First Friday in Chengdu

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This morning I found out that I am in level 123 for Chinese. This is a higher basic level, I think. It was a tad bit difficult to decipher the course postings as they were all in Chinese and no one there could speak English. I also bought my books. There are six of them. They cost about 28 dollars altogether.

Professor Youtz led those who were interested today into the center of Chengdu. We went to ChunXiLu, the fancy shopping street. We also visited Mao Square, which has a massive presiding statue of Mao. A central subway station is currently being constructed underneath. And then we took another bus to JingLi, the first street in Chengdu. Near there we had Tibetan food for lunch.

I was surprised, but yak, potatoes, yak butter, and barley were actually all very good. The yak tasted like overcooked steak.

On Jingli, Audrey and I bought Starbucks. Mocha frappucino... yum... We walked down the street and looked at all of the tourist items for sale. I fell pray and bought a lot of overpriced tourist items that I could have found on the street for cheaper. But all for gifts, so I don't feel too bad. They had men blowing sugar into edible shapes, paper cuts, stone jewelry, everything panda, and many tea houses and bars. Also Disco GoGo.

We shared a taxi back and I went upstairs to check on the internet situation. A couple of students were supposed to come help us today. The English speaking student told me he would not be able to resolve my problem, and then he had to leave to meet a few girls in our group at the hospital. One had fainted after having bad stomach pains. The rest of our group stood in the hall feeling worried.

At night, a lot of us went to English corner. This is where everyone in the city can gather on Friday nights to practice English. It is in front of the sports stadium that looks like a space ship. Professor Youtz told us it was a good place to meet people. So I went, and found myself talking to two graduate students who would not let me talk to anyone else. They fought over my attention. It was fun for a while. One asked my to play badminton with him next week at English corner, and I agreed. Then they started asking me about my views on marriage and love... We talked for two and a half hours straight before I told them I had to leave with my friends. It was not until later that I found out others ended up staying for four or five hours.

Afterward, we had planned to go to karaoke. But it took so long for everyone to meet up after English corner, we went to bar street instead. We found a man with a monkey who wanted us to pay to take his picture. We also found a bar called SoHo with terrible service. Some of our group sat with a group of locals who started giving them beer and watermelon. But the rest of us waited a long time to get served. I got tired and decided to leave early, just as some of my friends went in to dance. Instead, I spent an hour or two talking to Sara(h) before bed.

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