Comings and Goings

  Chengdu, China
Saturday, September 13, 2008

The thing about being in Chengdu is that I am still in college. Most days of the week are like normal ones I would experience in Ada, except with more spicy noodles. This week we had class and I learned things. I went out on Wednesday night to see some live jazz at the expat french bar. They were OK. It was live music and live music is always good.

I don't think I have mentioned the current James Bond marathon we have going on. We just got our surround sound working yesterday and so we are in a nice brief period where things are working. We watched some Juno this week too. We have a nice collection of DVDs the some people brought. It's kinda nice after a long day of learning to come back and chill out with a movie.

Speaking of movies, the 4D things I guess wasn't explained well. By 4D movie, i mean you sit in a chair watch a 3D movie and then randomly some snake comes on screen and you can feel it in your chair. Like Honey I Shrunk the Audience at Disney World. Or the Muppet thing.

Most days though the mornings are spent in school, then we get some cheap noodles or baozi(dumplings with meet inside) or jiaozi (noodles with meat inside) and come home. But homework is usually a couple of hours.

Friday there was an end of the summer bash at the Irish bar, so I went to teach little kids months (which when I said yi yue means January etc they laughed at my Chinese pronunciation) and I was suppose to meet up with this really nice Chinese girl my age who wants to improve her english but she couldn't meet because her mom was sick. So I came home and we went out. There I met with this guy from Virginia who has lived in Chengdu for 2 years with his family. He introduced me to his chinese friends and we just hung out. It was nice.

Today we had planned to go as an apartment to this ancient irrigation site which is 1.5 hrs away by bus. But we got a late start this morning and then couldn't find a cab to get us to the bus station. Then we couldn't buy tickets at THAT bus station. By that time it was so late we just said screw this and we are going tomorrow.

You see this weekend is special. Monday is the mid autumn festival or the mooncake festival. In Chinese culture families meet up, eat mooncakes and watch the moon. We were given mooncakes from Wen Tao and I didn't mind them (yes I cheated and had a taste of one early) but that particular flavor is one I wouldn't choose on my own. I would rather eat other things, but it wasn't unenjoyable.

So tomorrow I will be able to show you some cool pictures hopefully. I have a bunch on my camera still. I'll upload them when I get the chance. I hope everything is going well back at home. I keep updated with the news through BBC but I haven't really looked into the sporting things.

OK. I just looked on google maps and here I found a nice arial shot of my house.

Where I live

Its the one in the center of the screen. It has the blue looking roof. Yeah thats it. I am on floor 9. That smaller white building next to it is a "high tech" hospital. Eli went there recently because he messed up his foot playing soccer but let me tell you its name is deceiving.

Anyway. Zai jian!