"You are my best friend." - A Chinese Waiter

People in China wear the same clothes two days in a row and then change. We had this suspicion when we noticed DongFang do this when she picked us up in the airport and the next day, but it was defiantly confirmed by Heor, one of our tour guides from the first full day. Paige, who has been her before, says that Chinese people claim it is easier to remember people and their names that way. Of course, I think many of them look very similar, but I would think they would be better able to tell each other apart!! I guess if it is a common thing, and everyone does it, then no one can feel weird about it. It is just plain common. I wonder if American has any set standards like that that we take for granted and people from other countries would notice we do right away.

We have decided to not eat breakfast on campus and survive with the stuff we buy at the store. The food is not that bad, but the smell of it is less than appetizing. We had a welcome class this morning where several vice presidents of the university came to talk to us and welcome us. Furthermore, the about 30 graduate students each said hello and nice to meet you individually. We then introduced our selves. Every time we would say our names, they would all in unison repeat them. It was hilarious when we got to Gregory; they all just looked at each other and laughed before they tried to pronounce and three syllable word. They make themselves laugh quite often. Even when the children run up to you and say, “Hello,” something they’ve learned in grade school, they run away laughing.

We found out at our introductory course that the President of the school would not be able to come to our welcome dinner this evening because he was going to be on a late flight. Therefore, it was moved to Thursday noon. Since we had the rest of the afternoon off, we headed up the street to find some lunch. We went to a place we were originally going to call the orange place. We split our group up into two tables and a man with very little English came to greet us. He gave us menus and we started to pick some food out. Thank heaven that most places we have encountered so far have picture menus. We are told that you should pick out 1 more dish than the number of people at your table. We have found out that this is FAR too much. We always leave tons of food on our tables. We usually pick out some sort of chicken, beef, sea food, and vegetable plus rice for us to share. It is a lot. When we eat at “The Blackwell” we like the broccoli they make, this day at the Orange restaurant, we ordered snow peas and they were really good. During our meal, the waiter came out with a small slip of paper where he had scribbled, “Is the food to your taste?” We went above and beyond to let him know that it was. Later, he came to our table and said, “You are my best friend.” We are going to start calling this restaurant, “The Best Friend,” since we have no idea what it says in Chinese.


Mike, Ashe, and Greg eating at, "The Best Friend."


These vegetable markets are all over! I bet there are ten within a two block radius of our campus. They have to sell their product somewhere!

We then headed back to the room and eventually walked to the busy street for a little shopping and browsing around. We went to a Nike store they have here. The shoes are about $100, so it would not be worth buy them here. I'll get them at Kohl's for $40.


Ashe and Jess checking out the shoes at the Nike store.


Seth has since told me that this is a dog face, but originally we thought it was part of a cat. Read on.

We saw all sorts of things between the campus and here, including the hide of a cat head. Yes, we saw a cat head. We learned in class that in the Southern area the people are basically uneducated hicks and they do eat cat. What the teacher didn’t say was that they also eat it in Beijing. That is okay, we found out for ourselves!
Exercise is such an important part of the Chinese culture. No matter what their age, Chinese are always out and about doing something. The elderly are on walks or at the exercise parks using the equipment. The young people, of course, ride there bikes and walk all over. We haven’t seen too many runners yet, but I am sure they will appear.


This is a hospital about one block from our campus with a very common exercise park in front of it! We joke that there will be NO BREAKING YOUR LEG IN CHINA! We will not go to the hospital!

At the end of our afternoon, we watched the boys play basketball with the Chinese. The Chinese were really, really good. Mark is so tall and they are really impressed with him. He dunked a few and blocked a few of their shots. They cheered for him even though he wasn’t on their team. They loved to watch him play.




The boys from OSU who played basketball. I bet you can pick out which one is Mark.

Later we walked to an outdoor restaurant behind the Friendship Hotel with our whole group. It was very nice and peaceful. The menu was odd, but the items were written in English.


I ordered cucumber. It came out as five seven inch long, one inch around raw cucumbers. I ate two of them and then sent them around the table.

Ashley ordered barbequed cauliflower. It was on a skewer and had some spices on it, she really liked it. Next time we go, I think I will get some beef and scallions, some other people ordered. Lauren ordered barbequed garlic which was just garlic chunks on a skewer. They came out and asked us if we would like Chinese ice cream. They acted like it was a real big deal. I ordered some and it was not. It looked and tasted like something they would serve in elementary school cafeterias.


Paige ordered chrysanthemum tea to drink and what came back was this! I tasted it and it just tasted like warm water. I'd rather be here looking at this tea pot than a watering pots of mums at home!

We sat out here until way after dark and then headed back to campus via stopping at 7eleven. Yes, they have 7 eleven here.


Back at the hotel we all gathered in our room, asked each other get to know you questions, and chatted the night away. It was a very fun time and I really look forward to getting to know this group.