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Published: September 4th 2011
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Sorry if you were waiting for a blog entry yesterday; I’m breaking my habit of writing every day. There’s really no excuse because I didn’t really do much yesterday, but then maybe you didn’t want to hear about my not so exciting day. I did have an incident on Wednesday night though. I was hand washing some of my clothes in the sink, and I had just turned on my air conditioner to get the humidity out of the room before going to bed. It was running for about 10 seconds, then it and all my lights shut off! What I had been planning so carefully against had happened—they shut off my power. I ran down the hallway to the power box and I still had 4 kilowatts left so there was no reason to shut my power off! I got out my dictionary and looked up “kilowatt” and “power” so I could tell the front desk my problem. I had it all rehearsed in my head: “Meiyou dianli keshi zhi you si ge qianwa!” But no one was at the front desk. I had to spend the night in horrible humidity; needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well. I
went down Thursday morning to pay my deposit of 800 yuan ($125) for the semester and asked for my power for September and they turned it back on.
We went to get cell phones Thursday, so now we have an easy way to contact each other. Miss Li told us to meet at the convenience store so we headed over there. I was in front of everyone and strode into the store, but when I turned around, I couldn’t see anyone. They had all disappeared into thin air. I was very confused and walked around for a bit, even walking all the way to the Central apartment and back. I was starting to freak out a little when I saw them standing outside a building right next to the convenience store. I had walked right past it and they thought I was just getting something at the store first. Cell phones would have been useful for this. But we got our phones and now we can text each other! It’s interesting that we got along fine without them for a week, but once we have them, we immediately start using them for everything. Instead of walking to Carey’s room to
see if she wants to go to breakfast, I just text her.
I also did laundry for the first time. There are workers down there to help us with the machines since it’s all in Chinese, so it was pretty painless. Chinese dryers don’t work as well as American ones though, so my clothes were still damp when I took them out. It was a little difficult finding places around my room to hang them, and now it smells like wet clothes when I walk in. It’s been 24 hours, and they still aren’t completely dry. Thank you, humidity.
We met at 11 today to go to a tea house, which was amazing! Locals come to tea houses and spend the whole day there drinking tea, eating, and playing games like poker. We only spent three hours there. There was a buffet downstairs and so much delicious food! As you can see by the pictures, we ate a lot! The tea was really good too! We got three different teas: Dragon Well, a local green tea; Iron Buddha, a mix of black and green tea; and oolong ginseng tea, which is really sweet. Miss Li explained how they serve the
Most Expensive apartments in Hangzhou
17,000 yuan per square meter ($2600 per square meter) tea, and once I can get the video loaded, you can learn about it too! All of us were pretty impressed with the tea house and plan to visit many others while we are here.
Tomorrow is a free day, so some of us are going downtown to look around and shop. Carey and I are having lunch with our Chinese professor, Chen Ying, from last year. Hopefully she can show us more places to visit in the city.
And a little fun for you: Can you guess what kind of Oreos are in the first picture? Post a comment with your guess and I’ll tell you the answer!
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Jas
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Oreo Flavor
I know what it is, so I won't guess...but I can't wait to hear some of them!