you go big, or you return to your home.

Ni qu da, haishi ni hui jia

Because the government here controls... every single aspect of life in China... posting on my blog is proving to be very difficult! Consequently, this blog post is fairly long. Who am I kidding they're all long.

"Go big, or go home" is probably my favorite cliche in American slang.  I use it a lot back home with my friends (especially with the CINCO) .  Since I am not completely familiar with Chinese slang (lets be honest...I'm not familiar with Chinese slang AT ALL), my American counterparts and I have attempted to translated this commonly used American phrase.  We have come up with "Ni qu da, haishi ni hui jia", which literally means "you go big, or you return to your home".  We obviously think this is wildly clever and hilarious, so now we use it alllllllll the time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire country of China is using it by the time this semester is over.  

Alice in Wonderland? Christina in China.
EVERYTHING is smaller in China.
This is a picture of me at a restaurant.
My legs didn't fit under the table.....
Talk about a confidence booster.


This week I almost got hit by a motorbike (oops...), I got homesick for the first time, it SNOWED, and I went to the bird and flower market

The weather here is like Texas. And in that I mean its not really anything like Texas.  They call Kunming "Spring City", because it has perpetual good weather year round-no humidity, rarely any clouds, and the perfect temperature. The ONLY thing that makes it like Texas, is that the weather can change on the drop of a dime. One day it was very warm so I wore shorts and a t-shirt to run, and the next day, it snowed! SNOW?! Bizarre.

This is me and Carl, another American on my program. Because both my grandfather and dad are both named Carl, this name is off limits. I call him Carlos.

So this is me and Carlos next to the fire exit in our dorm, WITH A CHAIN LOCK ON IT, all bundled up because its really cold indoors cause apparently the Chinese don't believe in building insulation, OR fire codes. If you look at my previous post I state that they chain lock the front doors of the dorm at midnight. And I have bars on my window. Putting it together? There is absolutely no way out of the dorm after midnight.

Its so cold indoors I could see my breath in my classroom this morning! Awesome. This is very unnatural weather for Kunming.



To preface my motorbike story: DRIVERS HERE ARE CRAZY and pedestrians have absolutely no rights.  Its like the game Frogger. Except for instead of being played on a Game Boy, its my life. 

Before crossing the street I always look  both ways. In China I look about 18 times because drivers WILL hit people.  So while crossing the street one time, all the cars were gridlocked so I weaved throughout the  stopped cars to cross the street.  On the other side of a big van, there (apparently) was a motorbike coming. I was looking straight forward as the moped was barreling down the shoulder of the road. Generally drivers honk alllllll the time, but this one didn't till riiiiiight when he was about to hit me! The honk scared me! So naturally I flailed my arms, right as he went by me. My pathetic arm flail resulted in me actually punching the driver in the face as he drove by. hahahahaha. I hit him really hard because he was driving so fast!  My hand actually hurt for a while. From that story I have learned to look 19 times before crossing the street, and I am grateful to have all my limbs intact. Okay I won't lie. I'm also happy I punched him. He deserved it.

You've got to be careful here, because if you're not, you'll get mowed by a car, motorbike, bus, bike, and basically anything with wheels. But you have to be aggressive, or else you'll never cross the street. Its a revolving problem.  When I said you'll get hit with anything with wheels, I wasn't lying. My friend got run over by these hoodlums. hahaha.

The bird and flower market is a place where they sell...birds and flowers...but lots of other stuff too! Lots of traditional Chinese things, as well as animals, and pretty much everything else under the sun.  It was like a flea market, on steroids. My favorite part? Puppies!!!

Now I will start with places that I frequent:

Green Lake Park

I love this place! It's probably about a 10 minute walk from school. Things that occur at Green Lake in order of frequency: I get stared at here, I run here, and I do homework here. I love running around Green Lake Park; however, I must run around the park, as opposed to through.  For a variety of reasons.  I get stared at much less on the outskirts of the park-- apparently Chinese people don't run...So I get stared at for 1)partaking in physical exercise 2) for wearing shorts and 3) for being a foreigner. (Although my shorts attract much less attention than my friend Carl, who is a Cross Country runner at his University. Mainly because men's cross country shorts are MUCH shorter than my every day running shorts. HA).

Other downfalls of running on the outside: People at the park just looooove to feed the seagulls. As an innocent passerby I must be honest and declare that I do not support this activity. While people are tossing bread crumbs to the seagulls, I down below am dodging the bombs dropped by their feathery airborne friends. At least I can get some sprint work in? Cause I run FAST through that area! (the usage of the word fast is relative)




Also, because of all the trees and people, I can't run in a straight line for more than 10 yards. We can call it lateral training.

Another reason for my perimeter running route also happens to be one of my favorite things about the park.  Minority people, proud and excited about their culture, come to the park to dance and enjoy the perpetually good weather. HOW COOL!? I wish I could go to parks in the US, bring a stereo, and dance in a circle with strangers and friends. 

This a friend on my program in front of the fruit stand that is right outside the gate of our university. It is AWESOME. I go every few days and stock up on fresh fruit. Not only is it delectably delicious, its cheap! 

This is a common bus stop in China. Busses here are CROWDED. Its literally a fight to get on some of them. But one of my favorite things about this city is the ability to live without a car. That is impossible where I live in the states, but something I've always wanted to do. I'm perfectly happy with riding the mega crowded busses and walking everywhere else. Except for one time on a mega crowded bus when someone was standing reeealllyyy close to me was gnawing on some fried chicken. Two of my least favorite things- people in my personal space, and fried chicken. 

This is "Foreign Street" (Wenhua Jie- literally means Culture Street). I'ts not a very good picture...But its called foreign street cause there are places that serve Western food, and if you're ever going to meet any foreigners, its here. I try not to come here very often because 1) its easier to speak english and 2) its more expensive (and by that I mean its still really cheap). That being said, its still predominately Chinese people on this street. But sometimes it is nice to go to Foreign Street to eat something familiar (consistently-sub-par-western-food-that-no-one-in-their-right-mind-would-pay-money-for-anywhere-else).

This is the front of my school- Yunnan Mingzu Daxue- Yunnan Nationalities University.  Its in the middle of the busy city and the never ending traffic. This is where I engage in most of my real life Frogger playing.

Next week we have a week off from school! I am going up to the Mountains with my two closest friends here. We're going up to Deqing, also known as Shang-ri La, to backpack, hike, and get as close to Tibet as humanly possible (Tibet is closed to foreigners this month :( because March 14th is the anniversary of a huge riot). We'll be on the Meili Snow Mountain that is half in TIbet, and half in China. I've never done anything like this, so I'm extremely nervous- the altitude is 16,000 feet. But if I don't do things that are out of my comfort zone- way WAY out of my comfort zone- while I'm here, I would see my trip as a wasted opportunity. So, I will be out of contact for a little while, hiking to a glacier, seeing YAK(!!!!!), dancing the border of Tibet (don't worry I won't cross), and doing something brave.  My next blog post will be about my mountain time and my new Chinese family that I move in with right when I get back! "Ni qu da, haishi ni hui jia"

Zai Jian! 

"I wouldn't be friends with me either"

Classes have officially started here at Yunnan Nationalities University (Yunnan Mingzu DaXue). We have Chinese classes in the morning from 8-12 with a 30 minute Taiji break. The Chinese classes are pretty tough, there are 3 people in my class with one professor. The Taiji breaks are nice from the mega intense Chinese classes, but its kind of like "Americans on Display". Look-at-us-we're-foreigners-trying-to-do-Taiji-but-severly-failing-at-it. As if enough people don't stare at us already! Also, I learned tonight that most Chinese people would like to date a Chinese-American person. I guess its a best of both worlds kind of thing. Consequently, I have made up many fictional American boyfriends. Big ones. That could squash the tiny Chinese boys (which isn't necessary because I'm bigger than 95% of them).

I'll start this blog with a picture that I took at a Buddhist Temple. Pretty amazing if I do say so myself. That is the Corner of the temple at the bottom, a few of the gorgeous flowers that cover each temple, and some of the first clouds that I have seen in Kunming. 

That is my half of the dorm room. I live with an American girl. I wish that I lived with a Chinese roommate, but normal Chinese students live 6-8 people to a room...so I'm fairly spoiled here. My Chinese dorm room makes Ruder look nice (the Southwestern all boys dorm). The Chinese have a saying that the harder the bed the healthier you are. I am not entirely comfortable with this saying. The beds are so hard its literally like sleeping on the floor. Or a rock. On a mountain. Where its cold because there is no indoor heating in China. Another nice thing about the dorm is the 12 o'clock curfew. Something I haven't had for about 5 years. They literally chain lock the front doors of the dorm, and close the gate to the campus. There is no way to get in- you can see the bars on the windows. My name being Christina Nicholls, I have already jumped this gate to campus once.  

To accompany the midnight curfew, there is a 12:30 lights out. No literally. Lights out. As in the electricity goes off. I along with a few of my classmates made that unfortunate discovery while cramming in a reading the night before a lecture (typical). Although, as hard as the beds are, as cold as the room gets, and as ridiculous as the curfews are, I actually like my dorm room. Its become a home away from home- till I move in with a family in 2 weeks (where my curfew will most likely be even earlier). 

This week we had an adventure called the "drop off".  They gave us a small piece of paper with some Chinese characters on it and we had to find whatever was written on the paper. I was in a group of three which resulted in us wandering the streets of downtown Kunming for three hours.  Finally, HOURS later, after asking over 10 people who all       

gave us conflicting directions, frustrated and sweaty, we found our destination. Which was an amusement park type place were we saw bumper cars with American flags on them. Haha. Its a little ironic because every car in China is always almost crashing.

Our lectures this week were on religion. So on Wednesday we made a trip to another gorgeous Buddhist temple (where I took the flower picture at the top of this post) on a mountain where we meditated, Friday we went to a Mosque to observe prayer, and Sunday we went to a small AMAZING Christian village called Shui Jing to sit in on a mass service.  

                     This is where we had our Buddhism lecture

After our Buddhism lecture, we were free to explore the mountain. It was called Xi Shan (Western Hills), and it was a doozie! I thought the last Buddhist mountain was hard to climb, but this one seriously kicked my butt! But it was awesome once I got to the top. 

The Shui Jing village is home to the Miao people. They were converted by German Protestants a long time ago, and even survived the Cultural Revolution. This village seemed untouched by any outside influence (other than the whole Christianity thing). Their main form of income was corn, which was EVERYWHERE, and they all pretty much dressed in their traditional costumes. I didn't get many pictures of people because when we were free to wander around most of the village people were still in Church, but the village sat atop a mountain with a breathtaking view of the surrounding mountains. It was surreal and incredible.

1/1000000000 of the corn in the village

Where's Waldo- China Mountain Edition

My quest to make Chinese friends has finally resulted in success! I have lots of Chinese friends now who want to practice english and help me practice my Chinese. We just call them pengyous (the Chinese word for friend). However, before success, comes failure. Lots of people hang out outside our dorm in the quad at all hours of the day. So, one night an American friend of mine and I attempted to go out and make some pengyous. It unfortunately yielded no results. Confused at our ultimate failure, we began to assess our friend making strategy. We then realized that we were sitting right outside an all boys dorm. Facing the front door. Wondering why people gave us weird looks when we tried to say hi and look approachable. Turns out we just looked like two big desperate creeps sitting outside the all boys dorm. I wouldn't be friends with me either.