Around the World for 121 Days: Day 6: Learning how to Ride the Subway

Day 6 was my last day before classes started, and it was also a pretty free day.

I relaxed in the morning, skyping a friend, eating a roll or two, trying the dark chocolate I got at Walmart (chocolate is chocolate, no matter where you are, and it tasted the same here to me), and we headed out around 12:30 to catch the 1:00 bus to Campus A to meet the Chinese TAs, who were going to show us around the campus to find the classrooms for tomorrow, show us around the neighborhood, and show us how to ride the subway.

We headed back out to Campus A, excited for the day ahead. We caught a good picture of the exploding car sign this time, which was great! (Later, we found out it meant that there shouldn't be idling, which doesn't make much sense... I preferred the explosions prohibited meaning.)

We got to Campus A, and the other TAs were nowhere to be found. Nick and Dom wandered off to find them, while Jessica and I stayed put. A curious pup came around, and Jessica offered him some of the breakfast biscuit I had given her, but he turned up his nose at it.

Dom and Nick came back saying that they didn't find them, but Nick (who had an international phone for texting) turned on his data for a moment to find them. Turns out they were at the back of the campus, and we were at the front. We waited a while, but they eventually came up to where we were. Then they took us around the campus, helping us find our classes in several of the academic buildings, as well as the food court and the library. We even stopped for a couple rounds of ping pong.

Campus A library

Inside of library

Campus A food court

Everything found, we headed down to Sanxia Square, one of the financial capitals of Chongqing to try to get the phones, get something to eat and explore, as well as riding the subway back. We went into the phone store for a while, and haggled with some of the secondhand phone people with the help of Robert, Suri, and Celia, only to find out that the phones wouldn't be good. The Android would only have 2G with the network we're using, and the IPhone was very out of date. Jessica, Nick, and Dom decided to go with the cheapest new phone. I tried to hold off a bit for something cheaper. They only had two, so Dom also decided to wait.
Jessica got a free portable charger thrown in, but we had to wait a bit for Nick's phone. At that point, I was just really tired, and the others were a bit concerned for me. I reassured them that I was just tired and hungry, and that I wouldn't pass out, and they gave me a piece of chocolate to increase my blood sugar.
One of the good things that we

After the debacle at the phone store, we were all starving, so the JCI TAs decided to take us to get hotpot. If you don't know what hotpot is, it's a Chong Qing specialty with spices floating in a giant soup, and you submerge various types of food, from dates to duck intestines to mushrooms to baloney to pork to corned beef (and even tripe....which was...chewy, to say the least), and other things to absorb the spice.
Jessica and I aren't much for spice, so they got a pot of non spicy broth in the middle. I started off with that, and then alternated back and forth. The spice wasn't too bad (it was helped by the milk), but alternating also helped. The others all ate the spiciest stuff, and said that the burn increased over time.
Toward the end, the waitress made the non spicy broth a soup, which was delicious, and then Dom and Nick (a play on words, get it? Dom n' Nick ? ) wanted to try the spicy stuff as a soup. The Chinese TAs tried to talk them out of it, but they insisted. So they did it, claiming it wasn't bad. A few minutes later though, they said their insides were burning. But the Chinese TAs said that not even their friends would do that. Then Celia and Robert decided to do it, and had similar reactions. All the while, Suri, Jessica and I are all watching and taking videos of them being ridiculous.

The hotpot completed, we walked back to Shenzhen Square, where we saw the moon and a planet (not sure which planet) through the clouds of pollution, which, coupled with the sun we saw earlier, was a miracle.

Stars we saw on a tree (disclaimer: not actual stars)

When we got back, we saw a band playing Coldplay's "Yellow", and I had to stop and take a video, because they were REALLY good! Then they took us down into a basement sort of thing, which was strange at first. But then they were telling us it was where people played video games and then we figured out that they meant an arcade. We played different games, from a karaoke booth to a dancing game. I also won a new friend in the claw game, and I found out that I had a strange aptitude for fighting games (even though I was just pushing random buttons) beating all the American TAs as well as Robert.

My new friend

After we ran out of tokens, we went to get on the subway. Suri, Robert, and Celia showed us how to reload our cards in the machine, and which one to get on as well. They rode with us so that we could find our way back to our apartment from the subway station, which surprisingly wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be. We found a gym named Zoe, which was surprising and ironic (considering I'm not athletic.....). We also found the other entrance of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. We parted ways, saying good night.