Day 28 and 29: Lazing Around and Exploring (in that order)

Day 28 started off with a whole bunch of nothing. I was still a bit sick, so resting up didn't hurt at all.  I was mainly trying to figure out housing for next semester, hitting some unexpected roadblocks, skyping a friend, updating my blog, and working on stuff so I could get my previous job of being a Peer Leader for a group of 19 amazing engineering freshman counted as an honors experience.

Around 4 o clock, me, Jessica, and Nick went out for dinner. We discovered that Dom had gone out on a date with one of the girls who he and the others had met last night, which was very interesting (if you get my drift). The three of us walked down to Sunny Block to the same restaurant where I had gotten the gelatinous noodles a while back. This time, I decided to stick with them in getting dumplings. I got two orders of chicken dumplings, and two orders of pork dumplings, with the intent of taking some back home with me. I also got some vinegar with garlic in it to dip them in. They had the same plastic wrap packaging around the items, and to my amusement, my pack only had one chopstick. But I quickly grabbed another pack, and all was well.

Afterwards, we decided to go for dessert. I saw a bubble tea place that I had seen in various places around the city called Coco's. I went in, trying to use my typical way of ordering...taking a picture of what I wanted on the menu. However, it was one of those electronic signs, and it kept changing every time I tried to take a picture. I eventually got it though. Taking a sip at first, I thought that I had ordered just plain hot chocolate, but a bit later, some of the bubbles came through the straw. It was the first time I had had bubble tea that wasn't cold, and I really liked it (except towards the end, when the bubbles were getting a bit monotonous...)

Then we went to the store to get donuts at the donut shop and the cooking oil for the leftover food that we still had from the chicken chestnut place (which Jessica and I had in our fridge, but Nick didn't). I got a black mango donut for the morning. In the store, I also needed a new blanket, because my room is really cold, and since Greg said that we could be reimbursed for bedding, I decided to go ahead and get it.

                                                                  Chinese salad bar

                                         the first case of lunch meat that we've seen since we've gotten here

Donnnuttt

Blanket in a bag (and it's softer than the one I already had)

Walking back home, I started talking about how I had seen more black and Indian people in the past few days than I had seen in almost the whole rest of the time in China. Chong Qing isn't one of the international cities in China, so it's rare to see non-Chinese people. Nick then quoted the fact that there are 56 different Chinese ethnicities, and there are 50 of those ethnicities in China. Apparently some of these ethnicities near the border look Indian or Middle Eastern, which was confirmed by Jessica, who heard some of the supposed Indians speaking Chinese at some point.

At home, we decided to meet back up at 9 if Dom wasn't back to finalize the hotel plans for Beijing. Around 8:30, Nick and Dom came into our apartment to get everything together, and Dom told us about his (somewhat disappointing) date. We hung out for a while, finalizing it. I finished up the project for my Peer Leader honors experience, worked on some more French, read a bit, and then went to bed soon after.

Day 29, after working on some Astro Club stuff and chatting with some friends, I decided to explore around Campus A. I invited the others, but they decided not to come. There were only 4 buses running, so I got on the one around 1 o clock. It waited at the bus stop longer than it should have, probably to account for the fact that there weren't as many running. On the way there, I read a book on my e reader, and I invited Pablo to spend the day with me (since he lived on Campus B, right down the street from Campus A).

Getting there, I got off at the back of the campus rather than the front like normal. That was a great decision, because I found a beautiful pond and pagoda that I may not have found otherwise. I stood there for a while simply taking it in, as it caused an ache in my heart from its pure beauty.

Pablo soon messaged me to tell me that he was on campus, and I started to make my way up towards the front of the campus, finding another pagoda. I also needed to print something off, so I walked towards the print shop that Pablo had shown me the other day. Getting there, I found out it was closed (just like everything else on campus).

I met up with Pablo, who had gotten a new haircut a couple days before, and we discussed where to go that day. He wanted to go back to the ponds that I found, and he also said that there was a printer in the JCI office. We walked by another new pond with a fountain (which was attached to the others in a way). We also found out that the printer in the JCI office didn't work, no matter what we did (and a lot of the instructions were in Chinese, so that didn't help...)

But we continued on, to the ponds in the back of campus, we took a lot of pictures, including one with a very old tree, and a few with the Chinese versions of Mick and Mack (the UC lions by the McMicken building).

Afterwards, we walked down to Sanxia Square to get something to eat. We went up the escalator to one of the food court areas, but quickly found out that it was all desserts and drinks. We stopped for fresh squeezed juice (I got pineapple) and chatted for a bit.

Heading out, we went across a bridge to cross the street (lots of the crosswalks are overhead to avoid traffic delays), and I saw an orange salesman. The sign looked like it said that it had 10 oranges for 3 quai, so I had 3 coins out ready for it. But the man wouldn't take my money. I kept pointing to the sign, telling him what I wanted, but he didn't seem to get it. Two ladies came up, telling me stuff in Chinese, and yelling at him in Chinese, adding to the confusion. I kept trying to communicate what I wanted, but the language barrier was too much for us. Not knowing what else to do, I started laughing a lot. I pulled out a 10 quai bill, and the hilarity was increased. The guy held up a bag with like fifty oranges, and the ladies were yelling even more between us. Eventually, they took half of them out, and gave me the rest of the bag. I started to walk away, and they gave me 5 quai back.... So I ended up getting 25 small (mandarin...get it ) oranges for about 65 American cents.
Pablo realized afterwards that it may have been by weight, not by quantity, and told stories of Chinese women "helping him out" in similar ways at some Chinese stores.

After that, we went to a chain restaurant of sorts, and I ended up ordering the pork dish, which was very tender and juicy, which came with a side of rice, spicy pork, a tomato egg soup, and cucumbers. The lady ended up giving Pablo hot orange juice (which he described as...interesting) with his fried chicken and fried rice meal. She must have thought we were together, because she put our meal on the same check, and Pablo paid for mine.
(Sidenote: the Chinese have sooo many fried chicken restaurants, more than you would think. Every couple blocks in the city, there is another fried chicken restaurant. )

A little bit down the street was Campus C, which was the adult learning campus, according to Pablo. In China, the college entrance exam determines not only which college you can go to, but which degree you can get. At the adult learning schools here, you can get a couple degrees without this test. We walked around, and there was some cool foliage, but not much else.

After Campus C, we saw this huge aquarium that had a few fish in it, but was very scummy on the bottom. It was a marvelous piece of architecture, but not conducive to being cleaned. There were a few ads on the side that looked like they were for similar aquariums, but with all the mold, I don't think it would be a good buy.

the huge aquarium in the middle of the city

While we were walking to his apartment, we noticed a whole animal sticking out of a cooking pot, which reminded me of two other things that I saw the other day with Nick and Dom that I forgot to mention in my other post. We saw a couple guys carrying a whole kitchen sink up the escalator, and

a guy with two whole dried ducks sticking out of his bag, with all parts still attached. (Takes the idiom, "they took everything but the kitchen sink" to the next level....because they took the kitchen sink....)

I went into Pablo's apartment to print off the document I needed, and he told me about how they had to fix a lot of things in his apartment. The walls were cracked, and it was moldy, with other issues, but they wouldn't let him move off of campus due to safety reasons.

He showed me the main part of Campus B, which had a couple cool sculptures. I thought about staying around and catching the campus bus, rather than walking back to the subway station, but that would have been an hour wait, and Pablo was walking to Walmart as well, which was on the way there. To my surprise, Campus B was only a block away from Campus A, and I made mental plans to come back some day after class and relax there.

 I was surprised at how easily I made my way home. I did have to get off of the subway once, but had no problems navigating everywhere. And walking home from the subway station, I felt somewhat lost once, but quickly righted myself.                                                                                   

Light canopy in Sanxia Square

Getting home, Jessica was gone, and I assumed that the others had all gone to dinner. After a couple hours, the skype call I had planned got moved to the morning, so I just decided to go to bed. Jessica wasn't home yet from wherever she went, which struck me as strange, but I knew that she'd be fine with the others, and I went to bed, exhausted from all the walking I had done that day, ready for an early morning.

P.S. (I later found out that Jessica and the others were watching movies in the guys' room.)

-Zoe