My Host Family

Hi everyone,

A few of you have been curious about my host family. I moved in with them last Saturday. It's been good so far. The pictures you see are of my room, my Western-style toilet (hurray!), and the view from my bedroom.

The house is about a 10 minute walk from campus. It's off the North Gate, down a little street divided by a river/sewer. It's actually kind of pretty. The neighborhood I live in seems like a fairly tight-knit community with a lot of children. There are six volunteers who live in my complex.

I live in the very corner building of the complex. My site manager lives downstairs on the second floor. I live on the sixth floor. Apparently, the law in the China is that an elevator is required in buildings with seven floors, so our complex's buildings fall just under that mark. What that means is that I get to climb six floors every day. I figure that with all the walking and all the stairs, I'll get in shape pretty quickly!

I'm not sure if I should post my family's names, so on this blog, I'll call my host family by their initials: my host father "LL," my host mother is "YY," my host sister is "TT," and my host grandma is "grandma." LL and YY are probably in their mid-thirties, maybe late-thirties. LL is an engineer, but I have no idea where he works. YY is a Chinese teacher at the elementary school located on the university campus. Because she teaches Chinese, her Mandarin is very good. There is a Sichuan dialect most people speak, and it's very difficult to understand.

LL and YY have an eight year old daughter, TT. I haven't met her yet because she and grandma are on vacation visiting family near Beijing. I'm looking forward to her return, however. According to YY, TT always asks about me during their phone conversations. She wants to know my hair color, eye color, and where I am (usually at school).

LL and YY are both a little bit introverted, so the house is pretty quiet most of the time. They both speak a fair amount of English, so right now, more than half our conversation is in English, but as I learn more in my language class, we are speaking more in Chinese.

YY is a pretty fair cook, and she makes me breakfast and dinner every day. It's pretty nice to be cooked for like that. I offer to help, but she doesn't allow it. So far, I'm allowed to throw my trash away in the kitchen (trash is part of the counter), I'm allowed to put my dirty dishes into the sink, and I'm allowed to put leftovers into the refrigerator (located in the dining room). I'm not to help cook or do dishes. I'll push a little harder next week to see if she's just trying to treat me as a guest this week. Our host families are supposed to treat us as family members, but it's not happening quite yet. I get the feeling that YY doesn't want my help, but it could just be cultural. I'm not sure.

My living accomodations are pretty nice. As I mentioned, we live on the sixth (and top) floor of the building. This means that the apartment is two-stories and that we have the rooftop patio/garden. My room and bathroom are on the top floor, and I have them all to myself. My room is a good size, and I have a Western-stye toilet. Hurray! The only problem is the heat. I have an air conditioner in my room, but I don't use it overnight because of the amount of electricity it uses. The problem is that I don't have a fan or cross breeze in my room, so I usually wake up a few times a night, drenching my pillow and sheets with sweat. This means that I'm quite tired in language class the following morning.

Downstairs, I use the washing machine to clean my clothes, and I hang them to dry on the patio upstairs. The apartment doesn't have wireless, so I have to use an ethernet cord in the study downstairs. (I think my harddrive is dead on my laptop, so I'm using my family's computer right now).

Overall, I'm happy with my homestay experience. I do hope that my host daughter comes home soon. I thing she will help lighten the mood of the house a bit, but she might not return for a few more weeks.

I hope you are all doing well.

Jennifer

Happy Fourth of July!

Hi everyone,

Happy Independence Day! Today, I celebrated by having red, white, and blue silly string shot at our group by Chinese PC staff. I then skipped this carrot cake (not my favorite), and I finally had a burger, fries, and bottled water at Red Tomato, a Western-style restaurant near the hotel.

Some of the group went out together and will go clubbing later, but I'm still a bit jetlagged. I also had three shots today, and I'm supposed to stay hydrated and get to bed early. My shots were: first series Hep A/B, rabies, and Japanese encephalitis. My right arm is getting a little sore.

The big news of the day was finding out our training site and our host family. I'll spend the next nine weeks at Sichuan Normal University going to class everyday. My family is Lan Lin and his wife Zu Yunyan. Also living with them is Grandma and an eight year old daughter. From the age of the child, I'm guessing that my host couple might be approximately my age, but I think I might be expected to call them mama and baba. Not sure. They are teachers and live within walking distance of campus. Their hobbies are "reading, go outing, table tennis." I move in with them tomorrow, and I'm extremely nervous.

I think I'll commemorate this fourth of July by sharing some general facts/information about my Chinese experience here:

Chengdu has about 12 million people in it. Some of the city is very flashy with lots of neon lights. Some of it is very run down.

I haven't seen the sun since I've been to China. I knew the pollution would be bad, but I didn't quite understand that it would block direct sunlight. Maybe it's just overcast...I'll let you know as the weather changes.

There is a lot of honking on the streets. But my street's sweeping truck plays beautiful, relaxing, zen-like music as it drives by.

There is a huge rabies problem in China.

China has a dish of fried corn.

There is such thing as a Leather Engineering department on the Sichuan University campus.

A lot of women wear high heels walking around the streets of Chengdu, and many young women walk arm in arm with one another.

Men are often shirtless, even in restaurants.

Restaurants use rolls of toilet paper hanging on the wall to dry your hands on. They also put them on the table as napkins.

The Chinese say "bye bye" as an informal goodbye.

Babies in Chengdu do not wear diapers. Instead, they wear pants with the crotch cut open, and they are free to pee/poop whenever and wherever.

The people here are very friendly. They seem pretty enthusiastic to see foreigners and are always willing to try to help us.

Chengdu has mosquitos. I think I have about seven bites so far!

All in all, I'm having a fantastic time. I'm still tired, so hopefully I'll get a day to rest soon. Oh, I ate intestines and brains at "hot pot." I'll write more about food soon.

I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you all.

Jennifer

Getting to Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Hi everyone,

What a journey to Western China! From D.C., I had a 13 1/2 hour flight to Beijing. We flew United which is sorely lacking entertainment. We did not have individual screens, and the large screen we did have for the back section of the plane wasn't working most of the flight. Oh well. I got a bit of sleep and used my new, beautiful iPod. (Thanks to Michael for helping me load it up...twice :) )

The Beijing airport is really extraordinary--so beautiful. I heard that it just opened a couple months ago in preparation of the Olympics (some of you may know for sure). I wish I had taken some photos of the ceiling which was really lovely. Our flight time to Chengdu was changed from 4:30pm to 6. So we waited for awhile at the airport and changed into our business casual clothes, which we are expected to wear during training and to our jobs once we start. Our flight to Chengdu was a short 2 1/2 hours, but Air China still fed us my first in-China meal, which consisted of:

pork/rice/carrots & green beans

a sweet role filled with a date paste (?)

something like pear jello (a melting jello with fruit and seeds floating in it)

I loved the roll, but I'm not too sure about the jello. I'll do a separate food entry later.

Interesting note: when I arrived in D.C. and in Chengdu, there were firework displays that I could see out of the plane windows. I wonder if they were for me.

Jennifer

Peace Corps Staging in Washington D.C.

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Hi everyone,

Thanks to my mom, Cindy, Anna, and Nicole for seeing me off at Burbank Airport. My flight to D.C. was fine although I had an hour and fifteen minute delay in Dallas. I arrived in D.C. at National Airport at 10pm and was to my hotel by 10:45. My roommate Rebecca had already checked in, so I was able to meet one fellow volunteer my first night.

As a side note, our trainer Kathy lives in Paso where she and her husband own a vineyard. She used to sell her grapes to Tobin James!

Training lasted for a day and a half. It was pretty exhausting since I was jetlagged, but Peace Corps clearly tried to make it as interesting and interactive as possible. According to Peace Corps, my group might be the most educated and experienced group that Peace Corps has ever sent out. So I think that was an ego booster for all of us. After training on Saturday and Sunday, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with some returned China volunteers. They gave us a clearer idea of what we could expect, so it was nice to hear those first hand accounts. I even met Adam from the Peter Hessler's PC memoire River Town.

Overall, staging was a good experience. It was nice to finally meet all the people I'll be spending the next couple years with. I hope everyone is doing well!

Jennifer