New Friends

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I went out for 包子 in the morning with Kate, Andrea, and Nick. We walked out the east gate near our dorm, all the way around to the west gate. We stopped at the university store to buy t-shirts. Andrea and I took a rickshaw back.

Clare, Audrey, and I began the first season of Gossip Girls in their room. We took a break to visit our new favorite lunch spot, Relish, which sells noodles and dumplings only. It is very close to the dorm and the classroom building. We watched Gossip Girl until about four thirty.

At five we met Audrey's new friends from the English corner, Snow White, Jimmy and Frank. They took us to a dumpling restaurant and taught us how to mix the dipping sauce with chili, garlic, soy, vinegar, and various other spices. My new favorite is potato dumplings. Then we all took a bus to JingLi. It was even more beautiful at night. All of the lanterns were lit. Our new friends took us on paths we hadn't found before. They taught us Chinese words for things and told us about their culture. They held umbrellas for us, because it started pouring today. Just like Washington, but warm. We told them Americans in the Northwest don't really use umbrellas, but they insisted.

We then treated them to Starbucks, which they had never had. They sat down at first because they thought it would be like a teahouse, then realized that we had to order at the counter, "like KFC." The Starbucks in China are really fancy. They have beautiful, dark wood decorations. It all looks very traditionally Chinese, like a Chinese garden.

We took separate taxis home. Audrey and Clare hosted a welcoming gathering their dorm room so that our group could meet people from other groups. Moppy and Malia from South America and Japan came. Also Josh from London, and some boys from France. We all ended the night on the roof, just talking.

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