Chengdu impressions

Chengdu so far has taken me by surprise. At first glance, it's pretty much like any other city: dirty, loud, fast. It has smog so thick that you don't know where the sun is, and all the buildings are smaller than in the U.S. We made our way to TrustMart yesterday, which is like an extended version of WalMart. The foods section made me gag from the smells of sea creatures and unknown items, but also there are a variety of teas and herbs that you can't find readily in the states, i.e. lavender.

Our language teacher is great so far -- she was a little nervous the first day, but I think we are starting to get the tones and words. I'm sure we will all improve after 3-4 hours each day. I have been assigned a Chinese name - Du Juan - which I at first thought was unnecessary. However, I now see that it's a great way for me to begin to listen to Chinese and pick out words. I can figure out amid the other parts of the lesson if the teacher is calling on me, and I can hear the same name said many many times, which helps with my own pronunciation. Nick's is Wang Liyong.

And last, Nick shaved his beard! We had some talks at staging about first impressions, and how in general, Chinese people do not trust those with beards. To us that sounds like something silly, that surely it doesn't apply to us, but Nick went about it in a very wise way. He told me that when he began teaching last year, other teachers mentioned that he would be correcting the mistakes from his first week throughout the rest of the year. So, if that trend applies to our new teaching environment, the beard goes, until we are at site and have established some rapport (September-November).

We have not found a Starbucks yet, but have not searched either. We did find a Coffee Beanery, but the prices were pretty high (= same as or higher than in U.S.). Also there was only 1 person in there and we were shuffled to the counter and asked expectantly what we would like. Tomorrow I'm going to practice saying "we are looking" so that we'll have some time to just observe.

Zaijian!