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Published: September 6th 2011
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Well, I have experienced my first great dislike of China: the internet sucks. Or at least it has for the past 3 days which is really frustrating because I can’t post my blogs or check emails or talk to my Chinese friends on QQ. Every day I am getting more and more frustrated. I guess the internet is one thing I don’t want to compromise on and get quite annoyed when I can’t use it. Luckily Carey did some finagling with the fuse box and got our Internet and outlets working (the outlets stopped working too so we couldn’t charge our computers either).
We went to English Corner again today, and saw a lot of the same people from last time. It feels so cool to recognize people here and say hello like I know them. I met a lot of new people too and got more QQ numbers. We had to leave a little earlier today to get ready for our pen pal dinner tonight. I was on the cleaning crew for getting the apartment ready. The boys shopped with Miss Li for all the ingredients and some of the others cooked. We had a mix of Chinese and American
food: fried rice and dumplings, grilled cheese sandwiches, chips, and no bake cookies. We didn’t start off very organized though because the internet was finally working, so while the boys were shopping, we frantically checked emails and posted blogs and didn’t clean. Once they returned we started in on the work. It was difficult for me because I’m used to a certain level of cleaning which is very thorough, but Miss Li’s cleaning supplies were very limited. I started mopping the floor with warm water, but Balazs soon took that over. The tiny kitchen was a mass of bodies trying to get the vegetables and meat ready to make dumplings. I ended up cutting the watermelon (I took it away from Peter who wasn’t doing a very good job of it). Once the dumpling making crew moved to the tables, Carey started on the grilled cheese sandwiches while I cleaned the sink full of dirty dishes. I really want to organize the kitchen and find a place for everything, because it was quite chaotic and messy. I had to resist the urge to organize however and help Carey. The penpals were already arriving and we were running late with our
preparations.
The kitchen became even more crowded when the others tried to come in to cook the dumplings. That kitchen was not meant to allow even two people to move easily, let alone six. Once the dumplings and grilled cheese sandwiches were done, the kitchen calmed down and I was able to make my no bakes. (The grilled cheeses were a hit with the Chinese students and Miss Li). I felt a little outside of the group because we had spent about an hour in the kitchen while everyone else was talking and getting to know each other and eating our food, but some of the girls came in to talk to me while I finished the cookies. One of them was my penpal Jenny. I was excited to finally meet her; we had been QQing for a few weeks before I got here. I finally got to leave the kitchen and eat the fast dwindling food. The no bakes were also well received although Jenny and some other girls said they were too sweet. Can you believe that! Americans apparently have a more developed sweet tooth.
We decided to play a game popular in China called Killers. To everyone’s
surprise (and mine) I had played the game before. It involves 3 killers, 3 police, and a judge. Everyone closes their eyes except the judge and the killers choose 2 people to “kill”. Then the police point to two people and the judge tells them if they are the killers or not. Then everyone discusses who they suspect and choose another person to die. The police try to catch the killer before they kill all the police. We ended up playing 5 rounds of this, and by the end, I think everyone was tired of it. But we passed an enjoyable few hours together before they all left to go back to their respective campuses (Hangzhou has several different campuses for ZheJiang University).
But now it’s late and I need to be rested. I start my internship tomorrow!
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Jas
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Internship
Good luck with your first day! I can\'t wait to hear about it!