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.
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.
I actually laughed out loud, not surprising.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you've made some pengyous, but please don't get too attached and decide to stay there forever, because I already miss you too much.
I'd tell you to have fun, but it seems like you've already got that covered.