Seeing as how this is my first official blog from within
China, I thought I would start off by sharing my firsts so far. There are going
to be so many new experiences and mile stones. Here’s to my many more!
(Just a note on terms I will be using in my blog: As of last
Friday when we had our Staging, or Pre-Departure Orientation Training, in LA,
we are no longer Peace Corps Invitees but Trainees. We won’t be official Volunteers until we
commit to serving in China and swear in on August 29, and then we will start
teaching sometime after that. We are now doing Pre-Service Training, or PST,
for the next eight weeks or so until that date. We will be learning Chinese and
how to teach English. We also receive training on how take care of our health.
Until this Friday, we are all together for Orientation at Sichuan University,
and then on Friday we will move in with our host families and separate into
different training sites, which are all in Chengdu but at different
universities, meaning we will all be 30-40 minutes apart from each other).
First impressions of Chengdu, Sichuan, China
- · We walked out of the airport to a wall of humidity, and a light drizzle. It was also very hot.
- · Lots of car dealerships
- · Lots of construction and building new apartments (there is a house boom so everyone is trying to buy a place to live)
- · Sichuan University is huge, and if I understand correctly, there are several large campuses spread out throughout the city so it’s kind of like Oxford where many different schools make up the university
Other Firsts
Yesterday marked the first full day, and so naturally there
were a lot of firsts to experience! The following
bullets were all from the same day… keep in mind that I had training from 8:30
until about 3:15. That will give you an idea of how packed (and awesome) my
first full day was.
- · First time using a squat toilet (twice actually, and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be- in fact, I kind of like it because it’s pretty quick).
- · First training sessions of Pre-Service Training, which is the time until the end of August before we actually start teaching. We had our first Mandarin lesson (so exciting!!!!!) and our first health information meeting (there’s a lot to take in! We did get an awesome medical kit that should help us handle anything from diarrhea to itchiness to dehydration to the common cold.
- · Ate out at my first restaurant in China. I had delicious dumplings with pork and leek which cost 8 RMB which is the equivalent of about $1.50, which makes me very excited.
- · Played Frisbee for the first time in China, with three other trainees. Several Chinese people walked by us and stared curiously.
- · Had my first hot pot. Similar to Korean or Japanese barbeque where you cook your own stuff. We did the all-you-can-eat buffet where you pick up trays of uncooked meat and vegetables and pour into a boiling pot of sauce that’s set into the table. You wait until it’s cooked and then pull stuff out with your chopsticks or the ladle, and then pour more stuff in. So fun!
- · Had my first more-than-three-hour dinner. This was at the hot pot place and we just sat and talked and digested and then got more food and ate more. It was great. We were actually eating with some awesome current volunteers (part of the China 16 and 17 groups. I am China 18 meaning I am part of the 18th group to be sent to China with Peace Corps since 1993). They had some great stories and advice for us.
- · First time at a karaoke bar. After the long dinner, we walked with the current volunteers towards some night clubs and on the way we spotted some friends outside a karaoke bar so of course we ran in and sang some songs (Billie Jean and Sweet Caroline).
- · First time dancing at a night club in China, with many Chinese people. We actually went to two different clubs. Both places had a little stage/ raised areas so we all danced on that, and random Chinese people would come and dance with us.
Without a doubt, that was a highly successful and epic first
day.
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