Making it through language training

• Awesome experience finding dinner last night
• We went to go find some street food for our BLAST group’s first Chinese dinner together at Green Lake in Kunming but all the stalls close at about 6 pm apparently
• The only thing we could find was this Mr. Chicken place that had boatloads of fried chicken and the guy told us in Chinese, “It’s the best fried chicken in the land”
• But it was also cool because we got to see a group of women in the 50’s-60’s range tear it up on the dance floor while walking around Green Lake which entertained us for a good 15 minutes
• My favorite was the one guy who tried to dance with a woman during the song, “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears and he came in trying to do basically the second part of the chicken dance that we were all taught when we were younger
• The one old lady wasn’t having it and so she shadow-boxed him out of the circle into the periphery
• After walking for an hour and a half around our hostel and slightly losing our sense of where we were, we just ate at a halal small food place near the hostel
• It kind of defeated the purpose of walking around but it was good because we had authentic Chinese food
• Only one of us could fully translate the menu so basically the guy with awesome Chinese skills ordered us all the same plate of chicken and rice for only 8 RMB
• Never expect to get an English speaking staff member at 6 AM in the morning at your hostel
• There was this British guy who came in yelling and screaming because for the second night in a row he was locked out of his room
• A lot of f-bombs were dropped in there to say the least but the thing was that the guy he was screaming at didn’t speak a word of English
• I happened to be sitting in the bar (not drinking) at the time and so the Chinese guy came over to me and I translated using google for him but luckily the guy used so many f-bombs he woke up the English speaking staff 
• First day of BLAST language training
• So this isn’t a “You can’t speak anything but Chinese” because we would all be pretty silent but it was more of an introduction to Chinese class in a business setting where everyone wears business casual
• They said not to expect to be taught characters but expect to be taught how to say things so at least that leaves me with 40,000 less problems to worry about
• It was a good lesson in humility
• They split us up into three groups (1 advanced and 2 beginners) and I got placed in the beginner group where I pronounced just about everything wrong
• We were in a circle and every time except maybe two the teacher stopped at me to make me say the basic Chinese phrase like, “Thank you” over again
•  Chinese reimbursement isn’t that fun
• So in order to be reimbursed for meals I have to get what’s called a 发票 which is an official government document that’s in place in lieu of a sales tax
• Well the thing is that even though everything that is a store is supposed to have copies of these, only about 5% of Chinese restaurants actually do and if you want a发票 you either have to go to a really nice restaurant or a Western restaurant
• Luckily TFC chose one of the best districts to be in Kunming

• • We’re right by a shopping mall that has medium priced Chinese food and发票 so we’re all good to go whereas if we were in a more China-like district with mom and pop stores we would have to walk probably 30 minutes just to get some food
  • And luckily there’s a Carrefour nearby so when nothing is open in the morning that has发票 we can just get breakfast there
• My computer officially broke
• So as fate would have it my computer decided to break down in China 
• Right now I have two screens for the price of one with a nice black bar on the right side of my screen

• • It’s said to be error 0142 on my Dell laptop which means that my hard drive is officially fried but luckily I can still work my computer 
  • I have yet to turn my computer off because if I do I might not be able to turn it on again
  • But praise heaven that Vanderbilt is an awesome university with an awesome engineering school laptop program
  • Even though I graduated my warranty is good until August and Dell rocks because they told me how to fix my problem
  • All I have to do is switch my warranty over to Dell China and pray that they have an English speaking service guy…yay
• I can tell I’m not endearing myself to the staff
• We all got assigned our Chinese names today and I was assigned 鲁聪 where 
• Lu-鲁-means, “rash, rude, stupid, crass, rough”
• Cong-聪-means, “smart, quick-witted, acute at hearing” but I think it’s ironic because I’m in the beginner class so I don’t see how smart really describes my Mandarin skills right now 
• I’m not mad about my new Chinese name because I found that real Chinese people are named this http://www.jxdz.uestc.edu.cn/teacher_detail.asp?id=38
• One day I will hopefully be good enough in Mandarin to grow from 鲁 to 聪
• I lost my lunch group today
• We were divided into groups of three people to practice our language skills over lunch and I was so hungry that I spaced out and after I got done looking around a square at all of the Chinese characters I could recognize I realized I lost everyone
• What makes it worse is the fact that we're all not Chinese so I shouldn't have lost them
• At least I’m confident in my abilities to not die in China
• I just found a place in a shopping mall, ordered some Mapo Tofu and a huge bowl of rice for 18 yuan, and got myself two elusive 发票。