The atmosphere here, both literally and figuratively is not bad. In a briefing we received from the college, we were told to expect to be treated as outsiders, and outsiders are frowned upon in China. Surprisingly, everyone has been very friendly except for our cab driver on the return trip from Wal-Mart, and that was our fault, not his! (he brought us to a university entrance that we hadn't been to before, and we did not think we were in the right place.)
Everyone at the University has been helpful and accomodating. The students speak excellent English, and we've been learning some Mandarin words and phrases from them. We played ping pong last night and it was a lot of fun. Just smiling and laughing and learning the words for hot, tired, one more...etc.
We are learning that things are sometimes backward here- the BOGOC people, the taxi drivers, it's just a cultural thing. They take their time--maybe it's because we are foreigners/'from the Frontier' (their less than affectionate word for foreigners) and they know we are kinda screwed either way.
It's also been hard to get used to the spitting and hocking loogies that goes on! It could definitely been an Olympic sport and China would DOMINATE. All over the place--old, young, rich, poor--everyone does it. As my friend Helen put it, "It's not so much the spitting that bothers me, it's that they appear to be hocking up their internal organs everytime they do it."
The smog that envelops the city is a bit surreal. It's crazy that we probably won't see blue skies until we're back home. Paul, one of our professors, that it's not just industrial...it's been this way for decades...it's just the weather system plus the influx of factories. I'm just trying to drink lots of water and take a couple deep breaths of my POD everyday.
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