I survived the first week!

I've made it through the first week.  There have been some ups and downs along the way, but it's definitely been an adventure.

My classes are challenging.  The intermediate Chinese class would probably be easier if I hadn't shown up 3 chapters behind everyone else.  I'm narrowing the gap (with a lot of work in my free time), but I've still got a bit of catching up to do.  The conversation class might actually be a bit easier.  I need to work on my vocabulary, but it seems like it will complement the other class nicely.  Tai chi will be interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll ultimately like it or not.  There are 3 of us in the class, but this week there were only two of us because the other student was ill.  Our teacher doesn't speak much English and our Chinese is pretty terrible (but might actually be better than his English), so it makes for some odd instruction sometimes.  I'm getting the hang of some of the poses, but am pretty clueless when it comes to going from one to the next....

The weather this week was pretty nice.  Mostly in the 80's during the day, but definitely more humid than Boise.  It seems to be overcast most of the time here which I think would make it a rather dreary place to live all the time.  For a couple of weeks, I think it will be ok though.

Food is the biggest daily adventure.  I can't read a menu, other than a few characters here and there (imagine looking at an English menu and only recognizing the letters P and L and you'll get the idea of what I'm facing), and I don't know very many words in general, so ordering food is quite challenging.  A few places have an English menu or picture menu, but even then you don't really know what you're ordering.  Places where you can actually see the food are the easiest.  I've been frequenting a local bakery down the street and basically saying (in Chinese) "two of those," accompanied by a finger point.  Here's what I got this morning:

I have no clue what any of them are called, but they taste good.  They're similar in taste to pound cake or coffee cake.  These cost me about $0.50 today.

I had a huge win on Friday at lunchtime when I was able to successfully order some vegetarian dumplings for lunch.  Next time, instead of the boiled ones, I'm going to try for fried ones.  At that shop, the guy speaks a little bit of English, which helps, but I probably know more Chinese than he knows English (seems to be a common theme here).  I didn't understand the amount aspect of my purchase though.  I was told that I could order one or two 两 liǎng (that word means pair), but one liǎng was six dumplings and they wouldn't make just six, and I had to order two liǎng (12 dumplings).  Confused?  So am I.  But I successfully got 12 dumplings and promptly ate them all.

I've started taking pictures of things that I like so that I can buy them again and know that I'm getting the same thing the next time.  Here's a drink I've discovered:

Again, I don't really know what it is, but it tastes sort of like Tang.

Here are a few pictures near the bakery down the street.  Sorry they're a little blurry.  I was trying not to be too obvious taking the pictures.

A view out of our dorm toward the stadium on campus:

A sign near the dorm.  Maybe you can figure out what they mean in the section below Administrative Building?  My best guess is Cafeteria and Park, but I don't know most of the Chinese characters there.