Going to Miss Everyone

Hello Everyone. I have not posted in a long time. I've been to many places and I have done a lot of things. Two weekends ago our group went to the She Minority Village atop a mountain outside of Guangzhou. We were split into small groups with a mission to help the children with they're English. This was the first time I acted as a 中文老师 (Chinese teacher). It was really fun. They helped improve my Chinese just as much as I helped they're English. The kids were...overwelcoming. They saw me as a 力山 (a powerful mountain). They tried to tear me down. It was fine though. I am still living. 

On that Tuesday my Level 2 class went to my teacher's house to make 饺子 (dumplings). We made pork dumplings and egg and vegetable dumplings. I am an expert dumpling maker now for those that would like a Chinese treat every now and then. 

The next day we took a trip to Shenzhen, home to Tencent Inc. and many beautiful Asian girls. Shenzhen is a very large city of 12 million people. Tencent the fourth largest internet based company in the world only under Google, Amazon, and eBay. Tencent is the maker of WeChat which has over 200 million users across the global, most of them located in China. Going to Tencent was very fun because it showed me that technology certainly has a bright future. 

On Friday night, I went to KTV (karaoke) for the first time in my life. It was an amazing experience. The most memorable moment was when Jeremy and I stood hip to hip, my arm atop his shoulder, sing "The Circle of Life" from Lion King. That is one of his favorite songs. 

Unfortunately, we had class on Saturday because we missed class on Wednesday and Thursday. On Sunday, I went to 佛山 (Foshan) to visit my host uncles, aunts, and cousin Andy. Andy was a really cool guy. He spent a semester in Seattle through an exchange program so he was very "hip" and into American culture. He loves rap and Eminem. When I told him I was a rapper, he did not believe me because I talked too proper and I did not wear a gold chain and Jordans. That is definitely a global stereotype for a rapper. Andy will attend the University of Iowa next year; I wish him the best of luck. 

On Monday, I starred as 白雪公主 (Snow White) in the Chinese version of the story. After the play, I received my first Oscar. It was quite humbling. 

The rest of this week is preparation for the final exam and the closing ceremony. In the closing ceremony, I will not be performing as 白雪公主, but I will be dancing to the top Chinese song 小苹果 (xiao ping guo or small apple). I will also "shake" the kong zhu (Chinese yoyo) with my friend Dylan.

I will be home soon. Never rushing the experience. :)

Typhoon Rammasun

As many of you all know, Typhoon Rammasun has just passed the coast of China. Zhuhai lay on the southern coast of China. There was a lot of rain here in the past couple of days. Everything has been well though. I went to the mall yesterday in the pooring rain and even played my outdoor basketball games today. We won 2 games and lost 2 games in the tournament today so we will play again soon to hopefully advance. Jeremy took pictures of me playing 篮球.

I have a midterm (my first test) on Tuesday so I have been studying rather hard for that. Jeremy has been helping me with daily conversation. This is just an update post to tell everyone that all is well in Zhuhai and I am having a great time. 再见！

Guangzhou

A few days ago, the students in my program took an hour and a half bus trip to Guangzhou, the 6th most populated city in the world, and the sister city of Richmond, VA. Guangzhou is the capital of the Guangdong Province in China. We visited the Museum of the Chen family, a prominent family in Chinese history. Chen Lóng (Jackie Chan) is a direct member to this ancient family. We also visited a temple, the South China Botantical Garden, and Beijing Lù. I will only touch on Beijing Lù but I have pictures of the botanical garden and the museum as well. 

路 (lù) literally means road. Beijing Lù is a huge outdoor shopping mall that is full of vendors and many people on a stretch for blocks and blocks on this road and other adjacent roads. There are 17 million people in metro area of Guangzhou and that number plus tourists is frightening to see in most famous shopping center in all of Guangdong Province. My most interesting experience thus far came on this one street. The small division of the group I was with had one goal and one goal only, to buy some good quality fake watches. A man walked up to us and told us he had a shop that had great watches and other things. We figured that this would be a fun experience because this is something they strictly told us not to do. We went through a dark alley and up three flights of stairs; we walked another half of a block through more than a dozen stray cats and drying clothes in the bowels of an outdoor apartment complex. The man takes us into a room and hits the lights. There is everything from fake LV bags to fake Hermes belts and ties, but most importantly, the shop contains and endless supply of "namebrand" watches from Hublot to Rolex to Timex. The man out of the three of us, we decide to bargain for four watches (one guy got two). The first offer was 4500 yuan which is equivolent to about $725 US dollars. One, we did not have that much with us combined; 2, we weren't about to pay that much money for some knock-off watches. The next offer was 3400 yuan. Still not good enough. Then they dropped all the way to 2200 yuan which is about $354 and about $90 per watch. This was still not good enough. I told them that we would pay 800 yuan for all four and then they said no way. We smoothly proceeded to the door and aggressively unlocked it. They had a counter offer of 1400 yuan but that was still way too high. I let them know that we were serious and I dropped the proce to 700 yuan because I found a small scratch on one of the guys' watches. One of the men selling the watches told me in Chineae that he could not go that low because he has a family and a little boy to feed. I then typed in 900 yuan and we settled on that number. That is $145 and $36 per watch which is a pretty great deal. We paid the man and swiftly made our way out of the room and the live-lacking complex. We boasted about our watches for the rest of the night as we knew we had mastered the skill of Chinese street bargaining.