On Wednesday and Thursday I was sick with what I think was the flu and missed class. Our Culture class, which is on Wednesday, was canceled because our teacher was doing something (I don't know what). Instead, we were to have a make-up Economy and Government class since our professor for those classes (it's the same teacher for Economy and Government for now) will be gone Monday and Tuesday, February 23 and 24, when we are scheduled to have those classes. I know it's a little confusing, but basically three of my professors have had to cancel classes because of some reason or another. Anyways, I didn't go to the make-up class because I was too sick. I also didn't go to my Chinese class on Thursday for the same reason. I was in bed both days, sleeping for the most part.
On Friday, however, I felt better and went to Chinese and Cooking class. We learned how to make tomato and scrambled eggs and mapo doufu (mapo tofu). The class was very interesting. We were in the downstairs kitchen, where most of the chefs cook. This kitchen has really big woks (pans) that the chefs use to cook over an open flame (which we're not used to) and we were cooking in this kitchen. In addition, when the chefs went over how to cook the dishes, they told us what to do really fast, so it was hard to remember what to put in the dish at what time. Furthermore, I was still a little sick and didn't feel great standing for long periods of time, so I couldn't really concentrate on what the chefs were saying. When it was my turn to cook, one of the chefs helped me cook the dish. He basically cooked it for me. Once the dishes were finished, my teacher tasted it and gave us a grade out of 5 points. He knew that I hadn't actually cooked my own dish because he knew what the chef's cooking (the one that helped me) tasted like. He still gave me a pretty good score, nonetheless. I think I got a 4.6 out of 5.
After cooking class, we returned home and around 6 or 7 pm, Marit, Kevin, Christie, Gloria, William, Caitlin, and I (Jared came later) walked to an Indian restaurant for dinner. I ordered spicy curry chicken (I forgot the name of the dish. I think it was chicken vanduli or something like that). It was tasty, but very spicy.
Indian Restaurant (Namaste)
My weekend was very relaxed and laid back. On Saturday, I met Christie, Gloria and Kevin at Wang yi Wang. They had already ordered an enormous amount of food when I joined them. I ate some of the food and after we were done eating, I went to get my haircut. Gloria and Christie suggested that I go to the hair salon that plays hip hop that is next to a restaurant that we've gone to a couple of times. I walked to it and one of the girls (whose name is Ye Lu) standing outside of it motioned for me to go in. I entered and walked to the back where they wash hair. I laid down on the bed-thing and Ye Lu began washing my hair. She was talking to me as she washed my hair, but I only understood a little of what she was saying. After washing my hair, I was brought to the barber chair and Ye Lu began massaging my shoulders and arms, all the while talking to me. I could barely understand anything, but I responded and tried to hold a conversation. We then exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Once she finished the massage, a guy came and asked me how I wanted my hair cut. I showed him pictures on my camera of haircuts that I liked and he said he could cut my hair like that. He tried to speak a little English with me. A couple of times while he was cutting my hair he left to take a few phone calls and help some other people. After he cut my hair, he blow dried and straightened it. I was talking to him, Ye Lu and another hairdresser named Da Bing during all of this. After they finished and I paid, I looked at the time and I realized I had been there for about 2 hours. On my way home, I took pictures of stores and whatever caught my eye. The rest of the weekend, I didn't do too much.
On Monday, I went to my Government class at 1 pm and then I was to meet with my group for Culture class in order to go over our project for Wednesday. However, only one member (Scott) showed up. Tai Chi was about to start at 4:15 and our teacher finally had our uniforms. I went and grabbed my blue one. After my group meeting with Scott, I joined the 4 people that were in the Tai Chi class.
Tai Chi uniforms
On Tuesday (February 17th), I had my never ending day of classes. I went to Chinese in the morning, Calligraphy afterwards (to which about 5 people showed up), and then Economy (by which point I barely retained anything my professor was saying). Fortunately, since Marit dropped out of Calligraphy class, she gave me her supplies. The only thing she wanted to keep was the ink and the ink cartridge (the thing to put ink in). Our Economy professor let us out early (around 5:30, thank God), so Marit, Magnus, Bjoernar and I went to a restaurant near the school and ate dinner. We had some sweet and sour pork, homestyle tofu, green vegetables, and rice. We returned home around 6:30 and I stayed in for the rest of the night. I did some homework and went to bed.
Wednesday was the day my group had to present. Our project was on the Dragon Boat festival (also known as Duanwu festival). I felt bad because Brian had to do the PowerPoint presentation and had to research by himself. The problem was that Iran, another group member, had emailed me his information the night before and when I tried to forward it to Brian, my email stopped working. That meant I also couldn't send him my information, either. Scott had Brian's email address, but I don't think he emailed him until very late. Anyways, Brian also did most of the presenting and explained what the holiday was about. Scott told the class about one of the origins of the festival. I read a poem at the end and chimed in once in a while to put in my two cents. Iran didn't show up to class because he had to be somewhere. Nonetheless, I felt like our presentation went fairly well.
On Thursday (February 19th), I went to my Chinese class in the morning. After class, Gloria, Jared, Kevin and I walked to a bakery near school called Leanna's. It's owned by an American woman from Virginia (named Leanna) and her Canadian husband. The bakery, which just opened, is very nice and their food is equally delicious. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. Gloria and I went to the antique market that we went to the first day of Calligraphy class because we wanted to buy some more Calligraphy supplies (I had to buy more ink and the ink cartridge since Marit wanted hers and Gloria needed ink and a better brush). I also bought some souvenirs there. I tried to bargain (which I'm not great at yet) with the guy, but he wouldn't budge from his price. I still need to work on my bargaining skills. Gloria and I then returned home where I did some homework and relaxed for the rest of the night.
My Friday was fairly busy. In the morning I had to go to Chinese. I then went to lunch with Marit, Mike, Steven, and Scott to a Muslim noodle restaurant. However, even though this was a noodle place, I ordered beef and green pepper fried rice. I didn't really feel like eating noodles. I talked mostly with Steven (since I never see him). He is in a home stay with a Chinese family and isn't in any of our classes, so we barely ever see him. He has his own teacher for Chinese and is working three or four different jobs/internships. I had to rush home to grab my cooking outfit including my apron and chef's hat because my cuisine class was to start in half an hour and I had to take a taxi to the restaurant since it's so far. I met up with Gloria and Christie and the three of us took a taxi to our class. That day we were to learn how to cook sijidou (fried green beans) and egg and tomato soup. We arrived to the restaurant, but had to wait for Laura and Emma to arrive. They were behind us in their own taxi, but for some reason took quite a bit longer than us to get to the restaurant. I think the driver got lost. Once they finally did arrive, we went to the upstairs kitchen and one of the chefs began teaching us how to make the dishes. We then did it ourselves: we broke off the ends of the green beans and then broke them into four pieces, sliced a tomato, broke off spinach leaves, and cracked and whipped an egg. We were taught how to deep fry the beans and did so ourselves. The chef then put the beans and some ingredients into a pan and fried them together. Right after he did this, however, the electricity went out. Our teacher told us it was because they were doing construction around in the area and they might have had to cut off the power because of it. Either way, our cooking class came to a halt. We left the kitchen and went to sit at our table. They didn't know how long the electricity would be out for, so we suggested that we end the class then and make the dishes the next time. Our teacher was ok with that so we left.
Cooking class
I followed Wentao and Vivian to the bus because Wentao was going to pick up her daughter from English class and was going to introduce me to the owner/founder of the school. It took us an hour by bus to arrive at the school. For my internship I agreed that I wanted to intern at an English school and maybe even teach English, so Wentao wanted to let me check out the place I would intern at. The school is called Crayon Club and the owner is a former USAC Chinese teacher. I met her and she seemed really nice. Her daughter was playing with Wentao's daughter at Wentao's get together on February 9th and I briefly saw the teacher there. We decided that for the first couple of weeks of my internship, I will be going around to different places trying to promote the English teaching and if any teaching jobs become available I can also do that. Wentao told me I had to write her a proposal on what I hope to accomplish through this internship. I agreed with the teacher that I would come to the school next Thursday in order to do the promotion. I then returned home on an extremely crowded bus. I could barely get on the bus, it was so full. When I got to my stop, I had to go out the front door instead of the back door, because I couldn't get through the people. The driver tried to yell at me to go out the back door, but I just told him I couldn't go there and simply got off through the front door as people were getting in. It is so annoying to have to deal with the crowds! China has too many people. Once I returned home, I went to sleep really early and slept through the night.
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