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We had our first day of work on Wednesday, May 16th. Fernanda and I are in different groups and in different buildings. I'm in the environmental planning group while she's in the countryside planning group. Hopefully they're both interesting! My supervisor is very friendly and he had me sit in on a meeting (all in Chinese) about a project they're just finishing up in the South. They're building a whole new tourist area and relocating a lot of locals in the process. Apparently the locals are happy because they're poor farmers who will be given new homes and jobs at the the tourist spots. As someone who's been trained now to be totally against central planning, it's hard to get my head around this idea.
My supervisor then took me for lunch to a restaurant nearby which serves food from the North - where all the Turkish people are. We even had lamb shish-kebab! If it wasn't for a plate of noodles it wouldn't look very Asian. It was really good. In the afternoon I didn't have much to do, he told me "research sustainable cities" which seems like a make-work project until he has me start with a new
project they're doing near Shanghai. The exciting news is I'll get to travel to Shanghai with work for the project! Fernanda's supervisor wasn't in on Wednesday so she went home after lunch because there wasn't anything for her to do. For dinner we went to a dumpling restaurant and we once again succeeded in ordering food without any English (or even pictures!) Luckily Fernanda knew the word for "dumpling" because our dictionaries had the wrong word. More and more I'm realizing how useless these dictionaries are. They don't have a lot of Chinese food in them which is probably what you need to know most! We had to look online to find out the word for "tofu".
Thursday Fernanda stayed home because her supervisor still wouldn't be in. She just lounged about. I went in to work and had very little to do. But the third USC student, Jeff, had his first day on Thursday and he's in my group so we chatted a bit. At least they'll always be someone speaking English near me. My entire group is in Chengdu this weekend and many people left Thursday so it was really empty in the office. My supervisor left
today (Friday) so I'm home right now since there's nothing for me to do at work.
We have this internal messenger system on our computers and a Chinese intern messaged me and invited me to lunch. So Jeff and I had lunch with two sweet Chinese girls who helped us understand things a bit better. There's a cafeteria in our building and we get free lunch! It's pretty crazy. On weekdays we only have to pay for one meal which is amazing.
I guess in other news, Fernanda and I went running the last two mornings. We figure we need to get some exercise so we don't gain a bunch of weight here. Because the food doesn't seem very healthy. Lots of carbs. Portions are also MASSIVE. We're both getting a little sick of Chinese food which isn't good after only 4 days. I personally just miss salads and raw vegetables because everything's cooked here! But we bought some produce at the local store and I ate a bunch today. Since we don't have fridges we have to be careful not to buy too much.
The good news is there are lots of international restaurants in Beijing,
they're just a bit more expensive. But they'll be worth it when we're just dying to get some Western food. Which may be as early as this weekend haha.
So life is going on, we're getting settled, getting used to things, etc.
-Dafne
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Baba
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It was nice to hear your first news from China. Looks like you are settling in nicely. It is also nice that you have some friends. The buildings all like modern! To-day Meggie is coming to do some cleaning so I have to tidy up a bit to make it easy for her. Well, keep esnding your news, Love, Baba