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Week 8 in China

Challis Hackley
Dec 18, 2017
3 min read

What I Learned

Your food is going to touch.

I've known this for a while but I didn't think of it in this way until recently. I ordered my favorite meal from the cafeteria (I get it every Monday and Thursday when wer'e over at the other campus for lunch) Fried rice and dumplings. You get the bowl of fried rice first and then you have to go to a separate line to get the dumplings and they have little plates but they usually just put them on top of my rice in it's bowl. So you know how some people are weird about their food touching, you can't worry about that in China. Well you can, but it's going to take years off of your life if you do. When they serve food they'll have like five dishes but only one spoon. So the same spoon that dishes out steamed vegetables also give you your kung-pow chicken.

The peach Fanta is great.

I got a bottle from Walmart based on a recommendation from a friend. It’s a flavor that they don’t have back in the states, so I was excited to try it and it was really good. I think it looks cool but to because it’s clear.

What I Did

Sunday

I had good food but no church that day.

Monday

That night we had a little group get together. We all joined in the supply room and played a few games of Mafia/Werewolf. It was way fun.

Tuesday

Tuesday was the start of our group’s tournament. Badminton is a big deal here so all the volunteers I’m here with thought it would be fun to start a doubles tournament. We all got partners, the bracket was set, everyone paid their 5 yuan for the winners pot, and we started to play. Our matches consisted of one set, instead of the usual three because of there are a lot of us and we didn’t have the time. So my badminton career was over before it really began. oh well, better luck next time.

Wednesday

So, as a part of our program, the school we’re teaching at offers some culture classes. There are language lessons every week on Tuesday but on Wednesday night they had a Chinese opera lesson/performance. It was really cool to learn about th different types of opera native to China and the presenter preformed one of the songs and then taught us the first couple of line.

And, I guess because Halloween was just around the corner, someone left these creepy manikin legs in our kitchen of all places.

Thursday

Good food = good day.

Friday

A couple people in our group had birthdays this week including one of my friends who I teach with. So we celebrated with Mexican and fluffy cats.

Saturday

So, I decided to go out and see Nanjing's old city wall, and it turns out that it literally surrounds the lake that i visited last week and I had no idea. Go me, right? Some master traveler I am.

Anyway, at one point Nanjing was the capital of China and its city wall was something to behold. Known fondly as the Other Great Wall, it circled the old city and it is massive, and much better kept than the section ofthe Great Wall that I visited in Beijing. While we were there we walked around the lake and park too.