Procrastinating

Hey!   

    I was working on my Chinese homework but I needed a break so I thought I'd talk a little more about my trip. Last week was vacation, which was a very welcome break; classes here are very challenging... especially Chinese. We're in Chinese class for 3 hours a day, 4 days a week meaning that we do learn a lot but there's a lot of work involved. 

     My study abroad group has a week-long trip to Hong Kong in 3 weeks and between now we'll have had 3 tests in Chinese, our midterm being the day before we leave, so if I don't write very much between now and then you'll know it's because I'm studying. Next Thursday we're going to the Peking (Beijing) Opera as a field trip, it's world famous so I'm really excited about that, I've never seen an opera before, much less a Chinese opera. Besides that I've been pretty busy with school, there are a lot of art galleries in the city that I want to go visit, especially before it starts getting cold... it's about mid 70's now but should get down to the 50's in the next month or so. 

      One thing that's more different here from anywhere else I've lived is the food. I love Chinese food, although it's nothing like what you get in the US, there's no such thing as General Tsou's chicken in China. As you may have guessed there's a lot of rice and noodles, but depending on the region of China food can be very different. I've been eating a lot of soup and rice and noodle dishes... there's a lot of street vendor food that we can get behind our school, but it's usually deep fried and I usually get something else. I have had to change what I normally eat quite a bit though since I started living here. For example, in China things like cheese, salads, sandwiches and deli meats really aren't that common. They don't actually eat much dairy at all, except yogurt. I don't have a kitchen where I live so I can't cook any of my own food, which I miss doing but I've adjusted for the most part, and while I'll dearly miss my xiao long bao and strawberry pearl milk tea I can't wait to have a reuben or pizza again. 

      I should probably get back to work though, I hope everyone's well!  Here are a few more pictures. One is of the Shanghai Circus we saw during orientation and the second is of a meal we had when we visited a small town as a field trip... the snails were actually very good.