China: 1 Chelsea: 0

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China probably deserves a lot more points than that but China's only allowed to get one point per day or else it the score would be 500 to 0. And everyone likes a close game.

Actually I probably deserve at least one point for figuring out how to get on the aircraft in San Francisco. Usually in the United States, you can get by pretty much anywhere as long as you know English. Well, I have an amendment to that theory. You cannot get on an airplane going to China if you do not speak Mandarin, even if you are still in California.

Once I figured out how to get on the plane, the plane itself wasn’t too bad. The woman sitting next to me was pretty quiet until she had one beer, and then proclaimed she was wasted (she used a different word but I don’t remember what it was) and then all of the sudden she wanted to be my best friend. She made me guess how old all of the women and men were on the plane who she thought were around her age. There was a couple sitting in front of us who had two small children and the woman next to me goes “how old do you think that man is?” and I’m like “what are you talking about” and she said “I think we’re the same age but he already has kids!” I had no idea how old she was so I tried to be polite and say she looked ten years younger than I’m sure she actually was.

Halfway through the flight, I think she got motion sickness and spent the rest of the flight in the bathroom, which meant that I got to get a little bit of sleep. Before long, we were making our descent into China. It was a good thing that there were a lot of people there because all of the signs were in Chinese so I just followed the masses. But then it was time for customs. I was lucky because I heard some people speaking Japanese, so I guessed they were foreigners, and followed them into that line. While standing in line, this video of a mother and daughter going through customs started playing. They were singing and dancing and the border control people were really nice. If only it was like that in real life.

Finally it was my turn. Thank goodness I picked the right line. The border control man didn’t speak an ounce of English, but there were English words that displayed on the screen that told me what to do. Unlike when I entered London, I did not get questioned for a million years, but I’m guessing that had more to do with the fact that I would have just given him a blank stare if he had asked me.

By the time I found my luggage, it was getting pretty dark outside. I found the taxi manager and I was able to say “sorry I don’t speak Chinese” in Mandarin and did a lot of pointing to tell him where I needed to go. The taxi driver got me to the university pretty fast—in just under an hour. He dropped me off outside of the gates and that’s where the real fun began. I walked up to the gated entrance to find a million cops standing everywhere. It kind of felt like I was entering a prison. The head cop man started speaking to me in rapid Mandarin, despite my cries of “I don’t speak Chinese, only English,” which I was saying in my best Mandarin possible. He kept looking at me and finally I just decided to walk through the gates. He didn’t follow me or try to shoot me down so I kept walking and eventually found the dorm.

They took us to dinner after that. I had eaten a bunch on the plane because I was worried I would miss dinner, so by the time I got to dinner I was stuffed. But I think it is impolite not to eat in Chinese culture so I tried to eat a little more. I had never seen anything on the table before, and to be honest, I couldn’t tell what was what. I would have asked, but no one at my table spoke English and my charades aren’t as good as they once were when I was in kindergarten. Talk about true immersion.

Actually that’s a lie. In the middle of dinner, this guy looks up from his food and asks me in Chinese if I speak Chinese. I told him no, that I speak English, at which point he switched to English and asked me if one of my parents were Chinese. When I said yes, he asked me again in English if I spoke Mandarin. When I said no, he then asked me which province my dad was from. In my head, I was like "there are different provinces in China?!?" but out loud I was like "I'm not sure--he's from San Francisco". The guy laughed really hard and then did not speak English for the rest of the meal. So I’ve decided that I’m just going to tell everyone I’m Hawaiian from now on, so that they don’t expect me to know any Chinese. That or I'll tell them I'm Mexican, because everyone in London thought I was Mexican so I must look at least a little bit Mexican.

China dorm life has been interesting. Our roommates do not move in until this weekend, so for now it's just me. I would have loved having a roommate this morning when I couldn't figure out how to turn on the shower (the directions are all in Chinese) or when I locked myself inside my room and couldn't get out this morning. But I'm learning.

The bedrooms are really small. I'm pretty sure my room back home is bigger and there is only one of me (well two if you include my dog that has decided it's really his room). Here, there isn't really room for two twin beds in the room so they're less than a foot apart. Guess I'll get to know my roommate pretty well considering we're basically sharing a bed.

The water here is lovely. It's a great yellowish brown color. Yummy. There isn't really a shower--there's a shower head but it kind of just sprays on to the floor/into the toilet. I'm not really sure how to describe it but it's disgusting. It's basically like I'm camping here for the next four months.

Usually I like to have pictures in my blog, but this internet is slower than slow so this blog is going to have to be picture-less for the time being. I'm not entirely sure why I'm paying 80 bucks a month for internet because I really only use the internet for three things: Facebook, Gmail/Google, and Youtube, all of which are blocked in China. Maybe I'll use it more once classes start on Monday but even then I'm not really sure because how am I supposed to use the internet without Google?

Anyways, this will be one heck of a learning experience, that much is clear. But more later--we're off to the Chinese Wal-Mart at the moment!

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