First Day at the Host Family!!!

Who is this Fang Fei Fei person? I love going places within Chengdu and seeing familiar faces or hearing "Fei Fei!" hollered from any given direction, greeted by a familiar face.  It's welcoming for a meigoren (American) in China, although, to be honest, I don't think I like this Fei Fei: an idiot who does just about anything wrong.  Fang Fei Fei (Surname: Fang, pronounced Fah-ng; Given Name: Fei Fei, pronounced Fay Fay) speaks less Chinese than small children or even some dogs.  Fang Fei Fei calls out "Zai na'r" (where?") instead of "Zaijian" (goodbye) when parting.  Fang Fei Fei forgets to flush the toilet in her panic of understanding the bathroom; she also puts the lid down instead of leaving it up.  Fang Fei Fei doesn't know how to use the shower and gets water all over the bathroom.  Fang Fei Fei doesn't know how to eat properly and puts food on top of her rice instead of eating it separately.  Fang Fei Fei is constantly dehydrated and wants to drinks a lot of water (when there is a drought and water should be saved), and sweats more than she drinks.  Fang Fei Fei leaves her fan on when she isn't in her room, doesn't know about wearing "indoor" and "outdoor" shoes, almost gets hit by cars when walking anywhere, wants to dance in the street like an "old women" and is clearly not "ku." Fang Fei Fei is an idiot and needs to get it together.

Thankfully, Fang Fei Fei's host family is wonderful! :)

I live in a traditional Chinese apartment community.  It is green and we live on the 5^th floor of a building, which I like very much as it is about the only exercise I acquire except walking.  The apartment community is rather large, and when walking around (please do not picture western styles for any of this, if that is possible.  I'll post pictures later) you can be greeting by a health clinic, a hair cutting place, a park, a pool, a public square, a basketball court, etc.  Our apartment consists of two bedrooms (1 for my family, 1 for me), a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room with a table for eating.  It would be considered tiny by most meigoren's standards, but it really is very nice and the view is outstanding! From my room I am greeted by the windows of sooo many apartments (from my window ledge!) and a street so there is always something to see.  From the living room, though, I have view of the countryside (or at least a partial one) and can watch the farm be harvested.  It's neat. :) 

My family itself is quite young.  LiXiou (women) is only 28, and her husband, Wang Jang Tiang, is only 30.  Unfortunately for all of us, Wang doesn't know any English and Li Xiou knows as much English as I know Chinese.  It makes conversation really difficult (especially because I have so many questions about how to do things, what is acceptable, what is expected of me, etc. and they have so much to share that I just cannot comprehend).  We tried using an English/Chinese converter online to communicate, but that was even a bigger disaster ("please we want you to our attire, are you still an abrasive elephant?").  Peace Corps told us that we should learn about local customs and expectations by asking our host family lots of questions about their culture; so far, that hasn't really been possible, although, for bragging purposes, let me point out that we are all becoming experts at Charades.  ;)

My first dinner at home was really good! We were warned by PC that it may be a bit overwhelming because most Chinese families live to impress and welcome so they may bring out their finest: rabbit head, fish head, etc. as a way to welcome us.  Fortunately, and I think their youth played to my favor, they were considerate of the fact that I may not like meat so instead we had cucumber dipped in the most delicious sauce ever, pumpkin (in oil), beans (in oil), and (because no matter how hard the Chinese try, they cannot comprehend vegetarian) a meat soup-ish thing where the broth was oil; we put MSG in it to spice it up. ;) I wonder how our veggie eaters in other families faired. Hopefully the vegetarians faired as successfully as me! I am grateful that I grew up in a home where meat was embraced and vegetarianism wasn't allowed . . . . It's going to make China submersion that much easier (Thanks, Daddy!!)

After Dinner was my favorite part of the day.  Li Xiou's best friend lives in the same apartment community and is also hosting a Peace Corps volunteer, Terrie, who I haven't gotten much of a chance to meet up until now, but whom I really like (as she is the same age as me).  Thankfully, Terrie's host mother knows a bit more English than my family so I attempted to communicate the gratitude I otherwise wasn't sure was coming across.  We all took a walk after dinner and toured our neighborhood.  Terrie and I wanted to dance with the "old women" (as my family tried warning me) so we tried that out for a while, and we walked through a flee market and checked out the "Addas" shoes, or the shirts written in English, such as "Happiness makes the world go mound".  It was a hoot. :)

Now, however, it is almost 6 am and I cannot sleep anymore as I passed out last night at 9:30.  I'm not sure what I should do, other than try to be as quiet as possible.  Here, we shower at night so I don't even need to do that . . . . I'm afraid of tackling my curl-fro that I certainly have woken up with, so maybe I'll try that? That will certainly take up a good portion of the morning.

Anyway, at 8:30 am I have my first day of classes at Sichuan Normal East University Campus with our small group of 19.  I was, as expected, separated from Nikki and Jake, who are at Sichuan Normal University, which is far away from here and taxis don't come to my part of town.  Hopefully, we'll find a way around this.  At about 8:00 though, my host family will escort me to my first day of school, just like Mom used to for kindergarten.  That should be fun and, again, a language challenge.

Peace, Friends.

**This was written yesterday . . . I just returned home from class (very exhausting, but slightly --very slightly-- encouraging) and my family gave me an ether net cord so I now have internet in my room!! I'm the luckiest PC volunteer EVER!!! :D **encouraging sigh**