First Weekend in China

Well, I've been here 5 days now. At first it was almost overwhelming so much stuff to see, and take in. But I've been adjusting.

By the way, I posted pictures before of my dormitory, but that was on the day I had arrived, before I moved into it. I have now moved in, and have purchased a few things to make it feel like a home (you know, soap, paper towls, garbage bags, S-video cables to connect the computer to the TV, all the typical stuff). As such I made a short video tour of my place:

Now, the few times I've been downtown I haven't been finding my way around, I've just been following my friends, so I don't really have an idea of what is where. So today I decided to talk a walk from the school to downtown and walk around and get my bearings.

I think I have a better idea how the downtown area is laid out now, although it takes nearly an hour to walk there from my apartment. I think I'll try and get a bike soon to make things more convenient.

I've seen quite a few Tiburons since I've been here, although, they don't say "Tiburon" on the car here, it just says "Hyundai Coupe"


I met Tian Jia today in the downtown area. She needed some passport-type pictures of me for some paperwork and we went to get those. Afterward, it was about 2:30 and I hadn't eaten lunch so we went to KFC. It was pretty much the same greasy stuff we've got at home. By the way, apparently, Chinese people don't verbally differentiate between "drumstick" and "thigh." You say "da tui" which means "big leg" but BOTH the thigh and drumstick are called this same thing, so it's hard to tell them I want just a thigh.

After that I went to get some fruit from one of the supermarkets. I picked up some seedless grapes. I had some grapes the day before, but they were seeded. Trying to eat seeded grapes is a lot like trying to eat small meat chunks that have tiny bones in them: you have to try and separate the soft parts from the hard parts in your mouth, then spit out the hard parts. Seedless grapes are a bit more expensive here, but SOOOO much easier!

While at the supermarket, I also scouted out the meat area to try and find the stuff I like to cook. You can't even find chicken thighs not part of a whole or half chicken. I also noticed some other interesting bits, and I took pictures:

Pig Heart

Pig Intestines

Pig Tongue

Pig Kidney

Pig Hoof

Finally, after I left the supermarket, I was just meandering around the downtown area for a bit, getting familiar with the area when I saw the AWESOMEST mannequin ever:


Also, I didn't think to take a picture, but they had an "official Apple retailer" in Huzhou. I went inside, and the MacBook they had on display was running Windows XP, haha.