Day 1 on my own in China!

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I’m leaving Nanjing today to head to Jinan, which is kind of like stepping into a black hole. The group is separating. For the most part, we’ll all be in China, but we’ll all be in different parts. I’m in Jinan (ShanDong), Jill in Beijing, and Ming somewhere (I won’t even try to spell). At the Nanjing airport, I was in gate 30, the last gate, which also happened to be in the basement. When my flight was finally ready to board, I followed everyone else, just like I would do in the states, gave my ticket to the attendant, and started to walk to my “plane.” After awhile, we came to an escalator going down. At this point, I’m starting to get a little nervous, where the heck am I going? About halfway down the escalator, I see the next mode of transportation: a bus. Strange, but oh well, everyone was hopping on so I did too! I just kept thinking I’m taking a bus to get to the plane, I don’t know anyone to talk to in English, and who knows where I will actually end up, but I’ll try (deep breath). I think I’ll have to do this a lot this next two weeks (I’m on my own!).

Things turned out fine, and an hour later I was in Jinan! In Jinan, I’m not sure who I’m to meet, other than Grace and Song are their names (2 females, I thought…wrong. Grace = female; Song = male). If there’s but one thing I will take away from my trip, it is that I jump to way too many conclusions! They took me to my hotel, and later out to dinner. Grace and Song are a couple graduate students from the lab I will be working with and are ready to show me Jinan life. After dinner (Sweet and sour fish, broccoli, Frog soup (a little spicy), and beef something or other), we went back to their apartments. It was amazing to talk to them about life and their views.

We’ve been having this discussion of what we think the Chinese actually think of America and Americans within our Purdue group, so it was nice to get a little more first-hand interviewing. I was finally able to ask about the “family planning,” the one baby mandate, and in generally, they thought it most Chinese didn’t have a problem with it. The realized that people often will not keep their babies if their girls, but they also think it helps limit the population growth, which they thought was good. They compared themselves to India, and the problems over there, saying if they don’t control it now, it will get out of hand—if it is not controlled, no one will be able to live! We then ended the conversation like any good graduate student should, talking about alcohol. China’s beer is even lower than Utah’s; they drink 3.1% (Utah 3.2); the rest of the US is 4.3%--this explains soo much!

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Photos

Last Run with Andrea
Here's the track where we run in the am. They usually sell things, baskets today, live chickens the day before, bread before that, you know the basics

Dr Hua and Lynn Conspiring
Our two bosses talking about us I'm sure!

The Perfect Gift
Bryan gave us this as we for the airport! Who doesn't love gum, especially the germ-killing kind. I'm in heaven!

What??
This truly is a shuttle bus...it took my from my gate, out into the tarmac to the front door of the plane. Good service.

My own personal gym
This comes standard in my room--workout equipment or so my new Chinese friends tell me!

My interesting shower
Why have the expense of a shower curtain?? This is my new shower (notice the drain and lack of any sort of water containment area (i.e. tub). This will be interesting tomorrow.

Comments

[dad]

sounds like your finding a ton of new adventures. Be careful