So, I've missed a total of two classes due to being sick...I hope I haven't fallen too far behind everyone else. I felt pretty horrible, it was like everything bad I ever ate hit me at once. Fortunately, I felt a little bit better on Tuesday so I was able to attend the Calligraphy culture class. My father used to practice calligraphy at home sometimes and I was very interested to see what a master of the art could turn out. His handwriting was very beautiful and I was disappointed that I wasn't picked to recieve one of his paintings (I'm not sure if this is what you'd call them), but on the plus side, I did get a great rendition of my name from Dr. Liu. I don't think my handwriting was ever that great and the only time I had only done calligraphy once before in chinese school several years ago. As expected, my paintings turned out pretty bad (partly because I don't know enough characters to write anything meaningful), but it was a fun expreince nonetheless.
During the evening, we visited one of the commerical districts of Tianjin (it was called Jiang something something). It was pretty cool, considering that it's the most modernized part of the city that I've visited so far. The streets were lined with stores selling all kinds of stuff; there were shady resturants, Nike/Adidas stores, and an unusually large amount of wedding stroes (one of them selling a white tuxedo with a pink rose pattern). I've always enjoyed trying out new kinds of food; since I've never been out of the country, I'm trying my best to get a taste of all the new experiences that a culture as different as China's has to offer. This has cause some discomfort (I think I got sick from a funky blue soda I ordered at Seaside Coffee), but I don't think these bad experiences have significantly reduced my spirit. When I was at McDonalds, I decided to try out some of the coconut pies they had. It was like an apple pie from back home, but deep fryed instead of baked and filled with a white syrup containing cocunut chunks. It wasn't as bad as I expected.
During the evening, we visited one of the commerical districts of Tianjin (it was called Jiang something something). It was pretty cool, considering that it's the most modernized part of the city that I've visited so far. The streets were lined with stores selling all kinds of stuff; there were shady resturants, Nike/Adidas stores, and an unusually large amount of wedding stroes (one of them selling a white tuxedo with a pink rose pattern). I've always enjoyed trying out new kinds of food; since I've never been out of the country, I'm trying my best to get a taste of all the new experiences that a culture as different as China's has to offer. This has cause some discomfort (I think I got sick from a funky blue soda I ordered at Seaside Coffee), but I don't think these bad experiences have significantly reduced my spirit. When I was at McDonalds, I decided to try out some of the coconut pies they had. It was like an apple pie from back home, but deep fryed instead of baked and filled with a white syrup containing cocunut chunks. It wasn't as bad as I expected.
Maybe I'm being a little irrational, but I'm kind of hesistant about our trip to Xi'An this weekend. I usually don't like flying in airplanes at all (they're big hunks of metal floating through the air!) and to make it worse, China has sort of a bad reputation when it comes to safety. I guess there's nothing I can do about this and I can only hope we get there in one piece. Despite this, I am somewhat excited about our train ride from Xi'An back to Tianjin. I've only ridden on a train once in the United States and I'm interested to see how the system works in China. I've also never slept on a train and it'll be an experience staying on a train for more than 10 hours. Even though it's going to be a long and tiring journey, I hope there'll be a lot of cool scenery on the trip.
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