place on his own; he is only 19 years old, but it seems to me like he has a pretty successful business going on. He makes a really delicious mango and cream crepe sort of dessert that I absolutely love. He also has an adorable little, white dog named “Obama”. So, we had a lovely afternoon doing homework and hanging out with Liu Hao and Obama. Monday night, Kia and I babysat for Sam & Annie so they could have some free time.
 |
| Jialing River |
 |
| Jialing River |
Tuesday
For lunch, I met up with Shirley, a Chinese student who wanted to practice her oral English with me. We went to lunch, and I talked mostly about my family and about school to help her learn more English words and pronunciation. She was very nice, and we plan to spend time together again sometime soon! Later in the day, I went with Kia to play Badminton (which is a pretty popular sport here). After we had been there for a while, Chris came to join us too. A Chinese student also asked to play with us. Kia, Chris and the other girl were all so good! It was definitely a work-out for me to keep up with them because my Badminton skills are not as good as theirs. That evening, Kia and I went to meet Cindy and Annie to go on our second girls’ night of the week. We ate a really good chicken and potato dish at a nearby Muslim restaurant, and then went to a different tea place to try their lavender tea. It was another great night of talking and tea drinking. It won’t really do it justice to try to explain it any more than that.
 |
| Cindy & Kia |
 |
| Me & Annie |
Wednesday
In the morning, Axel, Ryan and I to the bus to downtown Chongqing to visit the Three Gorges Dam Museum (http://www.3gmuseum.cn/en/). Sam and Chris were also going to go, but Sam got sick and Chris was too tired to go. The museum is not really about the Three Gorges Dam- it was more of a history museum, but Chinese history includes art, which I love. We walked around the museum looking at everything. And apparently, while we were walking around, there were two separate occasions where little girls went up to Axel and felt his arm hair (because the Chinese don’t have very much arm hair)… events that I wish I had witnessed. After the museum, we went to find a well-known, but hard-to-find hotpot place. It took us a while to get there, but it really was very good, so it was worth it! Afterwards, Ryan helped us to find canned tuna because Axel really wanted some. I think we went to at least 3 supermarkets, but we eventually found some!! Axel basically cleaned them out. And since tuna is not common in China, it is very expensive. I think he ended up spending about 240 kuai (~40 USD). However, the hope is that it will last him the rest of the semester. At one of the supermarkets, I also bought some durian- a fruit with an interesting reputation- to give it a try because I had heard so much about it. For those of you who do not know about durian, it has a very strong, unpleasant smell. The smell is so bad that when a couple of my friends had a durian in their dorm last year, life safety came to check it out because they thought it was a gas leak. Also, durian is a love-it-or-hate-it fruit. It turns out that I hate it, but I figured it was still worth a try. Before we got on the bus back to Beibei, Ryan wanted to get his own “tasty” snacks. When he brought them back for us to try, I was very disappointed to see that he brought back some kind of tentacles and chicken heart. I decided not to try the tentacles.
This day was an exploration day for Kia and I. We went to downtown Beibei again because I was in search of a sweatshirt. After we found the sweatshirt that I had tracked down on National Day, we decided to walk to gate 2 (of the Southwest Campus) to get food (because we know there is an ‘eat street’ there. The set-up of campus, is kind of strange, the order of the gates from the North side of campus to the South side is gate 5, gate 1, gate 3, gate 2, gate 6. I don’t understand why the gates are not in order, but apparently 4 is an unlucky number, so that is why there is no gate 4. We live very close to gate 5, so gate 2 is a little bit of a trek. We wanted to go to gate 6 because we had not been there yet. All of campus is beautiful, but it turns out that gate 6 is even more beautiful. Ryan told us that he lives near gate 6, so Kia decided to call him to see if we could see what his dorm looks like. We had already seen what the girls’ dorms looked like, but we were curious if the guys’ dorms were the same or not. However, students aren’t allowed to be in the dorms of the opposite sex so we weren’t sure if they would allow us in or not. Anyway, Ryan came over to meet us and agreed to show us where he lives. I don’t know what he was thinking, but that guy does not live anywhere near gate 6… he lives way closer to gate 1 or 5. But the guard did allow us to see the inside of the dorms because we’re foreigners. Ryan’s dorm was actually a little bit nicer than the girls’ dorm that we saw because he only had 3 other roommates, whereas the girls lived with 6 people in a room. However, the beds do not look like they are long enough at all. After chatting with him and his roommate for a while, we invited Ryan to come see what our room looks like. We also decided to show Ryan what Youtube and Facebook are all about because those are two sites that are blocked in China. It was actually really interesting though because even though he knew what Facebook was, I don’t think he really understood what it was. When we told him that it was not like MSN or QQ (Chinese instant messenger), and explained what it did, his response was “The facebook is so powerful,” which really cracked us up! We ended up helping him to set up a facebook account (we will soon be giving him proxies so he can actually access facebook) until about 10 pm, when the receptionists for our hotel/dorm called us to tell us that he had to leave.
Friday
Friday was another relaxation day. I went to KFC for lunch with Chris and showed him the underground market, where he made a few successful purchases. After that, I went to hang out with Cindy to work on homework and chat a little. Friday night, we had our last girls’ night of the week, with another round of Shingo Times and lavender tea. Needless to say, it was another amazing night!
Unfortunately, Saturday and Sunday were deemed make-up days for some of the days that we missed during Golden Week, so we now have class 7 days in a row…
But despite this, I really enjoyed my National Day & Golden Week experience :-)p.s. I apologize for having so few pictures to share for this week!
