It Rains Every Day

I bought a Charmander toothbrush in the Campus Store today. I saw it and immediately had to have it, it was my big achievement for the day.


The other large achievement was finally going to the big Bank of China (literally translated) to get my traveler's checks changed. You have to go to the big (main) Bank of China to get them changed now, the small ones stopped changing them about a week before I arrived, something about wanting to be more safe with the influx of travelers for the Olympics. In any case, the person assigned to help me was in training, which made for a fun bank experience for all of us. Each sentence had to be spoken twice, once in the formal mode required and then again in normal terms. He had to say it all formal first since his supervisor was there, then when I stared blankly at him he would glance at his supervisor, then tell me what he had said in Chinese I could understand. The vocabulary differnce would be the equivalent of "This T-39 Form indicates that the undersigned is in agreeance with the aforementioned terms and your subsequent signature discloses..." and so on, and then he would say "Sign there to say that you are you." It was a fantastic waste of time. And the thing is it wasn't legal jargon he was using, there is just a very formal way of speaking Chinese involving the choice of certain verbs and terms over others and I just can't be bothered to learn customer service Chinese used for other Chinese, though I was flattered he was attempting to use it on me.


Now I will indulge how to upset your stomach in China. Step 1, when eating noodles, take your friends up on the dare to drink the broth solely for the sake of taking a picture. The first few sips are tasty, but remember that the key to step 1 is to ignore the fact that the broth is spicy and very likely going to ruin your digestive tract.



Step 2, celebrate your victory with your friends. This involves downing lots of the carbonated beverages seen in the pictures, this in no way encourages the war that has begun to rage in your stomach.


Step 3 is not pictured, but I can say with confidence that chugging the broth is probably a bad idea.

I have to conduct some research now, this weekend my roommate and I are going on a trip. We are getting reimbursed for the travel costs as long as we leave the city, so we have to choose somewhere fun to go. The winning idea right now is the "Thousand Island Lake". Each island apparently has a different theme. There is a bird island with lots of birds, and a cow island with lots of cows, and a flower island with lots of flowers, then there are interesting ones like lock island and such. I've seen the pictures, lock island and some of the weirder ones look really fun. No idea yet though, we are pressed for time as we can't leave until he is out of class on Saturday at 11 and have to be back for his class at 8am Sunday.

Jia you! 加油！