Today was our first day of class
which wasn’t all that exciting but definitely exhausting. First of all, I woke
up at 5 am since we went to bed so early and managed to kind of go back to bed
until 7, just when I had to get up and move around. My roommate and I just hung
around and made some Skype calls until we had to head to class. We have class
every day from 9:30 - 12 and 1 - 4:15 and each of those slots is only one class
that rotates depending on the day. Today we had class with our professor from
Purdue and then our Chinese culture class. With our professor from Purdue we
basically went over the syllabus and then went around the room and said one
thing that we had found interesting since we had gotten here, which was far
from a challenge. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t 30 degrees in the
room (you could actually see your breath) but that definitely made it drag on.
Luckily she let us out of class early to go put money on our school ID’s and
then we headed straight for the dining court.
 |
| Mechanical Engineering Building - SJTU campus |
 |
| Classroom |
Upon walking in we were completely
overwhelmed by the huge crowd of people with no sort of logical lines or food
we could identify. We then found our professor who helped us order this huge
noodle dish she had been talking about in class that turned out to be really
good for less than $2.
 |
| Noodle dish from SJTU dining court |
After lunch we went home and put on
about 5 layers and then headed back to our culture class, which exceeded my
expectations. The professor is very charismatic and likes to tell a lot of
stories to keep her students engaged. She told us the story of how she chose her
Chinese name, which was pretty humorous since she originally chose the name
“cheesy.” She decided on that because she went to school at UW-Madison and thus
became accustomed to loving cheese and thought that adding a “y” to anything
made it cuter. That being said she
quickly figured out that cheesy meant something more along the lines of tacky
and changed her name to Waychee in an attempt to somewhat keep the word cheese
incorporated. We also learned a lot of helpful tips to fit in with the cultural
norms in China and got a few warnings as well. This included that barber shops
may actually be whore houses and the other being that if a Chinese stranger is
outwardly nice to you, they are probably up to no good because Chinese people
are generally standoffish to strangers. She warned us of a technique where
someone will come up and start a conversation and then ask if you want to go
practice Chinese in a tea shop and proceed to make you pay an absurd price for
the tea to help the their shops business. Sound familiar? Needless to say, I
don’t think we are hitting up Mr. P anytime soon.
After we got back from a long day
of class we all kind of relaxed and started on our readings for class the next
day and watched our lecture for our online class. For dinner we decided to go
walking in a direction we had not been yet and found some interesting things.
We encountered our first food market with live chickens and fish, which was
quite a site. We also found a DVD store that sells movies that aren’t even out
in the theaters in the US yet. We got 2 movies for $3 and they seem to work
just fine and aren’t even just someone videotaping in the back of a theater.
 |
| Sketchy illegal DVD store |
We also found a western market that
sold everything I miss from mac n cheese to peanut butter although it is
extremely overpriced. A jar of peanut butter was about $13 so I decided to pass
although I’m sure I’ll eventually cave. We ended up going back to the same
street vendor as the night before but tried the rice instead of noodles, which
was also very delicious. I also got an red jujube ice cream bar to help calm
down my acid reflex which has been going crazy ever since I got here and some
OJ for the morning. Another night of going to bed early is in my near future.
 |
| Bryan giving in to some Oreos |
 |
| Interesting flavor choice |
No comments:
Post a Comment