Who knew I was athletic?

Correction: I didn't actually go to the countryside. Currently I'm in a hotel room what I'd like to call the suburbs of the Shandong province, which basically means that the buildings aren't as tall and there are probably 25% less people. I did end up going to the countryside, but more on that later. Tomorrow we are headed for the Anhui province to visit Shu Shu's sister's family.

I managed to keep track of everything that has been happening over the course the past three days in Notes, on my phone. I also jotted down some thoughts in the car ride to the Shandong province. 

I found out that my HOST mom's dad was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. He didn't kill anybody, though. He realized that it wasn't a good thing to participate in the destroying of Chinese culture after the revolution was over, but I guess at the time he got a bunch of free stuff.

Pictures from the Great Wall are on my photo blog, which, if you've forgotten, is linked next to my bio. It took me almost a week to finish posting all of the pictures because people kept asking me to post them and for some reason that always makes me lazier about it.

I'm pretty sure I could become a millionaire as a translator here. Not like a political translator or anything like that, but one that could translate English words or phrases on t-shirts or mugs correctly from Chinese. Really though, how hard can it really be to get someone who speaks good Chinese and English, at least good enough to make a few English words make sense or have correct spelling? Just this morning, I saw a sign by the elevator that said "IN CASE OF FIRF DO NOT USE ELEVATOR." Yes, firf. Someone did not know how to use Baidu (the Chinese version of Google Translate) or was in a rush. Then again, there is virtually no reason why anyone would need to read that sign, because no one here needs to speak English or is an English speaker. Based on the amount of stares I have gotten, I am probably the only white person that half of the people here have ever seen. Still, I might consider starting a temporary translating business while I'm here just so I'll have a few extra kuai to spend.

OCTOBER 1ST

After a twelve hour car ride that was made up of napping every other hour in the half packed back of a compact Mercedes, we arrived in Shandong. I get my own hotel room here! This is my first experience of living alone, and it's been great! I can play music kind of loudly and watch as much television as I want, both at the same time. I must say that the television here is awful. Well, maybe not. Maybe I'll be able to find myself relating to the characters of Peking operas and Chinese soap operas someday. As of now, I'll stick to translated Spongebob on channel 25, which somewhat compensates for the lack of good cinematography. Once we were moved in, we went to Shu Shu's brother's apartment, taking my laptop with me because Mom insisted that I did because she was paranoid that someone might break into my room and steal it. This became a common thing during the trip. When I walked into the building, everything was dusty and seemingly falling apart. The inside of the elevator was constructed of wood and advertisement posters. That's something else I don't really understand. Every elevator in China has advertisements in them. The 13th floor, where Shu Shu's brother lives, was no better than the first. Mom knocked on the door and a tall, pretty Chinese woman welcomed us into what was the total opposite of what I had expected. Their apartment looked like it came out of a modern magazine, and it was completely spotless. Just another thing to add to the list of things that I don't get about this country.

Shu Shu introduced me to his two nieces, who were around my age and painfully antisocial. I sat on the couch with them and his great aunt, who spoke the Shandong dialect which prevented much communication between us. Actually, everyone here speaks the dialect. So not only am I illiterate, I also cannot comprehend the language. During dinner, I was surrounded by about seven other aunts and uncles who were all trying to speak with me while I sat there helplessly. Fortunately, the cousins warmed up to me and were able to translate, since they learn putong hua, or the normal dialect, which is the primary dialect of China and the one that I speak and understand. 

I'm going to refer to the cousins as "the cousins" throughout the rest of this post, because I find it impossible to remember Chinese names. I feel bad because they treated me so well. They even took me out to the night market and bought me ice cream and some greasy stuff that tasted good, as greasy stuff usually does. I also finally found earrings that I had been searching for, and they insisted on paying for them. The lady who sold me the earrings was giggly, probably because doesn't see many white people, or at least any that speak decent Chinese. It's such a humorous concept for them. Twice that night, I heard "HALLO!!"s followed by guffawing which was directed towards me. It was weird because I had never received that kind of attention before. It was bound to happen sometime.

OCTOBER 2ND

I spent the morning writing one page of my APES paper, which doesn't sound like a lot, but a Chinese standard paper is about 1/4 longer than regular paper. Okay, that still doesn't sound like a lot. I was distracted by the cultural beauty of Chinese Spongebob. Before we left the hotel to go back to the apartment, I Facetimed with Cade for about 20 minutes. That was the first time I had heard any English for 36 hours, and surprisingly, I was doing fine. I think my Chinese has gotten better while being here, or I've gotten good at tuning people out. Me and the cousins went to the mall, where the only money they spent on me (they really wouldn't let me spend any money) was at the arcade, where they bought me tokens so I could play a car racing game. Then we walked to a beautiful garden which had a pond and a large statue of Confucius. Shandong was the homeland of Confucius, okay that's the history lesson of the day.

After the garden, the whole family drove to the countryside to meet up with even more relatives. I slept on the car ride there, so I was a bit disoriented and startled to wake up to the sight of piles and piles of corn. In front of each house was mounds of yellow corn to be sunned and sold at a market somewhere in the city. The cousins took me down a long dirt road to look at the scenery, of which I will post pictures when I get back to Beijing. We stopped at a flat area where instead of crops were large black patches scattered around the fields. I asked the cousins why we stopped, and they explained that the patches were where bodies were buried and the black was where money was burnt as offerings. They felt too uncomfortable to continue on, so we headed back to their grandparents' house. Mom explained to me that in Chinese culture, honoring the dead was more important than marriage.

OCTOBER 3RD

There is this song called "Little Apple" that plays constantly throughout China. It's the on the top of the charts here, and Shu Shu has played it in the car repeatedly throughout this whole trip. Here is the music video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d59boCs31uM

Skip to 1:18 if you care enough to watch and if you don't care for the intro. It's pretty entertaining in that it's just about the most Asian thing you'll ever see.

Today I went on the shortest hike of my life. I am assuming it was supposed to be longer, but my mom and the cousins realized that they do not have the athletic ability they thought they possessed. For once, I was the fastest in the group! Hearing them beg me to stop hiking was music to my ears, as it is usually the other way around with me. People here wear the most inconvenient stuff to hike in. Mostly everyone on the mountain was wearing jeans, and I even saw a man in a dress suit. The hike lasted about 20 minutes, and we spend a good 5 minutes resting. These are my kind of people.

The cousins. They aren't as formidable as they seem in this picture. They are, in reality, very adorable.

One of the cousins has a two year old brother who is almost three. He reminds me of Will and Wyatt, in that his cute, charming side is like Wyatt, whereas his butch, violent side is like Will. Because of this, I constantly felt a sisterly instinct to be around him and act as I would around my brothers, scolding him when he hit me and holding his hand on the street when the whole family went out.

After our hike, we went to go pick fruit. The uncles and one of the cousins were jumping to reach for persimmons, which reminded me of the Thomsens' dog, Ruby, jumping and grabbing persimmons from the tree with her mouth in their front yard back home in California (que homesickness). After, I was dropped off at the hotel so I could work on homework and was then picked up to go to dinner with the family. It seems that people do not realize that I can use chopsticks and that I have been using them since I was three years old because they continue to insist on getting me a fork at every single freaking meal. Tonight I refused to use it and took extra care not to drop any food when I used the chopsticks. My mom complimented me when I was able to pick up a quail's egg, because everyone else had been struggling to pick them up. I pretended to shake off the compliment when on the inside, I was like, "yesssssssss". They also think that I can't handle having spicy foods, but little did they know, I ate Extra Flaming Hot Cheetos before every cheer practice during freshman year, meaning that I can kind of handle spicy foods here.

After dinner, the cousins and I walked about a mile to go to a seasonal carnival. It was 8:45 when we got there, and as soon as we step foot in the place, the lights went out and the music turned off. We were the last people in there, minus the staff, who were riding around their mopeds and closing up. One of the cousins convinced a carny to turn on one of the rides for us. It was one where people were strapped into chairs at the bottom and were vertically sent around and around in giant circles. The staff said they would only allow us three rotations. As we were coming around on our third rotation, one of the cousins started screaming bloody murder and told the carny to stop the ride or she'd throw up!!!!! She got off, and the carny asked where I was from. I told him that I was from the U.S., which I think helped with the fact that we got to have three extra rotations. As we were getting off, he tried convincing us to let him lead us through the haunted house as a bonus treat for the American, an offer that me and the cousin that didn't get off the ride immediately turned down, because we are both terrified of scary things. I think it's funny that the carnies were willing to let us go on a ride even though the park was almost completely closed. They were even making sure we didn't want to go on other rides before we left. This is the opposite of what would have happened in the U.S., where the answer would have been a big fat NOPE. Although when the carny asked if I liked China or America better and my response was America, I think the generosity and sense of community is much better in this country.