Grab Life by the Horns, and then Eat Its Stomach

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And it’s that special time again, where I write about my life, and people read about it for some reason. And then I do a dance. So last time, I had a Kiliman-fail-o (play off of Kilimanjaro for anyone who isn’t a gamer/mountain enthusiast and doesn’t get that reference), went to An’Yang, and everyone looked at my tall black friend with out being super obvious or blatant about it. Ok, on to what you care about.

July 18th:
Tucker came back! So he came to chill for a little bit with me and Li Xuan, who’s one of the student directors at CET (also been helping me a ton with my visa problems – thank god), so we went out to a local restaurant, had some chuan’r (kebobs) had a (meaning 1) beer (cause school is a buzz kill like that, especially when you haven’t started your homework yet) and talked for a bit. Also, it was nice to talk to Li Xuan as a person and not a student, and joke around and what not. It was also interesting cause he asked me about how much I follow the language pledge, and I told him the truth (which is that I follow it unless I go clubbing – cause I can barely make out English in a club, let alone Chinese. Something about those small ears of mine I think) which he was cool with. And then he surprised me by listing off all the people who constantly break the language pledge. Apparently most of the staff knows by day one who wants to follow and who wants to break the language pledge – good to know. Also, tucker got a moped, so I got to ride with him for a quick lap around school. The whole buddying up on a two-wheeled vehicle is very, very weird. On a side note, his throttle on the moped is very sensitive.

July 19th:
Well today was interesting, as all the UNC students + Jason (CET head student director, UNC alumni) had dinner with Dan Gold, who is a big shot at UNC. Before dinner, I knew he had a lot of influence in the travel abroad department, but I never knew who he was, or what exactly he did. Well it turns out he basically creates a bunch of study abroad programs, and maintains a lot of relationships with them. Right now he’s working on a summer program at National Taiwan University (that won’t start till after I graduate – so don’t get too excited). But it was nice to meet him, and talk about CET with Dan and Jason, and get some good advice. Afterwords, Ian and I went to extra help, and then went to go play ping pong. As it turns out, Ian is not good at ping pong. I on the other hand was holding my own with the natives, and I don’t even have my paddle with me (and in case you’re wondering why that matters, generally people who are tall also have large hands, and thus many of the paddle handles didn’t fit my hand. Or they were created for the Chinese grip , which I use when I go easy on somebody.) And in case you were wondering what my masterful ping pong strategy is (and if you’re not, that’s your problem, I’m telling you anyway), it’s a dominate serve (like Roddick, only without all the choking) and a strong baseline play until they open up a hole, or they go for the slam, and mess it up (cause the Chinese will go for a low percentage power shot every time, you think a culture that is stereotypically good at math would have figured out the low success percentage of that shot by now.) So I got a bit of credibility, which is nice.

July 20th:
Watched a movie in class today about a little kid trying to keep his parents from divorcing (cause our super happy lesson that day was on divorce rates in China). Then I had dinner with ZiShu today (Another Chinese friend from UNC – I’m big pimping, only with Chinese people, and not selling illegal services, or anything at all). It was great to see her, and catch up with her. She’s interning for Teach for China, which is very very similar to Teach for America. She’s doing a lot of translation stuff, which has kept her very busy, but she’s really passionate about the work. Between joking around, we talked about the practicality of American’s wanting to do Teach for China, and while I believe in what the program stands for, I also don’t believe that it would be easy to convince Americans to sign up to go to rural China for a 2 year commitment. But despite that, it was great to see her, and show her around CET.
July 21st:
Today we watched a TV show about some girl who was fat and stupid (note that the stupidity made her fat, not visa versa). It was also an animated bit, and I learned that most Chinese animation is rather crude, so most people just watch anime (Japanese animation) cause it’s way beyond any quality any other country can make. Also scored some street cred with my teacher for liking anime, as did Ian. Also, still having Visa problems. Surprise Surprise. Also bought some wine today (will be relevant later).

July 22st:
So I took my test today, and then did my oral early (and my teacher said my composition was good. Bo-yah!) Packed up and Ross and I headed of to the train station (via metro, cause we can’t get enough of trains) to head to SHANGHAI (Cap letters for emphasis, yeah!). Well, actually that’s not quite true, Ross went to Shanghai, and I arrived in SuZhou to meet up with my friend Matt and meet his family. We used the bullet train, which is pretty classy, even has a TV, which played some kung fu movie. I’m going to go ahead and say that after only seeing 3 kung fu movies (2 of them out of the corner of my eye) that they are far superior to any action movie in the US. The movie on the bullet train would probably have to make Michael Bay change his pants.
So once I got off the train, I met up with Matt and met his family. His dad is an architect, currently managing the construction of a country club or something fancy like that, and his mother works for in translation for an American company. His mom is a English major, and thus knows a fair amount on English, while his dad knew nothing. I think the basic numbers, and a few very random words. Unfortunately my train nap was at the later half of the trip and as I have mentioned before in a previous blog, I need an hour of awakeness before I’m at my peak comprehension of Chinese. Sadly this was not the situation I met his parents under, so I could tell that there was a little bit of disappointment of my language abilities. Luckily we went to dinner, and after a little bit of food, I was able to make up for lost time, and prove I knew a bit more than I previously showed. Dinner was at a restaurant located on TaiHu Lake, which is rather famous for being super pretty, and having a lot to do. We ate at a place called MeiMei (which is the repeated character for beautiful – interestingly enough, this same Mei is used in the Chinese name for America). In typical Chinese fashion, they ordered a lot of food (guess who ate it all? This guy.) And I’m pretty sure I ate bull stomach. And the reason I think this is that Matt asked me if I liked bull stomach, to which I replied “What?” and then he told me never mind. Later, a dish came out with certain meat I’d never seen before, and Matt asked me if I’d seen it before. Which I feel like I’ve seen (but not ordered) in a Chinese restaurant in America before. Which I told him. And then he asked me how I liked it with too much curiosity when I ate it. Thus I have concluded that I ate bull stomach. Ironically, I then lost my stomach. Just kidding, I just wanted to mess with the play on words. It was just chewy, but didn’t really taste like anything (was expecting a grass flavor honestly).
So as I said before, I got to make up for lost Chinese speaking ability and show Matt’s Dad that I actually could speak Chinese, and we got to the point where if I didn’t know something, matt would help explain, or he would help teach me (perfect). Perfect example, I learned the difference between “re” and “ta”. “Re” and “ta” are both words for hot, but re is used when talking about body temperature, or air temperature, while after putting your hand on a burning stove (for some reason I imagine Uncle Carter doing this), you would later tell the paramedics as they drove you to the hospital that the stove was “ta”. Anyway after dinner, and eating like a boss (which is a problem, cause I then had to convince Matt’s family I was full so they wouldn’t buy more food), we went to Matt’s Dad’s company apartments. To make a long story short, Matt’s family lives in Shanghai, and his dad does work in SuZhou (very close to Shanghai) and comes home on the weekends to see his wife (and Matt when he’s not at UNC.) So they somehow got me my own room (good lord, too nice) and Matt and I caught up for an hour or 2, and then we went to bed.

What other adventures will happen in Shanghai? You’ll have to keep reading to find out! (A cliffhanger, oh no!) 3 food for thought
I can keep up in ping pong with the Chinese? Olympics 2012.
Any ideas on how to lower the time it takes between waking up and understanding a language? Seriously, would be really nice right now.
Is bull’s stomach going to be the weirdest thing I eat? I kinda hope so.
--Robby

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